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Seems good for society that Stossel will be taking this to court. Relevant quotes from article: "According to Stossel’s complaint (read here), he published on

by cwkoss 5y ago

Seems good for society that Stossel will be taking this to court. Relevant quotes from article: "According to Stossel’s complaint (read here), he published on Facebook a video titled “Government Fueled Fires,” where he took on “sensational media reporting about a so-called ‘climate apocalypse,’ and explored a scientific hypothesis … that while climate change undoubtedly contributes to forest fires, it was not the primary cause of the 2020 California fires.”" "[On facebook] Further information told readers: “Claim — ‘forest fires are caused by poor management. Not by climate change.’ Verdict: misleading.”" If Stossel never said "Not by climate change", and then Facebook falsely attributed that statement to him and rated it false, they certainly seem guilty of defamation.

lovich 5y ago
I don’t see a material difference between claiming “not the primary cause” and “not caused by” when in a short summary
- cwkoss 5y ago
  I don't think Facebook would have been credibly able to rate “not the primary cause” as false - that requires being able to quantify the individual contributions of each factor. To rate “not caused by” is false, they just need to argue it contributed to the slightest extent: it's a much lower bar.
- christophilus 5y ago
  One is possibly true and one is probably false. They're very different statements, and they are about the same length, so there's no excuse to use a misleading phrase simply for the sake of brevity.
KorematsuFredt 5y ago
I have seen the video and it is pretty sensible and definitely helps the debate around the fire. Either ways what caused fires is far from settled, the fact that climate change has anything to do with it is also disputed "fact".
- burkaman 5y ago
  I would recommend reading the fact check as well to get a full sense of what happened here. https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/climate-change-forest-management-and-several-other-causes-contribute-to-wildfire-severity-and-total-area-burned-in-the-western-united-states/ https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/climate-change-fores... https://climatefeedback.org/responding-to-stossel-tv-video-on-our-rating-process/ https://climatefeedback.org/responding-to-stossel-tv-video-o...
  - temp8964 5y ago
    The responses are laughably long. If John Stossel made false claims, a few paragraphs should be sufficient. If you need to write two full length articles to explain what happened, you don’t get to label other people as false/misleading.
    - d4mi3n 5y ago
      While I don’t disagree that the responses may be overlong, I think it harms your argument to criticize the format of the response rather than the content. If we’re to have productive discourse, we must all act in good faith and look at opposing arguments with the most charitable interpretation reasonably possible, otherwise we risk arguing against an interpretation of viewpoint that others may not have or agree with. EDIT: having looked closer at the fact check website referenced, most of the length seems to be from references to research and expert testimony. The actual rebuttal is indeed a paragraph or two at the very top of the page. Is the presentation of the data here your primary objection?
      - temp8964 5y ago
        Long is not about format. The content has to be long. This means simple label is wrong. This is a very easy point in my previous comment.
    - burkaman 5y ago
      It was not labeled as false, it was labeled as missing context, and this is the context. You can see the label here: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10157121971976621&id=46675576620 https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1015712197...
beebmam 5y ago
>If Stossel never said "Not by climate change", and then Facebook falsely attributed that statement to him and rated it false, they certainly seem guilty of defamation. This is strictly, legally false in the US. What you have described here does not satisfy the legal definition of defamation. It will get thrown out in court immediately. Here are the qualifiers for speech to be considered defamation: To prove prima facie defamation, a plaintiff must show four things: 1) a false statement purporting to be fact; 2) publication or communication of that statement to a third person; 3) fault amounting to at least negligence; and 4) damages, or some harm caused to the person or entity who is the subject of the statement. and here's a relevant Supreme Court ruling that further restrains what can be considered defamation: In The New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), the Supreme Court held that for a publicly-known figure to succeed on a defamation claims, the public-figure plaintiff must show that the false, defaming statements was said with "actual malice." The Sullivan court stated that"actual malice" means that the defendant said the defamatory statement "with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not." Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defamation https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defamation
- xondono 5y ago
  > This is strictly, legally false in the US. GPs point is the only one that’s in question (covers your point 1), the rest should be straightforward to prove: 2- it appears on Facebook 3- they have appointed themselves as fact checkers and supposedly review the video. They have full access to it as does anyone. 4- the difference between this and other view counts on the platform should be enough.
