Seems like the article is really gleeful. Somewhat ironic since The Onion could be brought down in the same way by defamation lawsuits.
Unlikely.
It's worth remembering that Jones was never actually tried for defamation. He instead received a default judgment. In the US, both sides of a civil case have the right to a fair and speedy trial. If there's delays, you had better have a good reason for them and they need to fit the rules of procedure.
Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, more-or-less refused to participate in the trial. The Knowledge Fight podcast has some episodes dealing with the discovery and deposition process for the suits, with actual deposition audio. I'm not a lawyer but it was absolutely brutal to listen to how ill-prepared Jones, his employees, and his representatives were. They were submitting Wikipedia articles about false flags as evidence, had a comprehensive background check on one of the parents that was in FSS records that no one could seem to explain the presence of, and generally didn't comply with other discovery requests.
The end result of this is that his life's work has been reduced to a satire and he is likely financially hobbled for the rest of his life.
For The Onion to have the same fate, they would have to basically disregard every single common-sense rule regarding what you should do when you're sued.
There were several claims about things such as Alex Jones paying individuals to call the plaintiffs 24/7 and other direct forms of harassment.
Feel however you want about free speech but the lawsuit wasn't just Alex Jones said mean words.
Of course, in a politicized legal context, these points may not matter since legal action could simply be an endurance trial.
To your other point, "a well-financed bad actor could ruin any business with enough SLAPP lawsuits" falls away because anti-SLAPP laws exist and award damages if you push too hard.
Do perfectly good people get ruined through litigation? Sure. Is it the epidemic that grifters trying to sway public opinion in their favor make it out to be? Highly unlikely.
I believe Info Wars etc becoming big is pretty much a symptom rather than the problem. And it has escalated lately. I fear that they will be used as excuses for getting at others.
I believe the problem is how incredibly easy it is to both disseminate and consume utter bullshit. You're no longer that weird loner in town. You go online and can find hundreds and thousands of people who agree with you. Why would you go find people that challenge your views, when you can get those dopamine highs from people who love everything you say?
Get pushback from people in your life? Cut them out. They don't get you, and they're just hating.
The worst part? It's self-sustaining. Humans are really bad about going against a group. So much of our social behavior is around what others do, and the more we find out about others believing XYZ, we'll start to believe it ourselves. Unless they're from a different group, in which case it is anathema.
Combine those 2 things and you get these people who basically live in separate worlds. And social media/internet enables that.
I don't know if Alex Jones is mentally ill or pretends to be. His targeting seems suspiciously self-aware and lame compared to how it usually sounds when people wander down that path.
But I guess most of his viewership is. But they existed on the internets in the beginning too. Plenty of them. Maybe the recommendation engines bring more people into the "self-sustaining" circle, than would be otherwise?
I think what has changed is mainly that there are more 'leaders'. I might have had the wrong conception of what it was like earlier, but apart from Alex Jones and the lizard guy (David Ike?) it didn't seem to be that many.
Something has changed. There are so many lunatic "influencers" nowadays that keep getting pushed to the top. Earlier you had to get out of your way to stumble upon them.
Obviously in some kind of minority, but I love having my views challenged. It’s how I grow. I want people to argue with me, though ideally, respectfully.
But more importantly, how easy it is to make a lot of money disseminating it.
Good! It should be. Alex Jones is a ghoul making money from dead school shooting victims. Anything that embarrasses him is entitled to as much glee as it wants.
But I think the right to be wrong is way more important than getting at Alexander Jones.
The precedent is bad.
But when you profit off the suffering and harm you've caused by being wrong knowingly and continuing to cause harm, then its a very good precedent.
I think the opposite precent would be worse. Regulating your tone around anyone with even a mediocum of power for fear of repercussion is part of the reason we're in the situation we face today.
A good reply I found online:
The Paradox of Tolerance disappears if you look at tolerance not as a moral standard but as a social contract. If someone does not abide the terms of mutual tolerance, then they are not covered by the contract. By definition intolerant people do not follow the rules so they are no longer covered and should not be tolerated.
Again, figuring out which speech is worth suppressing is a whole other can of worms.
EDIT: note that Jones did have his speech suppressed, and this was done because his speech was causing people to make death threats against the sandy hook parents. I feel like we could classify Jones's speech as intolerant against sandy hook parents, and the same logic applies as for any other type of intolerant speech.
Surely chairman mao agrees with free speech that doesn’t harm his society and social programs
The right to deliberately lie in ways that harm people is not a "right" that we want to uphold.
"He didn't present a defense therefore it has been determined for a fact that he is guilty" is not especially sound. You'd have to concede the existence of witches on the absurd end, and that everyone who makes a plea deal is guilty on the more rational end. He's guilty because he publicly made harmful defamatory statements that he privately did not believe, both of which are made clear by evidence.
Do you apply the same standard to public figures who call Trump a fascist or a Nazi? Are they responsible for the person who shot him?
>You’ve got parents laughing — ‘hahaha’ — and then they walk over to the camera and go ‘boo hoo hoo,’ and not just one but a bunch of parents doing this and then photos of kids that are still alive they said died? I mean, they think we’re so dumb.”
>“Why did Hitler blow up the Reichstag — to get control! Why do governments stage these things — to get our guns! Why can’t people get that through their head?” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/us/politics/heres-what-jo...
Re double standards on Trump, I think people are ok with criticizing power hungry politicians, less so with parents who have had their kids killed.
The Jones case was a civil case for damages. He's not going to prison or anything - just losing some assets. Trump is free to sue people who've implied he's a nazi (maybe he could start with JD) but I don't know how sympathetic a jury would be.
Whatever you think about the case, it should be decided with factual statements, not emotional manipulative accusations that bend the truth.
>To prove prima facie defamation, a plaintiff must show four things: 1) a false statement purporting to be fact; 2) publication or communication of that statement to a third person; 3) fault amounting to at least negligence; and 4) damages
So probably no in that case as there was no significant damage. Sandy Hook was different in that there were ongoing threats and harassment for years.
Not at all - I'm saying the liability should go in the opposite direction. If worldstar fight videos incite lots of people to start fighting in the streets, then worldstar should be partially responsible unless they take actions to distance themselves from their viewers' actions.
Don't want to be sued by defamation don't make BS about people in a fragile position. It's that simple
* the system referring to the vast combination of peoples: politicians, legal, monied interests, lobbyists, news media, corporations, journalists, agitators, whatever, et al