5 ms·

If something is not illegal but clearly bad, it's a lesson that we should change the law. It absolutely should not be legal to lob a completely baseless murder

If something is not illegal but clearly bad, it's a lesson that we should change the law. It absolutely should not be legal to lob a completely baseless murder accusation at someone with no evidence.

woodruffw 4y ago
The law deserves more nuance than that: it's clearly bad that someone can baselessly accuse someone else of murder, but it's not clear that a weaker defamation standard produces better social outcomes overall. In this particular case: the woman making the baseless claims is pretty clearly mentally ill. Is society best served by her being fined or serving jail time? It's not clear to me that it is.
- Analemma_ 4y ago
  It seems pretty fucked up that if I’m being defamed, I can’t do anything about it if the person defaming me is mentally ill. Do I just have to sit there and watch my reputation go down the shitter, with potential loss of jobs, income, etc.? That doesn’t seem like a workable system to me.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    In the US, you're not being defamed until someone relates a damaging false fact. This particular defendant has, apparently, only said that the Tarot deck told her the plaintiff was a murderer. That's not a fact. It's like saying "in my opinion, you're a murderer". You're allowed to do that.
    - dmurray 4y ago
      > That's not a fact. It may well be a fact. But it's a fact about the Tarot cards, not the professor. I don't think the case would be materially different if the cards required less interpretation, e.g. if she had instead consulted a Magic 8-ball which told her the professor was the murderer "without a doubt".
      - tptacek 4y ago
        Yes! But if you could show she consulted the Magic 8-ball and it said "Better not tell you now" and she lied and said "It is decidedly so", you might could actually sue for defamation, which is wild.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    In the legal sense, it's not clear that you are being defamed just because a crazy person believes crazy things for crazy reasons. The article goes into how (and why) the standard is (usually) higher than that. It's not clear what should happen differently. The court can't enforce the private mental states of random citizens; there could be millions of cranks right now who believe that you're a murderer and are talking about you behind your back. Unless their beliefs come from factual claims that they know are false, it's not clear what recourse the courts should offer you.
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    This person seem have hundreds of followers on social media sites, which is hardlya big audience, and the claims are so obviously batshit insane that I don't think there will be much risk for loss of jobs, income, etc.
- superfrank 4y ago
  > In this particular case: the woman making the baseless claims is pretty clearly mentally ill What makes you say that? I have admittedly only watched one or two of her videos, but I didn't see anything that clearly points to her being mentally ill as opposed to stupid and mean.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    That was based on her calling herself God in her profile plus, you know, thinking that you can solve a murder with tarot cards.
    - tshaddox 4y ago
      What if she doesn’t believe that she is God or that she can solve a murder with tarot cards? There are plenty of people on TikTok clearly performing as fictional characters.
      - woodruffw 4y ago
        Sure, that's possible. Maybe the court case will reveal that!
saurik 4y ago
Some things that are bad are not so bad that we should make them impossible to do. Just because you might be a jerk to do something, doesn't mean it should be enforceable by armed people with guns. Is it really insufficient (or somehow so difficult) for us to simply dislike people who are jerks rather than try to put them in jail / fine them?
- mind-blight 4y ago
  It gets complicated when a jerk has a platform that reaches a bunch of other jerks, some of whom go on to do things like stalking, harassment, and death threats. That's why Alex Jones was fined a billion dollars.
  - dmix 4y ago
    That's not why he was fined.
tptacek 4y ago
In this case, you'd need to do more than change the law; you'd need to amend the Constitution.
- eru 4y ago
  Why do you think you'd need to do that? Why wouldn't some generous re-interpretation be enough? Or is the US constitution so specific on the matter that this is hard?
  - tptacek 4y ago
    See, for instance, Hustler v. Falwell: In order to protect the free flow of ideas and opinions on matters of public interest and concern, the First and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit public figures and public officials from recovering damages for the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress by reason of the publication of a caricature such as the ad parody at issue without showing in addition that the publication contains a false statement of fact... See also Gertz v. Welch: Under the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea. However pernicious an opinion may seem, we depend for its correction not on the conscience of judges and juries but on the competition of other ideas. But there is no constitutional value in false statements of fact. The Digital Media Law Project has a great page on all of this: https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/opinion-and-fair-comment-privileges https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/opinion-and-fair-comment-pr...
Beltalowda 4y ago
The problem is that "changing the law" usually changes the legality of more than just the specific situation at hand. So a law banning "my tarot cards tell me person X is a murderer" may also ban "I've carefully reviewed all the evidence, and I think person X is a murderer" where this is a reasonable accusation. And we can go from murder to "rape" or "abuse" etc. You need to be very careful with this kind of stuff; in this particular case, yeah, I agree that it probably should be illegal. But at the same time: what else would this also make illegal, and wouldn't the cure be worse than the disease?
- ummonk 4y ago
  "So a law banning "my tarot cards tell me person X is a murderer" may also ban "I've carefully reviewed all the evidence, and I think person X is a murderer" where this is a reasonable accusation." Countries that extend defamation to opinions tend to apply a reasonable person or similar standard to the opinions.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
eru 4y ago
> If something is not illegal but clearly bad, it's a lesson that we should change the law. I don't agree (at least not in general). Eg not loving your kids is clearly bad, but I don't think laws would be the right way to tackle this. > It absolutely should not be legal to lob a completely baseless murder accusation at someone with no evidence. You could try to make American courts change how they interpret defamation. Or you could change the defamation laws in the US. Or you could stop fiddling with defamation, and make up a new category of 'bad thing'. In the last case, you could learn from the German experience: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cble_Nachrede_(Deutschland) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cble_Nachrede_(Deutschlan... (use Google translate, if necessary).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

If something is not illegal but clearly bad, it's a lesson that we should change the law. It absolutely should not be legal to lob a completely baseless murder accusation at someone with no evidence.

woodruffw 4y ago

The law deserves more nuance than that: it's clearly bad that someone can baselessly accuse someone else of murder, but it's not clear that a weaker defamation standard produces better social outcomes overall. In this particular case: the woman making the baseless claims is pretty clearly mentally ill. Is society best served by her being fined or serving jail time? It's not clear to me that it is.

