Posted by lxm 2 days ago
"I just thought it would be just a beautiful joke if we could take this pretty toxic, negative, destructive force of Infowars and rebrand it as this beautiful place for our creativity”.
Of course it's personal. Alex Jones is an arsehole manufacturing outrage for profit. Being made fun of is the least of his problems
This keeps it out of that ecosystem, which I think is a really good thing.
Yeah, it seems hard to believe that anyone would take Alex Jones' behaviour so personally. He only suggested that the murder of 20 young children and 6 adults in a school shooting was faked for political reasons.
(Are you serious?!)
It is openly and proudly personal. It is also political, also openly.
I’d rather it be collective action that produces real change, but humor is cathartic so I’ll take it.
And someone repurpose one of the instigator’s web sites as a humour outlet is the issue that leaves a bad taste in your mouth?
Fucking hell that's a funny line.
Because I'm fairly sure no-one is claiming that Jones is a murderer or that the Sandy Hook killer was defaming people
This destroyed their reputation.
Alex Jones made a lot of money from his lies.
The parents made no money from those lies.
The parents' reputation was sold for dollars, and they got no dollars.
That is theft. Alex Jones stole the reputations.
He should pay for what he did.
As for the rest of your nonsens:
* the families are and have gone after the murder and the family.
* defamation/slander is incredibly hard to prove. Jones' actions were so blatantly awful they met that high bar. Parroting talking points on bluesky does not even come close.
* Perhaps, you should ask "if helping Trump win was all that's necessary for a giant settlement, why hasn't joe rogan been punished too?"
can someone explain the difference between what alex jones said about sandy hook and what other people say about 9/11 being an inside job, hologram planes, fake this fake that etc
This was not that.
This was a civil defamation case; the parents bought a case of actual material harm and harrassment of epic proportions before two seperate judges in two seperate states and both courts made the finding that Jones had indeed caused harm and harrassment .. and continued to do so over years.
If you mean higher bar for litigation, then maybe this lawsuit and its outcome shows that the bar isn't as high as you think when it comes to defamation?
To my understanding the case outcome is pretty much what I would expect, even considering the first amendment raising the bar. It's also interesting that there's been so many legal shenanigans in the case that it's hard to even keep track of them all.
That sealed the case outcome as, IIRC, at least one of the judges just ruled against them for not mounting any defence.
The first amendment does not protect you from the results of your speech, like someone deciding they don't like you because of what you said. That person is free to dislike you for what you said and the first amendment has nothing to do with it.
Similarly, if you say things that are untrue and cause damage to others, you may be held civilly liable for the damage if they sue you and convince a jury that you lied with knowledge and intent to lie. The first amendment has nothing to do with this.
This is the biggest difference - no one is claiming that all of the people who lost their loved ones in the 9/11 attacks were actually actors paid to pretend that they were grieving for their parents and children and friends. No one was encouraged to personally attack said victims and survivors to "expose their lies" because of 9/11 conspiracy theories.
Furthermore, defamation law works very differently for claims against public personalities ("Bush did 9/11!") compared to claims against private persons ("this random child shown crying in news reports after her classmates were supposedly killed is actually pretending!"). Also, vague accusations of orchestrating a criminal conspiracy / cover up are far harder to litigate than very clear claims of massive fraud. Finally, the Sandy Hook victims were generally able to show specific damages they suffered, attacks against them by people in their community, because of Jones' actions; Dick Cheney may have been more generally hated because of claims about 9/11 conspiracies, but was not directly harasses in the same way.
However, the first amendment is not absolute. Defamation is still a thing in the US. The first amendment creates a higher bar than many other countries (especially for public figures, but the victims in this case aren't public figures), but it is still possible.
If I were to bring a civil suit against you because the comment above offended my sensibilities, it would be quickly thrown out of court because it is your first amendment right to say anything you like, with certain exceptions that the government recognizes as limitations of this right.
Even though this is a civil matter, it is still a judgement on government law. This is not some contract dispute where the parties are simply seeking arbitration, with no government involvement except as a "service provider" for this arbitration.
He did take actions that, by civil law, created civil liabilities. He was sued over those liabilities. He failed to participate in the civil litigation process and lost badly as a result.
Civil and criminal law are not the same thing and your insistence otherwise doesn't change the reality.