  - _jal 5y ago
    This seems to get awfully close to making disagreement actionable. If I claimed "xondono's understanding of the law is incorrect", should that be a cause of action?
    - cblconfederate 5y ago
      if HN placed a [liar] badge next to their username, would that be a cause for action?
burkaman 5y ago
Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpLIBY9nReU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpLIBY9nReU In includes phrases like: "If all you know is climate scientists then every weather event you blame on climate change. If not climate change, what is to blame? [...] Foolish policies." "You could have had this amount of warming and not had these fires." "Bad policies were the biggest cause of this year's fires, not the slightly warmer climate." "While climate change is a problem, Schellenberger's new book explains it's not an apocalypse: natural disasters aren't getting worse, in fact they're getting better. [...] A small change in temperature is not the difference between normalcy and catastrophe." To summarize: the video heavily implies throughout that the fires are not caused by climate change, and literally says so a couple times. Facebook did not falsely attribute that claim. They didn't fully summarize the entire video, but I don't think the fact check is intended to - it just pulls out one particular claim it wants to address. Aside: this video wasn't that bad, and I don't know if it needed a fact check, but that's not what the lawsuit is about. It did acknowledge that climate change is real and happening. However, it exclusively talked about climate change as a warming phenomenon, which is not the main issue and is a misleading characterization of why climate change is bad. Warming causes many other issues which are much more harmful than just "a small change in temperature". The discussion about forest management was valid and important, it should just be happening at the same time as discussion about climate change. Edit: Here's the original Facebook post where you can see the fact check: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10157121971976621&id=46675576620 https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1015712197.... I believe this is visible even if you don't have an account. Here's the fact check: https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/climate-change-forest-management-and-several-other-causes-contribute-to-wildfire-severity-and-total-area-burned-in-the-western-united-states/ https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/climate-change-fores.... Here's the fact checkers response to the lawsuit: https://climatefeedback.org/responding-to-stossel-tv-video-on-our-rating-process/ https://climatefeedback.org/responding-to-stossel-tv-video-o....
- PKop 5y ago
  Sounds like the discussion is nuanced. But this nuance is lost by Facebook slapping a label on his content as "misleading", which for all intents and purposes means "wrong". Sounds like defamation to me. Why is Facebook involved in adjudicating the nuance of unsolved public policy debates?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
His shtick is to express a contrarian viewpoint on anything and everything. It was mostly harmless 40 years ago. Now it feeds into right wing trolldom and he's notably cozied up to his new core audience. I wouldn't value anything he does these days.
- fortuna86 5y ago
  Being contrarian on climate change is just as bad as being a denier, both result in inaction and increase the consequences.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
coding123 5y ago
"Misleading" seems to be the current politically motivated way to handle the fact checker's tie to either liberal or democratic politics. A fact check should be either true or false.
microtherion 5y ago
> Seems good for society that Stossel will be taking this to court. It's good for society that he's taking somebody to court with ample resources to defend themselves against this utterly frivolous lawsuit. "Disagreeing with an easily triggered blowhard" is not actionable under US law. And, much as you might think it should be in this particular case, I suspect you would find that libel laws more favorable to plaintiffs (as they exist, e.g. in the UK) would often be used against people with whose political views you are sympathetic.
- dimgl 5y ago
  Stossel is far from an easily triggered blowhard.
hackcasual 5y ago
> If Stossel never said "Not by climate change" Masson v. New Yorker Magazine Libel in the US requires more than just inaccuracy, it looks at the substantial truth. So "not by climate change" vs "not only by climate change" is irrelevant for establishing libel
- hartator 5y ago
  I think the big red "Misleading" is the libel.
  - hackcasual 5y ago
    Misleading is opinion though, which in the US can never be libel
    - grayhatter 5y ago
      never is a strong word but even so I could prove something is misleading making it an objective assessment which wouldn't be covered under opinion exclusive.
kenjackson 5y ago
That is simply not substantial enough to win a libel case. This is like someone saying "McDonald's hamburgers are the worst" and then someone else saying, "you said McDonald's hamburgers aren't good". You never said that -- in theory the worst burgers could still be good, but it's not an unreasonable take given no other additional context. The libel is simply not substantial enough.

