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I seem to be on the other side of the consensus here on HN. If you accept defamation laws (and defamation laws are a thing in Singapore and many other places),

I seem to be on the other side of the consensus here on HN. If you accept defamation laws (and defamation laws are a thing in Singapore and many other places), then the question is whether you actively participated in the creation or dissemination of slander (again, assuming that creation and dissemination are both illegal). We in the tech world have optimized various mechanisms to enable sharing information- we have gotten so good at it that our users don’t pause for a moment and think about their responsibility they bear when hitting that share button. It’s like picking up cleanly packaged meat from the grocery store or filling up on gas from a gas station- the experience is so clean and polished that one doesn’t really think about where the meat/crude oil is coming from and what it means to be paying for it. I think the courts held that one is responsible for what they share. It isn’t “merely” sharing a news article on facebook - the person had to decide to hit that share button. Now, there are a lot of things wrong with this. But most of the problems come from having some defamation law to begin with. I take issue with the law itself, but this interpretation of it doesn’t bother me. IANAL, and I don’t know if dissemination is somehow different from creation in defamation cases. I expect it has to be - otherwise “Mr. X is a pedophile” can be illegal while “I heard that Mr. X is a pedophile” isn’t. Which seems dumb if one’s intent was to make defamation illegal in all ways.

mytailorisrich 5y ago
Republishing libellous content can indeed be defamation. I don't know the details for his case and IANA but retweeting/sharing can land you in hot waters not only in Singapore but also in the UK for instance: "In 2013, a defendant named Alan Davies was ordered to pay £15,000 in settlement after retweeting a Sally Bercow tweet that suggested Lord McAlpine, a former leading Conservative politician, had committed child abuse." [1] "Defamation is apparent when one person publishes a statement or material about another person that is untrue and is damaging to the claimant’s reputation or likely to cause such harm – this is the case even if the defendant has simply republished a statement made by another." [1] [1] https://www.daslaw.co.uk/blog/distinction-in-defamation-slander-libel https://www.daslaw.co.uk/blog/distinction-in-defamation-slan...
- gowld 5y ago
  Is Sharing (or sharing a link!) the same as Publishing? The law needs to be updated for this nuance. Is giving a magazine (containing a defamatory article) to a friend Publishing?
  - nindalf 5y ago
    A retweet is visible to the public. A magazine shared to a single person doesn't have the same effect. The practical difference between publishing and private sharing with friends was about the greater reach of publishing. Social media means everyone has the same reach as a publisher, with some of the same responsibilities.
jdc 5y ago
It's also worth mentioning that the shared article claimed that Malaysia, under former Prime Minister Najib Razak, had signed unfair deals with Singapore in return for help to launder stolen funds, so this is a big allegation. However, a guy has to wonder what the odds are of the state levying such a fine in defence of an ordinary citizen.
pjc50 5y ago
Uneven enforcement is a problem in and of itself. Doing nothing to a thousand people and then slamming a fine like this on one guy is not conducive to rule of law. But this is Singapore, it's not a very free country.
- ValentineC 5y ago
  > Uneven enforcement is a problem in and of itself. Doing nothing to a thousand people and then slamming a fine like this on one guy is not conducive to rule of law. The defendant, Roy Ngerng [1], is often portrayed in Singapore media as a troublemaker, and has been the subject of multiple defamation suits. Politicians in Singapore's incumbent party seem to mainly use defamation against politicians, activists, and the media, and very rarely against a random person on the street. It seems to boil down to the government needing to protect their integrity, as former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong said in a 1999 interview [2]: > There are many critics of the PAP in Singapore. They are not all hauled up before the judiciary. Political opponents, so long as they keep within the law, don't need safeguards. They do not have to appear before the judiciary. But if they've defamed us, we have to sue them -- because if we don't, our own integrity will be suspect. We have an understanding that if a minister is defamed and he does not sue, he must leave cabinet. By defamation, I mean if somebody says the minister is on the take or is less than honest. If he does not rebut it, if he does not dare go before the court to be interrogated by the counsel for the other side, there must be some truth in it. If there is no evidence, well, why are you not suing? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Ngerng https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Ngerng [2] http://edition.cnn.com/ASIANOW/asiaweek/interview/goh.chok.tong/goh3.html http://edition.cnn.com/ASIANOW/asiaweek/interview/goh.chok.t...
grumple 5y ago
Let's say the NYT publishes an article about the president. You, believing it to be an accurate representation of facts, share the article. It turns out the NYT writer made it all up. Do you think it's reasonable to punish you for libel? What about newspaper stands that sold the libelous paper? I think it's clear this ruling is totally incompatible with a free press and free speech. Only the original source should be held accountable.
- dahfizz 5y ago
  Disseminating defamatory material is legal __provided you did your due diligence__. Whether taking the journalist at face value is due diligence, I don't know. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocent_dissemination https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocent_dissemination
