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Alex Jones just lost a lawsuit for defamation for claiming that Sandy Hook was a hoax and the reward was $965bil (after a previous $50mil verdict so its over a billion) for defamation and emotional damages. Jones is a kook, and his claim was both false, and outrageous; but I'm not 100 percent sure he even should have lost. Esp for the emotional damage part. I don't think people should be entitled to damages because they feel hurt by what you say. As far as the defamation part if he claimed particular people created the hoax then I can understand a loss of a defamation lawsuit, but if its just a general comment along the lines of "I think it's a hoax" I don't think he should face any legal penalty for it. And a billion dollars for spouting off some nonsense seems ridiculous to me.
I suspect that he will appeal (I understand he tried to appeal the previous case all the way up to the Supreme Court, who refused to accept the case), and that the case won't be overturned on appeal, but perhaps the damages will be reduced.
There was also some talk about harassment and death threats against people suing Jones. If it can be proven that Jones was behind it I suppose that could be ground for a lawsuit (and perhaps even criminal charges depending on the details), but that would be a separate issue than defamation or emotional distress over the original comment.
I hate these huge judgements. Justice can still be served without having to destroy someone's career which otherwise should be protected by the 1st amendment. Did these survivors and victims really experience $1 billion worth of trauma? At what point does justice cross into thirst for revenge? I hope Alex Jones fights this successfully to get it reduced to something that will not totally ruin him, not even because I agree with him, but this has a chilling effect on anyone whose career involves speech.
Where does the 1st come into this? Rather, how does the amount of a judgment make it more or less relevant?
Same as with Gawker, the concern is using massive judgements to financially ruin someone such that they are effectively silenced by being unable to afford to publish.
The important difference is that Gawker was punished for saying true things about powerful people that they wanted to keep secret (the real crime was outing Peter Thiel as gay, the pretext was invading Hulk Hogan's privacy by publishing a sex tape) whereas Alex Jones is being punished for telling lies about ordinary people who happened to become newsworthy because they were involved in a tragedy.
Whatever you think about the wisdom of giving human governments this power, God convicts Alex Jones and acquits Gawker.
No, Gawker was a gossip rag, and they thought they could get away with it because they were well-connected in the media scene. They published the sex tape because why the fuck not, let's have our sophisticated and jaded audience laugh at the likes of an idiot lower-class guy like Hogan who is a celebrity for the exact kind of people we despise.
They believed they had power, so that they could twit the likes of Thiel, and then they found out that no, they didn't have power. They were no loss and they brought it upon themselves - ironically, with the same kind of stubborn disregard that Jones exhibited by not shutting up after the various lawsuits against him.
"Ha ha, I am a witty upper middle-class urbanite working in an atmosphere of cynical deprecation, so I can joke about four year olds and sex - oops, what do you mean ordinary people think someone who does that is a shit head?"
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If I take and publish an upskirt photo of AOC, would you classify that as "saying true things about powerful people"?
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