I'm very much not a fan of Q-anon and related subcultures, but the sandy-hook award of $1.5 billion is obviously ridiculous, and is clearly just a government/institutional exercise in dictatorial/systemic power.
There is no possible way that someone ranting on the internet can cause 1.5 billion of emotional damage or whatever the claim was.
In particular, the libel (and it should be libel, making claims that are not true, rather than 'defamation' which is merely slurring them), should be from a credible source. Alex Jones is obviously not a credible source in this, or any case, and is unlikely to have caused any material harm (loss of jobs etc) to the 'victims'.
I mean, good riddance to Alex Jones, but the tools and methods used were entirely inappropriate to a liberal democracy, where you prevail with better arguments.
I didnt see anything about a dictatorial power, just a complaint about incompatibility with liberal democracy, and I tend to agree.
That can come from broken systems as easily as a dictator.
It is hard for me to imagine what would support 150 million per plaintiff. That is and order of magnitude more civil damages than are often awarded for cold blooded murder.
Everyone hates Alex Jones, and I don't like him either, but that shouldn't trump justice and proportionality. It makes me think that the penalty was for more than what was on trial, and rather a reflection of mob justice by other means.
Indeed 'dictatorial power' was not quite what I meant - I did not mean that Trump or Biden demanded a certain outcome for example,
I mean that the system prosecutes these kinds of cases seemingly quite unfairly, as with Assange, or some of the maneuvers against Russell Brand, and that the actions just so happen to mesh with the interests of those in power.
People can claim that everything is OK because, court of law, etc, but to me the system is clearly not delivering correct answers.
Well, it moves the claim. Now the dictatorial power lies with the jury.
The normal corrective for such a thing is to appeal the amount of the award, on the grounds that it is clearly unreasonable. For Alex Jones, it probably didn't matter - he was bankrupt either way, so the extreme amount of the award is just a middle finger from the jury, with no practical effect.
It depends. If the courts went through the regular processes and he did nothing but defy them, you could argue that on top of the money, he should have been in jail by now.
5'500'000'000 people on the internet, which means an average of 27 cents per user. To say that there is "no possible way" of reaching that level of emotional damages is a stretch.
he wasn't paying for emotional damages done to the users of the internet. He was paying for emotional damages to 15 plaintiffs. 100 million is a lot of emotional suffering. Civil damages would have been lower if he killed the children himself. OJ paid 30 million civil damages for murder, and that was outstandingly high.
The courts might as well have assigned a 1 trillion dollars of damages.
You could argue that he was fined for wilfully communicating his lies to everyone on the internet (at least in the anglosphere). The award made by the jury (not the court) was explicitly for punitive damages. They picked a number to ensure he would be wiped out financially, and I think he deserves every bit of suck he is currently experiencing.
This look like the same argument the record companies use for piracy.
Oh "we would have made 10 billion if everyone downloading illegally would have paid." Except of course most people wouldn't have bothered if it wasn't free.
So, how much is 1.5B, per 'victim' of some obvious crackpots' rants.
Someone should get to lie and spread conspiracy theories for decades and have to only pay a little? The man had been doing it because he could, not because he didn’t understand it was a lie. Then when called out and asked to stop, he kept doing it.
The damage is tremendous, there are still people that are radicalized by it and spouting his lies today. Doesn’t sound like an unreasonable amount of money to me. What is unreasonable about the amount of money, what should have it been?
that isnt the damage that was assessed at 1.5 billion, and isn't what he was paying for. It is damages done specifically to 15 families for emotional pain and suffering.
Yes pain and suffering caused by lies used to radicalize people about a tragic event. Cute little caveat you’re willing to carve out in your head for lies, though.
Being radicalized is damage. Some of those people radicalized will go on to perform mass shootings, literally. I would wager heavily that the risk of someone being a mass shooter amongst Jone's audience is much higher versus the average population.
damage to whom? Is that who got the the 1.5 billion? the money didnt go to fund deradicalization. It went to 15 people to compensate for the harm that those people specifically suffered.
If you are saying the fine is an appropriate punishment because of harm done to some other people, than that itself is illiberal. That isn't what Jones was on trial for.
That is intentionally giving an excessive penalty because you want to punish them for something else, that certainly wasn't litigated, and may not even be a crime.
Do you understand how people might be uncomfortable with that logic?
It's not my logic, the jury decided it. I guess take it up with them.
The fines are mostly punitive, which I frankly support. Why? Because Jones deserves it. If anything, Jones should consider himself lucky to be surrounded by such outstanding citizens that they go through the legal system instead of taking matters into their own hands.
Maybe if it was someone else I would care more. But for him, I can't bring myself to care much. Maybe that's illogical, but I don't mind much. Life is always a case-by-case basis.
Why bother? Jones didn't provide credible evidence for the bullshit claim that the Sandy Hook massacre was fake, so he's being paid back in his own coin. Fuck him.
its so frustrating that the only reason i am able to post this is because of X... because searching for this guys name or "poject veritas nudge" does not produce the result that it obviously should anywhere except for X. this is the tactic that is so often used by people like you. state something that is factually correct but completely incorrect and misleading when the full context is taken into account. even if this were an actual civil case brought on in the normal way it would still be the undeniable truth that one billion is silly and that this is political.
