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> This is dangerously close to making the penalty the loss of his first amendment rights. It’s fascinating (and worrying) how the people who cry the loudest ab

by latexr 2y ago

> This is dangerously close to making the penalty the loss of his first amendment rights. It’s fascinating (and worrying) how the people who cry the loudest about the first amendment are the ones who least understand it. The right to free speech doesn’t mean you can say literally anything without consequences. If you’re a deliberate liar who provably lies to profit and harm others, you can and should be punished. I’m reminded of the Twitter engineer who said “Twitter wants to censor bullying and harassment, and the idea of free speech is that you can bully and harass people”. No dude, not it’s not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

a-french-anon 2y ago
> The right to free speech doesn’t mean you can say literally anything without consequences. If you’re a deliberate liar who provably lies to profit and harm others, you can and should be punished. Right, and how do you obtain that "proof of deliberateness"? Or measure that non-physical harm in a way that doesn't give power to people who just don't like what you're saying (possibly the truth)? Most people in favour of free speech already know about libel and defamation, you're just trying to muddy the waters here.
- CJefferson 2y ago
  You obtain it through a court, exactly had happened here. Jones as a deliberate lair, who has ruined the lives of dozens of people who had already had the most terrible thing happen to them -- the murder of a child.
  - logicchains 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - mountainriver 2y ago
      Wow go read the stories of the parents who dealt with this and think about who you are defending
      - capybaraStorm 2y ago
        Whether their stories about what they dealt with are true or not, they have incredible incentive to make sure they present such dealings as worth a billion dollars. You can't put a price on human life, but if you could surely those children are worth a billion and more, so they just took the money from Jones (the nearest lying person they hated) instead of the broke murderer. Bernhard Gaetz famously said (accurately) the victims family never got a dime from him after the lawsuit. It's quite likely similar will be said from Jones, although they can take the scraps of Infowars which is worth very little without their star loon. They are grasping at straws while being yanked around by attorneys, while the brutal truth is the real enemy that murdered their children is in a grave and they will never be able to truly dish out justice to him while they flail around looking for it elsewhere.
        CJefferson 2y ago
        I think Jones hurt them more than the murderer. People do have their children murdered, and it's terrible, but they often go on with their lives. Because of Jones, these parents were harrassed for years, forced to move home and go into hiding. Yes, it wasn't Jones doing the harrassing directly, but he was the one accussing them of being actors for years.
        capybaraStorm 2y ago
        I don't at all agree with what Jones said. I find it disgusting. But you should take a look at some of the videos of the parents. There is one, where the dad is laughing and smiling and suddenly goes up to the microphone and switches to sad dad mode. Now being a thinking, somewhat empathetic human being I understand people handle grief differently. I don't think he was an actor. But I understand why he might be viewed that way. It seems insane to me that somehow it was lawfared that Jone's real interpretation that it looked like acting to him (it looked like acting to me, but I know it wasn't and those kids really were killed) and somehow it is his fault that he is liable for harrassment others do under the flag of agreeing with Jones' take. That has an incredibly chilling effect on speech. Jones did lose the civil case but it was a weird one, in the right venue, at the right time, in the worst possible light, and with pretty bad representation both of himself and spotty counsel. It's not something to look at to rest your hat on for how these things will continue to be interpreted in the future.
  - akira2501 2y ago
    > exactly had happened here It actually wasn't. The case was decided on a default in discovery and no facts were ever tried. Then the separate penalty trial was started immediately afterwards. The judgement is being appealed, but in Texas, you can collect anyways. If the appeal is successful, then the claimants may have to pay any difference back, or reduce the total amount they can expect to receive from escrow. I really don't think people appreciate the precedents involved here. Including that one of the claimants is was an active FBI agent at the time and was suing over claims involving his job performance which has never been done before. > Jones as a deliberate lair Well, it could be that he actually believes what he says, if so, what exactly should happen then? This was never heard by a jury or judged on those merits.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- moomin 2y ago
  I feel like if this is your position, you should make it clear you’re not talking about the first amendment here, which is subject to interpretation by US courts. I’m not sure how you would do this succinctly though. Maybe “Unamerican Free Speech”?
- jmull 2y ago
  > Right, and how do you obtain that "proof of deliberateness"? Or measure that non-physical harm in a way that doesn't give power to people who just don't like what you're saying (possibly the truth)? If only there were a system of formal rules and a process where evidence is presented by highly trained and experienced experts, presided over by an impartial arbiter, with deliberation, established precedent, a system of appeals, and if only that system had been used here.
- skywhopper 2y ago
  There’s a long history of law and court cases that have set the rules for making this determination. Do you think this is the first such case in history, that no one has thought of this before? These sorts of laws go back thousands of years in general and hundreds of years specifically in the US. You are not some super genius who just realized it’s hard to figure out if people are intentionally lying. That part of the case is long over with here.
logicchains 2y ago
>If you’re a deliberate liar who provably lies to profit and harm others, you can and should be punished. The first amendment absolutely gives you the right to lie, and the right to profit from that lying if you're not explicitly committing fraud or defaming anyone. You may disagree with it, but that's what the law is.