  - Buttons840 5y ago
    Does sharing a NYT article mean "look at this article I believe to be true" or does it mean "look what the NYT said"?
    - mamborambo 5y ago
      This is a common dilemma in social media. Does "liking" a post mean you agree with it? Does "angry face" mean you disagree? What about "laughing face", "shocked face"? It is dangerous to read legal responsibilities into an action which is probably meaningless.
  - grumple 5y ago
    Is disseminating a link to defamatory material illegal? Should it be? In this case, it was a link, not the content itself, which was shared. If Facebook added an excerpt, I would think liability falls to Facebook. Also note that I'm more interested in what is moral/just, not legal according to any specific system, since this is a discussion about laws which vary across nations. The American/English system isn't necessarily ideal.
  - nindalf 5y ago
AuthorizedCust 5y ago
> If you accept defamation laws... And there is the problem. While you propose an interesting academic question, the chain of events starts from a law that I see as harmful. Therefore, there's no value in justifying the legitimacy of the next steps.
- retrac 5y ago
  The suggestion that defamation should be generally legal is somewhat outside the norm, as far as I know. If I start a campaign, billboards and all, saying that my doctor is a pedophile once convicted of rape in Australia who has been also implicated in organ trafficking (when she's actually very wonderful) then I should be held liable for the damage to her career and reputation, at a minimum.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    Outside the norm? I don't think so, it's perhaps not the majority current but it is a pretty large one.
    - inetknght 5y ago
      You think it should be legal to make up complete lies about people and not have repercussions?
      - johnisgood 5y ago
        I suppose it would not be such a bad thing to educate people to do their own research sometimes and not believe everything they are being fed. Were it the majority of cases, we would probably not be talking about this to begin with. What makes things worse is quantity of people making the same claim, or claims coming from authority figures.
  - the_local_host 5y ago
    I'm not a lawyer, but I think the USA has a reasonable position on how much defamation should be tolerated. Slander and libel are illegal, but the threshold at which the law takes effect depends on how public the target is. As such care has to be taken when making statements about a private citizen, e.g. "Mr. X is [something horrible]", but one can say almost anything about a public figure like the president, or senators, without fear of legal trouble.
TimPC 5y ago
There seems to be an argument to be made that sharing an article resembles saying "I heard that X" where X is the contents of the article. It seems a bit dumb to have the heard that distinction and not apply it to sharing on social media. I don't think it's reasonable to assume that by sharing an article a person is asserting they consider everything in it to be unquestionably true. It generally means they found something they heard/saw interesting.
- inetknght 5y ago
  > sharing an article resembles saying "I heard that X" That can absolutely be the basis for slander and defamation though.
perennate 5y ago
> then the question is whether you actively participated in There is another important question: intention. In the US, "for a public official (or other legitimate public figure) to win a libel case in the United States, the statement must have been published knowing it to be false or with reckless disregard to its truth" [1]. It seems to me that most of the problems come not from having the defamation law to begin with like you said, but from the law applying even to defendants who believed the information they were creating or disseminating was true. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation
- kelnos 5y ago
  I very much believe that intent matters, and should matter, but the problem with intent in a legal setting is that often it is incredibly difficult to prove intent, and the defendant just has to say "I never intended it to mean that; I was thinking $INNOCENT_THING when I said it" to inject some doubt into the proceedings, often enough doubt to avoid a guilty verdict.
  - perennate 5y ago
    I agree that there needs to be a balance. I'd argue that US defamation law is close to the "right" balance, by making a stronger case needed to prosecute defamation against public figures (like public officials or celebrities), and by focusing not exactly on intention but on whether the defendant within reason could have believed the statement was true.
    - marcus_holmes 5y ago
      Singapore is a different culture, and they see public figures differently. Being disrespectful to your boss, and those higher up the authority chain, is a strong cultural taboo. Authority is respected. It's complicated for us Westerners to understand, and totally goes against how we view the world and our place in it. But that's the culture, and changing it because it doesn't agree with ours would be wrong. So yes, the US defamation law is right for the US. It's probably not right for Singapore. I'm not sure Singapore's actual law is "right" - this article and the popular support for the defendant in this case shows it may not be. But that doesn't mean they would be better off with the US version.
emodendroket 5y ago
> IANAL, and I don’t know if dissemination is somehow different from creation in defamation cases. I expect it has to be - otherwise “Mr. X is a pedophile” can be illegal while “I heard that Mr. X is a pedophile” isn’t. Which seems dumb if one’s intent was to make defamation illegal in all ways. It is different. Opinion is also exempted. I don’t think that’s dumb at all. Otherwise it would be impossible to report on a controversy without risking a lawsuit.

