> 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.

Jones' lawyers at one point forwarded a full phone dump of Jones' phone by accident to opposing council. They of course notified Jones' lawyers immediately to ask if this was a mistake that they should delete/disregard, as was their right. Jones' lawyers promptly ignored this, or didn't understand what was going on, resulting it becoming fair game after X days had passed. This goody bag of text messages and pictures contradicted several points of Jones' defence regarding who he was communicating with and a bunch of incriminating evidence that wasn't produced during discovery. That was my understanding of that episode, I may have misunderstood parts of it. Oh, and they revealed this when Jones was on the stand, and it is available to view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC9RiRUF21A

Legal Eagle (among many others I suspect - that's just the channel I tend to follow for pop legal) did a breakdown of that clip explaining what was going on for the layperson: https://youtu.be/x-QcbOphxYs

I wonder if attorneys have any liability at all. Granted, lawyers do not provide any guarantees, and I usually tend to be more forgiving of genuine fuckups, but this seems a bit too much. The very least you expect from a hired lawyer is not to single-handedly destroy all your defense.

You can sue a lawyer for malpractice, same as a doctor. They even carry insurance for it.

Also worth remembering, the entire lawsuit wasn't about defamation.

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.

IANAL, but I'd also imagine there's a difference between clear satire and something being presented as the truth. Additionally, The Onion generally goes after public figures while Infowars, in this case, was targeting private individuals. Not sure how either of these have bearing in the legal sense, but could be important factors.

Of course, in a politicized legal context, these points may not matter since legal action could simply be an endurance trial.

>>I'd also imagine there's a difference between clear satire and something being presented as the truth. There is, and the 1st amendment's coverage of Parody/Satire is very well documented. The Onion has always made it clear that it's fake news, Infowars fought tooth and nail to say they're allowed to say their "truth" even if it's harmful lies. When you can prove that someone believes the damaging bullshit they're saying (not always easy!) they get their dick kicked in.

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.

A lot of jurisdictions have anti-SLAPP lawsuits, but not all. I think Logan Paul is trying to sue YouTuber Coffeezilla in a district that doesn't have anti-SLAPP protections with the express intent of bankrupting him.

Fair enough. I didn't know it was a walkover in the end. And it is not really surprising there was no sane defence.

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 Info Wars etc becoming big is pretty much a symptom rather than the problem

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 think there is a three fold problem of the mental health crisis, decreased social trust (broken communities etc) and algorithmic feeds.

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.

> Why would you go find people that challenge your views

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.

> I believe the problem is how incredibly easy it is to both disseminate and consume utter bullshit.

But more importantly, how easy it is to make a lot of money disseminating it.

the problem was that it was profitable.

> Seems like the article is really gleeful.

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.

I can't imagine a more valid use for defamation laws than to prevent someone from knowingly and repeatedly causing death threats and other harassment to be directed at parents whose children have been murdered. After being sued, Jones completely failed to defend himself in any meaningful way and lost the suit by default. I honestly have no idea which part of this chain of events you object to. People should be free to send mobs after parents grieving an unimaginable tragedy? Morons who get sued should win by default?

There is a right to be wrong.

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.

> The precedent is bad.

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.

Calling Sandy Hook a hoax and harrassing grieving parents is not "the right to be wrong".

"Being wrong" and "repeatedly defaming people" are quite different.

The Paradox of Tolerance: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance>

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.

That's awfully close to "terrorists shouldn't have rights", and problematic for the same reason.

I think it's actually closer to "terrorists should go to prison". Terrorists and other criminals have broken a social contract, and a level of punishment that some approximation of society deems to be acceptable is extracted from the terrorists. This doesn't mean that terrorists don't/shouldn't have some rights. Similarly, thinking about tolerance as a social contract doesn't require stripping anyone who violates this contract of all of their rights.

FWIW I don't actually have a problem with Jones specifically getting in trouble over defamation after getting his day in court. What I have a problem with is the broad notion that it's generally okay to "not tolerate the intolerant" to the point of forcibly suppressing them. The paradox of tolerance is not really a paradox when we're talking about intolerant speech.

I'm kind of worried about society deciding which speech is "intolerant", so I'm not completely on board with the idea of treating tolerance as a social contract. That being said, if we could stop a genocide merely by suppressing people's speech, I feel like that would probably be a worthwhile thing to do. That is to say, it feels like the least bad way to prevent a genocide.

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.

Indeed. And one of the wonders of this is that anyone can determine that you have not abided by the terms. Even Stalin’s Russia was tolerant. It merely deemed many people to not abide by the terms of mutual tolerance.

The right to be wrong is important.

The right to deliberately lie in ways that harm people is not a "right" that we want to uphold.

And profit off of the lies.

The precedent would otherwise be that it is ok ignoring and debasing the US Justice system.

What precedent do you think this sets exactly?

Great point! When The Onion starts making threats against survivors and relatives of school shootings, they should also face defamation lawsuits.

The threats were made by Jones followers rather than Jones personally.

Okay. But I think that undermines the argument the OP was making significantly.

"Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?"

And when one of your followers has done the deed throw them under a bus.

A court already determined he is guilty. If he thought he was innocent, he had the opportunity to present any defense he wanted. Whether or not he is at fault isn't a point of discussion because it's already been determined for a fact.

Yes, he is guilty. But he's guilty of defamation, not incitement. It is an important distinction because "I thought that was true" is a defense in a defamation case, but not in incitement- you can't say "the pope is catholic, go kill him now", regardless of whether he is actually catholic.

"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.

Did he actually call for people to make threats or use violence? Did he even imply it?

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?

Some examples of what he said

>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.

We're not discussing the case generally. We're asking if the assertion that he THREATENED anyone, holds water. So far, nobody has been able to provide any evidence, that he has.

Whatever you think about the case, it should be decided with factual statements, not emotional manipulative accusations that bend the truth.

Yeah, it seems he didn't directly threaten the families.

If I understand correctly: if I threaten a third party based on something you’ve said, you now face legal liability?

Googling:

>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.

A single person reacting that way is unlikely to make the speaker liable, but when a large crowd reacts the same way and the speaker does not make attempts to defuse the situation, then liability should be assigned.

So you’re saying that every supportive observer in every worldstar fight video should be held liable for any injuries? Not suggesting you’re wrong or right, but your approach places a novel legal burden on observers, and thus detaches it from actors, where the responsibility currently lies.

> So you’re saying that every supportive observer in every worldstar fight video should be held liable for any injuries?

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.

So if Alex Jones posts on WorldStar, they’d be liable? How far does deplatforming responsibility extend in this theory?

The Onion was not telling the parents of dead children they were crisis actors and were lying

Don't want to be sued by defamation don't make BS about people in a fragile position. It's that simple

In the US, the truth is a strong and approved defense against defamation. If you are for some reason terrified of defamation lawsuits in the one nation with the highest bar required to prove defamation, you can avoid any possible loss by simply not lying.

Er... the Onion is satire. Satire is not defamation because no one with any sense thinks it's true. InfoWars was not satire. Rather, it constantly lied.

I’m glad that you didn’t waste effort saying “I am not a lawyer” here, because it’s very very apparent that you aren’t.

it absolutely can not, satire is protected under the first amendment and there are piles of precedence

Can't tell if this is satire or not, that's the real irony here.

Not likely. Satire is protected under the First Amendment.

Are you as confident about the 22nd?