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Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#531

Post by anigbrowl »

wyager wrote: post #240
AlexandrB wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alex was free to say it and the people he defamed were free to sue him for saying it. Alex was free to hire competent legal counsel for the trial(s), and he hired a bunch of wacky, like-minded nincompoops instead. There were so many points in this saga where Alex could have made decisions that would have made the outcome less severe and he doubled down almost every time instead. Even as the last trial was wrapping up…

> There is such a thing as consequences for your actions. A system which produces effects extrinsically equivalent to direct proscriptions on free speech is not better than a system which explicitly proscribes some speech, and is arguably worse, because it tricks credulous people into thinking it's not as bad.

Now apply this same standard to Jones' communications. How are they not extrinsically equivalent to harassment, for identical reasons?

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#532

Post by aschearer »

tptacek wrote: post #164
aschearer wrote: post #145

Quoted post unavailable.

(a) Stuff like this is supremely unhelpful and corrosive to the thread. (b) It's obviously not the case that Jones is getting a sympathetic hearing from this thread; instead, you're noticing mostly the randos posting pro-Jones stuff that lives briefly before being flagged to the bottom of the site.

In this thread there are many non-new accounts taking positions such as:

  - This infringes on the first amendment
  - He shouldn't be punished solely for his speech
  - What about this or that person who did X
  - The punishment is too much
  - Anyway, he'll never pay so it doesn't really matter
All these strike me as being sympathetic to Jones. Why even post such things if not to elicit sympathy or muddy waters? Meanwhile you and others are up and down the thread playing whack-a-mole with these people.

So calling a spade a spade, I'm surprised how many on this site are sympathetic to Jones. If you find that corrosive and unhelpful so be it.

P.S. I'm only replying because your a respected member of this community who has called me out.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#533

Post by Jordrok »

paganel wrote: post #430

Blatantly copying from Twitter [1], but it's what I believe, also: > The largest fine paid by a banking executive responsible for the 2008 Financial Crisis was $67.5 million A few tens of millions would have set straight almost everyone involved, the victims getting their money, Jones having to pay out of his pocket. But $1 billion means Jones will never be able to pay the sum, and, what's more, it will also silence…

This is only a good point if you think that the fines that the banking executives paid in 2008 were sufficient. I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone express that opinion. The fine here is fully justified. The lack of fines in 2008 is the problem, not this.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#534

Post by rglover »

tptacek wrote: post #528
rglover wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They were harassed by his followers across Those are individuals who should be tried independently of Jones. By that standard, anybody who goes and commits a crime because of song lyrics should find the artist tried as an accomplice. It's not "walking on eggshells," it's a matter of legal accuracy. You may not like it, but it's important for maintaining a fair courts system (without which, we forfeit a civil societ…

So far no part of the argument you've presented has had anything to do with US defamation law, just for what it's worth. If you're trying to be persuasive, that might be the part of your argument you should opt to shore up. In the alternative, you could adopt the somewhat more popular strategy of "the entire edifice of US defamation law is incongruous with the Constitution and should be thrown out". That argument is…

No post body was provided.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#535

Post by yucky »

Jordrok wrote: post #533
paganel wrote: post #430

Blatantly copying from Twitter [1], but it's what I believe, also: > The largest fine paid by a banking executive responsible for the 2008 Financial Crisis was $67.5 million A few tens of millions would have set straight almost everyone involved, the victims getting their money, Jones having to pay out of his pocket. But $1 billion means Jones will never be able to pay the sum, and, what's more, it will also silence…

This is only a good point if you think that the fines that the banking executives paid in 2008 were sufficient. I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone express that opinion. The fine here is fully justified. The lack of fines in 2008 is the problem, not this.

>The fine here is fully justified.

A billion dollar fine is justified because idiots read his blog and decided a baseless conspiracy theory seemed plausible?

That's laughable. I didn't think I'd ever find myself on the same side of something as Alex Jones and yet here I am. These people lost their minds.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#536

Post by warbeforepeace »

lovich wrote: post #202
wara23arish wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

did he really say go harass these people or did he just say they’re crisis actors and its hoax? Im genuinely asking because i don’t understand how this works. I was under the impression that saying “Trump is a murderous liar” is fine, if I say “Go kill trump”etc then thats incitement. Does that make sense?

He probably could have made such an argument or a similar one on his defense but he received a default judgement because he continuously refused to show up to court dates for his case and perjured himself repeatedly. If this was a soccer game he basically walked to the edge of the field and sat there the whole game and then complained that the refs were in a conspiracy against him because the opposing team was able t…

He received a default judgment because he failed to provide discovery items including financial documents to show the company value, videos that included sandy hook, text and emails that included sandy hook, how much it made of sandy hook and failed to provide a competent corporate representative that could answer questions on a list of items that was provided in advance.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#537

Post by tptacek »

akerl_ wrote: post #530
rglover wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They were harassed by his followers across Those are individuals who should be tried independently of Jones. By that standard, anybody who goes and commits a crime because of song lyrics should find the artist tried as an accomplice. It's not "walking on eggshells," it's a matter of legal accuracy. You may not like it, but it's important for maintaining a fair courts system (without which, we forfeit a civil societ…

There’s criteria for defamation. Jones likely met them, but it didn’t matter here because he lost by default in the trial due to his overwhelming failure to engage with the legal system in his own defense. If an artist published songs with lyrics that met the criteria for defamation, and then people heard the song and committed crimes, the artist would be liable for defamation and the listeners who committed crimes w…

Your best Google search here, for what it's worth, is [defamation damages model jury instructions]. :)

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#538

Post by tptacek »

aschearer wrote: post #532
tptacek wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(a) Stuff like this is supremely unhelpful and corrosive to the thread. (b) It's obviously not the case that Jones is getting a sympathetic hearing from this thread; instead, you're noticing mostly the randos posting pro-Jones stuff that lives briefly before being flagged to the bottom of the site.

In this thread there are many non-new accounts taking positions such as: - This infringes on the first amendment - He shouldn't be punished solely for his speech - What about this or that person who did X - The punishment is too much - Anyway, he'll never pay so it doesn't really matter All these strike me as being sympathetic to Jones. Why even post such things if not to elicit sympathy or muddy waters? Meanwhile yo…

My perception is that the comments and the voting on this thread overwhelmingly disfavors Jones. But, anyways, just as a general rule, characterizing the tone of an entire thread or of HN in general is just something we're not supposed to be doing here. That's all!

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#539

Post by mikkergp »

donatj wrote: post #176
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's not at all what happened. Jones lied in a deliberate attempt to provoke harassment of these poor people. If owned a radio show and I go on and said you were a child rapist and should be stopped by any means necessary would you believe me faultless if you got attacked?

> a deliberate attempt to provoke harassment of these poor people That seems superbly unlikely. If that were true, what would he stand to gain from that? What did he have against these people? I can't imagine he was just sitting there chuckling maniacally "yes yes I'm going to hurt these people who just lost their children". That's an imagined cartoon

Have you listened to Alex Jones speak? I get that we should try to see the humanity in people and that 99.999% of people are complex and nuanced but some people really are sociopaths. Some people really are cartoons.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#540

Post by anigbrowl »

tptacek wrote: post #493
anigbrowl wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The poster is wholly correct in observing that Alex Jones has a disproportionate number of defenders here. Usually a busy thread might collect 2 or 3 flag-dead comments, this one has 23.

The point is that they're all flagged dead, not that this story didn't attract a bunch of new randos to post flagged comments. Anybody can make an account here to post nonsense with practically no effort at all; it's an open-access site.

The original point was that it was amazing to see so many randos, given the relatively narrow popularity of HN.
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