mytailorisrich 5y ago

Republishing libellous content can indeed be defamation. I don't know the details for his case and IANA but retweeting/sharing can land you in hot waters not only in Singapore but also in the UK for instance: "In 2013, a defendant named Alan Davies was ordered to pay £15,000 in settlement after retweeting a Sally Bercow tweet that suggested Lord McAlpine, a former leading Conservative politician, had committed child abuse." [1] "Defamation is apparent when one person publishes a statement or material about another person that is untrue and is damaging to the claimant’s reputation or likely to cause such harm – this is the case even if the defendant has simply republished a statement made by another." [1] [1] https://www.daslaw.co.uk/blog/distinction-in-defamation-slander-libel https://www.daslaw.co.uk/blog/distinction-in-defamation-slan...

gowld 5y ago
Is Sharing (or sharing a link!) the same as Publishing? The law needs to be updated for this nuance. Is giving a magazine (containing a defamatory article) to a friend Publishing?
- nindalf 5y ago
  A retweet is visible to the public. A magazine shared to a single person doesn't have the same effect. The practical difference between publishing and private sharing with friends was about the greater reach of publishing. Social media means everyone has the same reach as a publisher, with some of the same responsibilities.

jdc 5y ago

It's also worth mentioning that the shared article claimed that Malaysia, under former Prime Minister Najib Razak, had signed unfair deals with Singapore in return for help to launder stolen funds, so this is a big allegation. However, a guy has to wonder what the odds are of the state levying such a fine in defence of an ordinary citizen.

pjc50 5y ago

Uneven enforcement is a problem in and of itself. Doing nothing to a thousand people and then slamming a fine like this on one guy is not conducive to rule of law. But this is Singapore, it's not a very free country.

ValentineC 5y ago
> Uneven enforcement is a problem in and of itself. Doing nothing to a thousand people and then slamming a fine like this on one guy is not conducive to rule of law. The defendant, Roy Ngerng [1], is often portrayed in Singapore media as a troublemaker, and has been the subject of multiple defamation suits. Politicians in Singapore's incumbent party seem to mainly use defamation against politicians, activists, and the media, and very rarely against a random person on the street. It seems to boil down to the government needing to protect their integrity, as former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong said in a 1999 interview [2]: > There are many critics of the PAP in Singapore. They are not all hauled up before the judiciary. Political opponents, so long as they keep within the law, don't need safeguards. They do not have to appear before the judiciary. But if they've defamed us, we have to sue them -- because if we don't, our own integrity will be suspect. We have an understanding that if a minister is defamed and he does not sue, he must leave cabinet. By defamation, I mean if somebody says the minister is on the take or is less than honest. If he does not rebut it, if he does not dare go before the court to be interrogated by the counsel for the other side, there must be some truth in it. If there is no evidence, well, why are you not suing? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Ngerng https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Ngerng [2] http://edition.cnn.com/ASIANOW/asiaweek/interview/goh.chok.tong/goh3.html http://edition.cnn.com/ASIANOW/asiaweek/interview/goh.chok.t...

grumple 5y ago

Let's say the NYT publishes an article about the president. You, believing it to be an accurate representation of facts, share the article. It turns out the NYT writer made it all up. Do you think it's reasonable to punish you for libel? What about newspaper stands that sold the libelous paper? I think it's clear this ruling is totally incompatible with a free press and free speech. Only the original source should be held accountable.