by cwkoss 5y ago

lovich 5y ago

I don’t see a material difference between claiming “not the primary cause” and “not caused by” when in a short summary

cwkoss 5y ago
I don't think Facebook would have been credibly able to rate “not the primary cause” as false - that requires being able to quantify the individual contributions of each factor. To rate “not caused by” is false, they just need to argue it contributed to the slightest extent: it's a much lower bar.
christophilus 5y ago
One is possibly true and one is probably false. They're very different statements, and they are about the same length, so there's no excuse to use a misleading phrase simply for the sake of brevity.

KorematsuFredt 5y ago

I have seen the video and it is pretty sensible and definitely helps the debate around the fire. Either ways what caused fires is far from settled, the fact that climate change has anything to do with it is also disputed "fact".

burkaman 5y ago
I would recommend reading the fact check as well to get a full sense of what happened here. https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/climate-change-forest-management-and-several-other-causes-contribute-to-wildfire-severity-and-total-area-burned-in-the-western-united-states/ https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/climate-change-fores... https://climatefeedback.org/responding-to-stossel-tv-video-on-our-rating-process/ https://climatefeedback.org/responding-to-stossel-tv-video-o...
- temp8964 5y ago
  The responses are laughably long. If John Stossel made false claims, a few paragraphs should be sufficient. If you need to write two full length articles to explain what happened, you don’t get to label other people as false/misleading.
  - d4mi3n 5y ago
    While I don’t disagree that the responses may be overlong, I think it harms your argument to criticize the format of the response rather than the content. If we’re to have productive discourse, we must all act in good faith and look at opposing arguments with the most charitable interpretation reasonably possible, otherwise we risk arguing against an interpretation of viewpoint that others may not have or agree with. EDIT: having looked closer at the fact check website referenced, most of the length seems to be from references to research and expert testimony. The actual rebuttal is indeed a paragraph or two at the very top of the page. Is the presentation of the data here your primary objection?
    - temp8964 5y ago
      Long is not about format. The content has to be long. This means simple label is wrong. This is a very easy point in my previous comment.
  - burkaman 5y ago
    It was not labeled as false, it was labeled as missing context, and this is the context. You can see the label here: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10157121971976621&id=46675576620 https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1015712197...

beebmam 5y ago

>If Stossel never said "Not by climate change", and then Facebook falsely attributed that statement to him and rated it false, they certainly seem guilty of defamation. This is strictly, legally false in the US. What you have described here does not satisfy the legal definition of defamation. It will get thrown out in court immediately. Here are the qualifiers for speech to be considered defamation: To prove prima facie defamation, a plaintiff must show four things: 1) a false statement purporting to be fact; 2) publication or communication of that statement to a third person; 3) fault amounting to at least negligence; and 4) damages, or some harm caused to the person or entity who is the subject of the statement. and here's a relevant Supreme Court ruling that further restrains what can be considered defamation: In The New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), the Supreme Court held that for a publicly-known figure to succeed on a defamation claims, the public-figure plaintiff must show that the false, defaming statements was said with "actual malice." The Sullivan court stated that"actual malice" means that the defendant said the defamatory statement "with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not." Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defamation https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defamation

xondono 5y ago
> This is strictly, legally false in the US. GPs point is the only one that’s in question (covers your point 1), the rest should be straightforward to prove: 2- it appears on Facebook 3- they have appointed themselves as fact checkers and supposedly review the video. They have full access to it as does anyone. 4- the difference between this and other view counts on the platform should be enough.
- _jal 5y ago
  This seems to get awfully close to making disagreement actionable. If I claimed "xondono's understanding of the law is incorrect", should that be a cause of action?
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    if HN placed a [liar] badge next to their username, would that be a cause for action?

