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Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

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Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#91

Post by benj111 »

mbg721 wrote: post #7
tptacek wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Danger, Will Robbins. I have zero expertise; I'm an annoying nerd like most of the rest of us. I just read lots of law blogs. :) The post touches on this: In determining whether the audience is likely to interpret a statement as one of fact or one of opinion or hyperbole, courts consider a viewpoint of an audience familiar with the speaker, the forum, and the circumstances. The interesting thing here --- and this is…

(It's Will Robinson.) This sounds like a Perry Mason episode...either the tarot reading has some kind of observable truth, in which case it is treated as a fact, or it's just made-up nonsense, in which case it is opinion.

If I said God showed me a list of all the arseholes in the world, and your name was on it.

Is that defamation?

If you believe in God, you could reasonably believe that God came down and showed me the list.

If you don't believe, then this is obviously made up.

My personal opinion is that a 'fact' depends upon what the audience and/or speaker believes. So a tarot reading on a tarot reading channel could be construed as a fact. As could trump stating at a trump rally that the election was stolen.

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#92

Post by eru »

squokko wrote: post #11

If something is not illegal but clearly bad, it's a lesson that we should change the law. It absolutely should not be legal to lob a completely baseless murder accusation at someone with no evidence.

> If something is not illegal but clearly bad, it's a lesson that we should change the law.

I don't agree (at least not in general). Eg not loving your kids is clearly bad, but I don't think laws would be the right way to tackle this.

> It absolutely should not be legal to lob a completely baseless murder accusation at someone with no evidence.

You could try to make American courts change how they interpret defamation. Or you could change the defamation laws in the US. Or you could stop fiddling with defamation, and make up a new category of 'bad thing'. In the last case, you could learn from the German experience: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cble_Nachrede_(Deutschlan... (use Google translate, if necessary).

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#93

Post by atoav »

causality0 wrote: post #88
niemandhier wrote: post #84

Interestingly the statement that “ defamation requires a provably false statement of fact “ is not true in all jurisdictions. German law makes a distinction between „Verleumdung“ which is indeed like defamation and “üble Nachrede“, which only requires a statement to not be probably true.

[flagged]

Ah free speech, the thing that makes every discourse better if there is more of it. I surely envy the nuance and shade you guys have over there in your (political and otherwise) discussion. With it's two sides the US is truly a beacon of free thought. That polarization is not at all harmful to more nuanced positions. /s

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#94

Post by TeMPOraL »

gnopgnip wrote: post #81
mbg721 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have anywhere near the background expertise that you do, but surely there's some kind of "reasonable person" standard at some point, right? Or is that just for juries in criminal trials?

Yes in some cases this is a factor. In CA, from the 1703 Defamation per quod civil jury instruction notes, That [this person/these people] reasonably understood that the statement(s) [was/were] about [name of plaintiff] And “If [a] defamatory meaning would appear only to readers who might be able to recognize it through some knowledge of specific facts and/or circumstances, not discernible from the face of the public…

Interesting.

So imagine I combine some niche industry terms to call you something nasty - say, "init forker" - and make it a statement of fact, though one that's hard to discern even for insiders, much less for the general audience. But it so happens that you're an influencer on the side. You make an angry Tiktok video whining about me. Then someone in your audience makes a YouTube commentary about it. Then someone else makes a counter-commentary. Fast forward one week, half the population in the country knows what "init forker" means.

Would this give you grounds for an effective libel suit? Even if it only became "matters of common knowledge rationally attributable to all reasonable persons" after the fact, thanks to third parties making the story viral on the Internet?

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#95

Post by TeMPOraL »

causality0 wrote: post #88
niemandhier wrote: post #84

Interestingly the statement that “ defamation requires a provably false statement of fact “ is not true in all jurisdictions. German law makes a distinction between „Verleumdung“ which is indeed like defamation and “üble Nachrede“, which only requires a statement to not be probably true.