Analemma_ 4y ago
It seems pretty fucked up that if I’m being defamed, I can’t do anything about it if the person defaming me is mentally ill. Do I just have to sit there and watch my reputation go down the shitter, with potential loss of jobs, income, etc.? That doesn’t seem like a workable system to me.
- tptacek 4y ago
  In the US, you're not being defamed until someone relates a damaging false fact. This particular defendant has, apparently, only said that the Tarot deck told her the plaintiff was a murderer. That's not a fact. It's like saying "in my opinion, you're a murderer". You're allowed to do that.
  - dmurray 4y ago
    > That's not a fact. It may well be a fact. But it's a fact about the Tarot cards, not the professor. I don't think the case would be materially different if the cards required less interpretation, e.g. if she had instead consulted a Magic 8-ball which told her the professor was the murderer "without a doubt".
    - tptacek 4y ago
      Yes! But if you could show she consulted the Magic 8-ball and it said "Better not tell you now" and she lied and said "It is decidedly so", you might could actually sue for defamation, which is wild.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  In the legal sense, it's not clear that you are being defamed just because a crazy person believes crazy things for crazy reasons. The article goes into how (and why) the standard is (usually) higher than that. It's not clear what should happen differently. The court can't enforce the private mental states of random citizens; there could be millions of cranks right now who believe that you're a murderer and are talking about you behind your back. Unless their beliefs come from factual claims that they know are false, it's not clear what recourse the courts should offer you.
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  This person seem have hundreds of followers on social media sites, which is hardlya big audience, and the claims are so obviously batshit insane that I don't think there will be much risk for loss of jobs, income, etc.
superfrank 4y ago
> In this particular case: the woman making the baseless claims is pretty clearly mentally ill What makes you say that? I have admittedly only watched one or two of her videos, but I didn't see anything that clearly points to her being mentally ill as opposed to stupid and mean.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  That was based on her calling herself God in her profile plus, you know, thinking that you can solve a murder with tarot cards.
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    What if she doesn’t believe that she is God or that she can solve a murder with tarot cards? There are plenty of people on TikTok clearly performing as fictional characters.
    - woodruffw 4y ago
      Sure, that's possible. Maybe the court case will reveal that!

saurik 4y ago

Some things that are bad are not so bad that we should make them impossible to do. Just because you might be a jerk to do something, doesn't mean it should be enforceable by armed people with guns. Is it really insufficient (or somehow so difficult) for us to simply dislike people who are jerks rather than try to put them in jail / fine them?

mind-blight 4y ago
It gets complicated when a jerk has a platform that reaches a bunch of other jerks, some of whom go on to do things like stalking, harassment, and death threats. That's why Alex Jones was fined a billion dollars.
- dmix 4y ago
  That's not why he was fined.

tptacek 4y ago

In this case, you'd need to do more than change the law; you'd need to amend the Constitution.

eru 4y ago
Why do you think you'd need to do that? Why wouldn't some generous re-interpretation be enough? Or is the US constitution so specific on the matter that this is hard?
- tptacek 4y ago
  See, for instance, Hustler v. Falwell: In order to protect the free flow of ideas and opinions on matters of public interest and concern, the First and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit public figures and public officials from recovering damages for the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress by reason of the publication of a caricature such as the ad parody at issue without showing in addition that the publication contains a false statement of fact... See also Gertz v. Welch: Under the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea. However pernicious an opinion may seem, we depend for its correction not on the conscience of judges and juries but on the competition of other ideas. But there is no constitutional value in false statements of fact. The Digital Media Law Project has a great page on all of this: https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/opinion-and-fair-comment-privileges https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/opinion-and-fair-comment-pr...

Beltalowda 4y ago

The problem is that "changing the law" usually changes the legality of more than just the specific situation at hand. So a law banning "my tarot cards tell me person X is a murderer" may also ban "I've carefully reviewed all the evidence, and I think person X is a murderer" where this is a reasonable accusation. And we can go from murder to "rape" or "abuse" etc. You need to be very careful with this kind of stuff; in this particular case, yeah, I agree that it probably should be illegal. But at the same time: what else would this also make illegal, and wouldn't the cure be worse than the disease?

ummonk 4y ago
"So a law banning "my tarot cards tell me person X is a murderer" may also ban "I've carefully reviewed all the evidence, and I think person X is a murderer" where this is a reasonable accusation." Countries that extend defamation to opinions tend to apply a reasonable person or similar standard to the opinions.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

eru 4y ago

> If something is not illegal but clearly bad, it's a lesson that we should change the law. I don't agree (at least not in general). Eg not loving your kids is clearly bad, but I don't think laws would be the right way to tackle this. > It absolutely should not be legal to lob a completely baseless murder accusation at someone with no evidence. You could try to make American courts change how they interpret defamation. Or you could change the defamation laws in the US. Or you could stop fiddling with defamation, and make up a new category of 'bad thing'. In the last case, you could learn from the German experience: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cble_Nachrede_(Deutschland) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cble_Nachrede_(Deutschlan... (use Google translate, if necessary).

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]