burkaman 5y ago

Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpLIBY9nReU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpLIBY9nReU In includes phrases like: "If all you know is climate scientists then every weather event you blame on climate change. If not climate change, what is to blame? [...] Foolish policies." "You could have had this amount of warming and not had these fires." "Bad policies were the biggest cause of this year's fires, not the slightly warmer climate." "While climate change is a problem, Schellenberger's new book explains it's not an apocalypse: natural disasters aren't getting worse, in fact they're getting better. [...] A small change in temperature is not the difference between normalcy and catastrophe." To summarize: the video heavily implies throughout that the fires are not caused by climate change, and literally says so a couple times. Facebook did not falsely attribute that claim. They didn't fully summarize the entire video, but I don't think the fact check is intended to - it just pulls out one particular claim it wants to address. Aside: this video wasn't that bad, and I don't know if it needed a fact check, but that's not what the lawsuit is about. It did acknowledge that climate change is real and happening. However, it exclusively talked about climate change as a warming phenomenon, which is not the main issue and is a misleading characterization of why climate change is bad. Warming causes many other issues which are much more harmful than just "a small change in temperature". The discussion about forest management was valid and important, it should just be happening at the same time as discussion about climate change. Edit: Here's the original Facebook post where you can see the fact check: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10157121971976621&id=46675576620 https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1015712197.... I believe this is visible even if you don't have an account. Here's the fact check: https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/climate-change-forest-management-and-several-other-causes-contribute-to-wildfire-severity-and-total-area-burned-in-the-western-united-states/ https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/climate-change-fores.... Here's the fact checkers response to the lawsuit: https://climatefeedback.org/responding-to-stossel-tv-video-on-our-rating-process/ https://climatefeedback.org/responding-to-stossel-tv-video-o....

PKop 5y ago
Sounds like the discussion is nuanced. But this nuance is lost by Facebook slapping a label on his content as "misleading", which for all intents and purposes means "wrong". Sounds like defamation to me. Why is Facebook involved in adjudicating the nuance of unsolved public policy debates?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago

His shtick is to express a contrarian viewpoint on anything and everything. It was mostly harmless 40 years ago. Now it feeds into right wing trolldom and he's notably cozied up to his new core audience. I wouldn't value anything he does these days.

fortuna86 5y ago
Being contrarian on climate change is just as bad as being a denier, both result in inaction and increase the consequences.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

coding123 5y ago

"Misleading" seems to be the current politically motivated way to handle the fact checker's tie to either liberal or democratic politics. A fact check should be either true or false.

microtherion 5y ago

> Seems good for society that Stossel will be taking this to court. It's good for society that he's taking somebody to court with ample resources to defend themselves against this utterly frivolous lawsuit. "Disagreeing with an easily triggered blowhard" is not actionable under US law. And, much as you might think it should be in this particular case, I suspect you would find that libel laws more favorable to plaintiffs (as they exist, e.g. in the UK) would often be used against people with whose political views you are sympathetic.

dimgl 5y ago
Stossel is far from an easily triggered blowhard.

hackcasual 5y ago

> If Stossel never said "Not by climate change" Masson v. New Yorker Magazine Libel in the US requires more than just inaccuracy, it looks at the substantial truth. So "not by climate change" vs "not only by climate change" is irrelevant for establishing libel

hartator 5y ago
I think the big red "Misleading" is the libel.
- hackcasual 5y ago
  Misleading is opinion though, which in the US can never be libel
  - grayhatter 5y ago
    never is a strong word but even so I could prove something is misleading making it an objective assessment which wouldn't be covered under opinion exclusive.

kenjackson 5y ago

That is simply not substantial enough to win a libel case. This is like someone saying "McDonald's hamburgers are the worst" and then someone else saying, "you said McDonald's hamburgers aren't good". You never said that -- in theory the worst burgers could still be good, but it's not an unreasonable take given no other additional context. The libel is simply not substantial enough.