[flagged]

Yes and no. I find the contrast between US and German laws to always be interesting, often revealing a very different approach to what's fair and what freedom means.

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#96

Post by eru »

tptacek wrote: post #18
squokko wrote: post #11

If something is not illegal but clearly bad, it's a lesson that we should change the law. It absolutely should not be legal to lob a completely baseless murder accusation at someone with no evidence.

In this case, you'd need to do more than change the law; you'd need to amend the Constitution.

Why do you think you'd need to do that? Why wouldn't some generous re-interpretation be enough? Or is the US constitution so specific on the matter that this is hard?

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#97

Post by crote »

system2 wrote: post #85
bowsamic wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Tiktok is aimed at 13 year-olds or younger people who waste 8+ hours on their phone. Lot's of screaming, cringy repetitive video creations (same video recorded by millions), people proudly admit the algorithm of tiktok is the best because it keeps the user's dopamine levels high. And on top of that, blatant Chinese data collection with likely evil intend. I will not say more than this because whenever I criticize tik…

TikTok has a very efficient algorithm which rapidly tunes to your personal interests. If you only see screaming and cringy repetitive videos beyond the first 15 minutes of use, you've got nobody to blame but yourself. For example, my personal feed is for a large part educational content, and I don't think I have seen any person under 16-17 since I first started using it.

It's still probably a net negative on society, but I definitely consider Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to be far worse. TikTok is getting a bad reputation solely because of its Chinese origin, while its Western counterparts are doing exactly the same thing.

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#98

Post by noduerme »

mbg721 wrote: post #5
tptacek wrote: post #2

Fascinating: this is a defamation case that could conceivably turn on the conventional interpretation of specific tarot cards. You can make up a completely batshit but purely subjective reason to accuse someone of a crime, and the "subjective" part insulates you from liability, but if there's a shred of objectivity in the claim to latch onto, and you lied about it, you can be liable.

I don't have anywhere near the background expertise that you do, but surely there's some kind of "reasonable person" standard at some point, right? Or is that just for juries in criminal trials?

>> surely there's some kind of "reasonable person" standard at some point, right?

Are you referring to whether a reasonable listener would believe the defamatory claims? Or whether the person doing the defaming could reasonably be expected to know better than to believe what they're saying?

Normally, we think of situations where the defamer is a crazy person and no reasonable listener would believe them. But the distinction seems pertinent to the potential prosecution against Trump based on the Jan 6th committee hearings, because in that case the normal "reasonable person" standard would be inverted. A reasonable listener could easily believe that the President of the United States was describing reality when he claimed he knew the election was stolen and that the Vice President could legally overturn the results. His defense may well rest on whether he himself could have reasonably believed that what he was saying was true.

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#99

Post by noduerme »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #94
gnopgnip wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes in some cases this is a factor. In CA, from the 1703 Defamation per quod civil jury instruction notes, That [this person/these people] reasonably understood that the statement(s) [was/were] about [name of plaintiff] And “If [a] defamatory meaning would appear only to readers who might be able to recognize it through some knowledge of specific facts and/or circumstances, not discernible from the face of the public…

Interesting. So imagine I combine some niche industry terms to call you something nasty - say, "init forker" - and make it a statement of fact, though one that's hard to discern even for insiders, much less for the general audience. But it so happens that you're an influencer on the side. You make an angry Tiktok video whining about me. Then someone in your audience makes a YouTube commentary about it. Then someone e…

I don't know, but it's a great reason not to expand libel law. Especially in an age where everything is permanently recorded but the sequence of events is increasingly elided.

Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?

#100

Post by ggm »

niemandhier wrote: post #84

Interestingly the statement that “ defamation requires a provably false statement of fact “ is not true in all jurisdictions. German law makes a distinction between „Verleumdung“ which is indeed like defamation and “üble Nachrede“, which only requires a statement to not be probably true.

The article is almost certainly written with an eye to US defamation law. Squirrel Importunities not being an offence in lower Saxony, on a Tuesday.
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