dahfizz 5y ago
Disseminating defamatory material is legal __provided you did your due diligence__. Whether taking the journalist at face value is due diligence, I don't know. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocent_dissemination https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocent_dissemination
- Buttons840 5y ago
  Does sharing a NYT article mean "look at this article I believe to be true" or does it mean "look what the NYT said"?
  - mamborambo 5y ago
    This is a common dilemma in social media. Does "liking" a post mean you agree with it? Does "angry face" mean you disagree? What about "laughing face", "shocked face"? It is dangerous to read legal responsibilities into an action which is probably meaningless.
- grumple 5y ago
  Is disseminating a link to defamatory material illegal? Should it be? In this case, it was a link, not the content itself, which was shared. If Facebook added an excerpt, I would think liability falls to Facebook. Also note that I'm more interested in what is moral/just, not legal according to any specific system, since this is a discussion about laws which vary across nations. The American/English system isn't necessarily ideal.
- nindalf 5y ago

AuthorizedCust 5y ago

> If you accept defamation laws... And there is the problem. While you propose an interesting academic question, the chain of events starts from a law that I see as harmful. Therefore, there's no value in justifying the legitimacy of the next steps.

retrac 5y ago
The suggestion that defamation should be generally legal is somewhat outside the norm, as far as I know. If I start a campaign, billboards and all, saying that my doctor is a pedophile once convicted of rape in Australia who has been also implicated in organ trafficking (when she's actually very wonderful) then I should be held liable for the damage to her career and reputation, at a minimum.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  Outside the norm? I don't think so, it's perhaps not the majority current but it is a pretty large one.
  - inetknght 5y ago
    You think it should be legal to make up complete lies about people and not have repercussions?
    - johnisgood 5y ago
      I suppose it would not be such a bad thing to educate people to do their own research sometimes and not believe everything they are being fed. Were it the majority of cases, we would probably not be talking about this to begin with. What makes things worse is quantity of people making the same claim, or claims coming from authority figures.
- the_local_host 5y ago
  I'm not a lawyer, but I think the USA has a reasonable position on how much defamation should be tolerated. Slander and libel are illegal, but the threshold at which the law takes effect depends on how public the target is. As such care has to be taken when making statements about a private citizen, e.g. "Mr. X is [something horrible]", but one can say almost anything about a public figure like the president, or senators, without fear of legal trouble.

TimPC 5y ago

There seems to be an argument to be made that sharing an article resembles saying "I heard that X" where X is the contents of the article. It seems a bit dumb to have the heard that distinction and not apply it to sharing on social media. I don't think it's reasonable to assume that by sharing an article a person is asserting they consider everything in it to be unquestionably true. It generally means they found something they heard/saw interesting.

inetknght 5y ago
> sharing an article resembles saying "I heard that X" That can absolutely be the basis for slander and defamation though.

perennate 5y ago

> then the question is whether you actively participated in There is another important question: intention. In the US, "for a public official (or other legitimate public figure) to win a libel case in the United States, the statement must have been published knowing it to be false or with reckless disregard to its truth" [1]. It seems to me that most of the problems come not from having the defamation law to begin with like you said, but from the law applying even to defendants who believed the information they were creating or disseminating was true. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation

kelnos 5y ago
I very much believe that intent matters, and should matter, but the problem with intent in a legal setting is that often it is incredibly difficult to prove intent, and the defendant just has to say "I never intended it to mean that; I was thinking $INNOCENT_THING when I said it" to inject some doubt into the proceedings, often enough doubt to avoid a guilty verdict.
- perennate 5y ago
  I agree that there needs to be a balance. I'd argue that US defamation law is close to the "right" balance, by making a stronger case needed to prosecute defamation against public figures (like public officials or celebrities), and by focusing not exactly on intention but on whether the defendant within reason could have believed the statement was true.
  - marcus_holmes 5y ago
    Singapore is a different culture, and they see public figures differently. Being disrespectful to your boss, and those higher up the authority chain, is a strong cultural taboo. Authority is respected. It's complicated for us Westerners to understand, and totally goes against how we view the world and our place in it. But that's the culture, and changing it because it doesn't agree with ours would be wrong. So yes, the US defamation law is right for the US. It's probably not right for Singapore. I'm not sure Singapore's actual law is "right" - this article and the popular support for the defendant in this case shows it may not be. But that doesn't mean they would be better off with the US version.

emodendroket 5y ago

> IANAL, and I don’t know if dissemination is somehow different from creation in defamation cases. I expect it has to be - otherwise “Mr. X is a pedophile” can be illegal while “I heard that Mr. X is a pedophile” isn’t. Which seems dumb if one’s intent was to make defamation illegal in all ways. It is different. Opinion is also exempted. I don’t think that’s dumb at all. Otherwise it would be impossible to report on a controversy without risking a lawsuit.