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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32863 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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This is trending on Twitter Jury decides Alex Jones must pay $965 million in Sandy Hook defamation trial

The conspiracy theorist Alex Jones should pay $965 million to people who suffered from his false claim that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax, a jury in Connecticut decided Wednesday.

The verdict is the second big judgment against the Infowars host over his relentless promotion of the lie that the 2012 massacre never happened, and that the grieving families seen in news coverage were actors hired as part of a plot to take away people’s guns.

It is unclear how much of the verdicts Jones can afford to pay. During the trial in Texas, he testified he couldn’t afford any judgment over $2 million. Free Speech Systems has filed for bankruptcy protection. But an economist testified in the Texas proceeding that Jones and his company were worth as much as $270 million.

There is no way he or his company can afford $1 billion. What is the point of these huge verdicts if there is no hope of it being paid. From what I understand, collecting on a judgment can be as hard as winning. Likely Mr. Jones has various forms of asset protection set up. Texas and Florida have the most generous homestead protection.

Because this is a civil matter , not criminal, it means Mr. Jones can avail himself of these protections.

With a generally contentious situation like this one, it seems to me that a symmetry argument is a reasonable sanity check. We're a nation of ~350 million, and the current culture war is decades old. Is there a roughly-comparable example with the valence flipped? If this sort of thing has happened to irresponsible loudmouths of either tribe, I think it's a lot harder to argue that it's a solid example of oppression. If this sort of thing only happens to people Blues don't like, then I think that's a lot more worrying. Are there any examples available of roughly similar situations playing out with a blue-tribe defendant? Prominence of the accused, nature of the offense, resulting harms and severity of punishment seem to be the salient variables. For severity of punishment, I think the exact dollar figure is largely irrelevant, and can reasonably be rounded to "Financially Ruined".

I'll open bidding with Gawker. Disreputable media outfit, though probably with more scale and reach than Jones. Offense I think might be very roughly summed up as "made scummy statements that enabled harassment". The harms in Jones' case are probably worse than Gawker's. The judgement seems roughly similar, with the caveat that Gawker played out years ago and Jones' ordeal is only really beginning.

...If we agree that Jones actually did make knowingly false statements, and that the people he made them about were actually harassed, and there is actually evidence that Jones' statements are why the harassers did what they did, and presuming the result is financial ruin but not more, this does seem (very roughly) comparable to Theil's takedown of Gawker. That leads me to put the breaks on the outrage narrative I'd otherwise slot this into.

Are there better examples?

[EDIT] - And of course, one could also flip it around: is there a blue-tribe case with comparable facts where no lawsuit or prosecution resulted?

A difference between Gawker and Alex Jones is that Gawker is a company and Alex Jones is an individual. What that means is that Gawker can file for bankruptcy as a company and leave much the personal wealth of the individuals involved out of it. The individual who published Hogan's sex tape, A. J. Daulerio, did not have his life ruined and pretty much carried on as usual; He went on to found a website and newsletter called The Small Bow. The individual who founded Gawker, Nick Denton, was "only" on the hook for $10M personally (this sounds like a lot but remember it's 1% of what Alex Jones was fined for) and is apparently running a venture called Dialog Engineers.

Personal bankruptcy doesn't help with judgement?

For Alex Jones? I don't think so. This is bankruptcy proof.

Interestingly, Ryan Holiday interviewed all of the relevant parties for a book about the Gawker trial Conspiracy (well worth a read even if you don't read a lot of non-fiction). Peter Thiel, who bankrolled the case, is explicitly quoted as saying that his goal was never to send Denton to the poorhouse.

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