It's not that simple though. The initial guilty verdict was not even the decision of a jury, but the result of a fairly abnormal procedural decision by the judge. There was then a follow-on hearing to determine the amount in damages, where Jones' lawyer "accidentally" sent loads of evidence, not required by discovery, directly to the prosecution. The entire suit against Jones is filled with interested parties and corruption. It is definitely not a good example of better arguments prevailing.
The USA has an adversarial legal system. Jones and his lawyers didn't do anything that they could have done to prevent this.
My understanding is that the suit against Jones was pretty standard in what damages it asked for, and that defendants (Jones in this case) are giving every opportunity to negotiate and legally lessen the damages. Jones' lawyers did not do this, apparently at his direction. Jones also refused to produce evidence that is always traded between parties in suits like this. There was a "Perry Mason" moment when Jones was on the stand testifying that revealed (due to an incredible screw up by his lawyers) that Jones had apparently withheld info he should have disclosed during discovery.
Basically, he directed his lawyers to do nothing, and they did so. The size of the judgement is statutory. It's not that there was a governmental thumb on the scale, it's that Jones and his lawyers didn't do anything to scale it down, or even do much to contradict the plaintiff's claims.
You cannot quantify it. IMHO emotional damage is not a thing, at least in terms of people merely saying things about you. Have you not heard 'sticks and stones...'?
If someone claims false facts about you, and is credible, and that then has a material impact on you, then sure, that might be something for the law.
You can, within some reasonable margin, quantify the opportunity cost, though, which is what such reparations are intended to compensate.
Best I can find was that there were 15 plaintiffs, each representing a family. If we assume an average family of four, let's say there are 60 beneficiaries, or $25 million per person. That's about an order of magnitude more than the typical person would expect to make in their lifetime.
There should be something to suggest that they had an income trend or other demonstration of similar potential to have otherwise earned that much if Infowars/Alex Jones had not done what they did. I wonder what showed that?
Your feelings that it is not a thing have no bearing on the actual law. I'm sure you and Alex Jones both agree, but luckily the victims, the jury, and the law don't.
The number seems to be based on the fact that he made money of it. And if that was in the 100s of million, the fine should obviously be higher to ward of other people doing so (and not just have it as a cost of doing business). Kind of like the german movie piracy thing where the convicts had to give up thousands of bitcoin, which the state sold for more than 2 billion.
(Beside the fact that in other liberal democracies, he would be in prison now)
There were 2 issues. The first is that he made money off of it. The 2nd (and likely bigger issue) was that he repeatedly violated court orders (e.g. not complying with discovery, repeatedly lying under oath, threatening the jury on his show while the trial was going on, etc). Judges and juries generally really don't like it when one of the parties is lying their ass off and ignoring the judge's orders.
What is your argument? It sounds like you aren't very familiar with the case ("whatever the claim was"), and I don't think just declaring that something is ridiculous is a very good argument.
>I mean, good riddance to Alex Jones, but the tools and methods used were entirely inappropriate to a liberal democracy, where you prevail with better arguments.
The tools and methods used were "a trial by a jury of his peers," in which better arguments did prevail. That seems entirely appropriate to a liberal democracy.
Better arguments prevail only works when participants argue in good faith grounded in curiously, evidence and reason. The guy who flips the table isn't proposing a novel gaming strategy, you just kick him out of board game club.
I'm not aware of him suggesting people harass anybody. There's a wide line between saying crazy things and calling people to take specific action against specific people.
My dude. He was ranting for years to an audience of people self-selecting as susceptible to propaganda about how a specific group of normal ass people was assisting the Government in dismantling their second amendment rights.
Like no he didn't literally say "go torment them" but come the fuck on. The connection between the events here isn't 1/10th as complicated as most of Alex's actual theories, it's literally just a line.
This isn't the 18th century anymore where the dissemination of arguments barely traveled outside of the immediate vicinity, this is the globally networked firehose of disinformation blasted right in your face 24-hours a day. Relying on better arguments to win hearts and minds in this environment is hopelessly naive.
a liberal democracy, where you prevail with better arguments
This is only true when everyone argues in good faith, and is committed to accepting the possibility of being proven wrong. Sociopaths and other kinds of assholes exist and can corrupt any system if allowed to do so.
Oh yeah that's all we need is whatever tech org having even more unearned and unaccountable authority in our lives.
I'll fully cosign that liberal democracy has a LOT of issues but sweet fuck if we hand over our government to more fucking algorithms I'm becoming a terrorist.
There is no possible way that someone ranting on the internet can cause 1.5 billion of emotional damage or whatever the claim was.
In particular, the libel (and it should be libel, making claims that are not true, rather than 'defamation' which is merely slurring them), should be from a credible source. Alex Jones is obviously not a credible source in this, or any case, and is unlikely to have caused any material harm (loss of jobs etc) to the 'victims'.
I mean, good riddance to Alex Jones, but the tools and methods used were entirely inappropriate to a liberal democracy, where you prevail with better arguments.