- JamesSwift 2y ago
  Well I hate to break it to you but profiting by lying is the definition of fraud. In general if someone is impacted by your actions you are open to legal ramifications. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fraud https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fraud
  - commandlinefan 2y ago
    That's incredibly pedantic. What Alex Jones engaged in was nothing remotely like "fraud". The poster you're replying to is correct, the first amendment does protect "liars".
- kiba 2y ago
  Defamation is basically lying about someone to damage their reputation. So I don't think that the first amendment gives you the right to lie? Also, doctors and lawyers are subjected to discipline by their respective guild. So even if it's your right to say bullshit, you might lose your job and license. Arguably, there's no to little consequence of being a nobody and lying about something like autism and vaccine. It's probably isn't worth the effort to sue folks. That said, misinformation is clearly harmful and we shouldn't let people lie unchecked.
  - dublin 2y ago
    Yeah, that self-policing guild discipline by doctors and lawyers has really worked out well, hasn't it?
- skywhopper 2y ago
  You really should read up on these things before you make statements like this.
thatcat 2y ago
The media is routinely used for psyops to bully people into certain policies for profit using known lies with no accountability, either all media companies should be held accountable for this or none should.
- jeltz 2y ago
  I am totally fine with holding all media accountable.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - thatcat 2y ago
    If the Judaical system enforces content regulation selectively, that is objectively worse than pure free speech since it encourages propaganda AND suppresses dissent of that propaganda. Also no one cares what you're ok with, go report some facebook posts if you want to feel like an idea authority.
mynameishere 2y ago
[flagged]
- nilamo 2y ago
  And the death threats those people have been living with for decades because of Jones? That's just acceptable and normal to you? The amount of whataboutism and history rewriting going on in these comments is impressive
- zztop44 2y ago
  Most people who have this opinion going in tend to change it when the learn the particulars of the case. Jones absolutely knew he was lying, he did it deliberately, the lies caused incredible real world harm, he knew they were causing harm and he kept doing it because that’s his business model and that’s how he gets rich.
deleted 2y ago
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deleted 2y ago
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pookha 2y ago
You're stretching it. In the US the government can't arrest for causing offense to someone specifically because of the 1st amendment...You can get sued for libel (very high bar and it's notoriously difficult in the US) but you're not going to be rounded up and put into a corrections facility for being offensive. This is the perfect illustration of the first amendment in the US vs the UK. In the UK a violent Maoist (red guard-like) police mob went after teenager for causing offense: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12399911/Revealed-Mother-autistic-daughter-16-dragged-home-police-saying-female-officer-lesbian-like-nana-set-SUE-force.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12399911/Revealed-M...
- latexr 2y ago
  > for being offensive. The Sandy Hook parents received death threats for years because of him. That’s not “being offensive”, it’s tormenting people and putting their lives in peril. https://archive.ph/20221013141353/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/29/us/politics/alex-jones-sandy-hook-parker.html https://archive.ph/20221013141353/https://www.nytimes.com/20...
  - zer8k 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - roland35 2y ago
      Dude you are uninformed! Jones profited off the sandy hook families, elevated people like halzig, and accused the parents of being crisis actors which directly led to harassment. Jones is the one with the platform spreading these lies and that is why he got sued. Also he certainly may have won the defamation cases against him. Too bad he totally made a joke of the process which led to the default judgement. Maybe he thought providing the discovery info was worse? Listen to his depositions yourself if you don't believe me. Jones is a sociopath.
    - buttercraft 2y ago
      FFS, nobody is stopping him from speaking! He's being held accountable for his own words. You have it completely backwards: this is Free Speech in action.
akira2501 2y ago
> are the ones who least understand it. It's horrifying to me that when people don't like a defendant they're willing to justify almost any reduction of that person's rights in an effort to see them "punished." > you can and should be punished. This is a civil case. Why should he be "punished?" Shouldn't he just have to pay a settlement? Why is a billion dollars a reasonable penalty for his actions? Why must he necessarily sell his platform when the platform will make the most money staying in Jones' control? Why is it important to the victims in this case to ensure that a specific owner controls these assets? > I’m reminded of the Twitter engineer who said Okay, does that have any bearing on this particular case, or it's details?

by latexr 2y ago

a-french-anon 2y ago

> The right to free speech doesn’t mean you can say literally anything without consequences. If you’re a deliberate liar who provably lies to profit and harm others, you can and should be punished. Right, and how do you obtain that "proof of deliberateness"? Or measure that non-physical harm in a way that doesn't give power to people who just don't like what you're saying (possibly the truth)? Most people in favour of free speech already know about libel and defamation, you're just trying to muddy the waters here.

CJefferson 2y ago
You obtain it through a court, exactly had happened here. Jones as a deliberate lair, who has ruined the lives of dozens of people who had already had the most terrible thing happen to them -- the murder of a child.
- logicchains 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - mountainriver 2y ago
    Wow go read the stories of the parents who dealt with this and think about who you are defending
    - capybaraStorm 2y ago
      Whether their stories about what they dealt with are true or not, they have incredible incentive to make sure they present such dealings as worth a billion dollars. You can't put a price on human life, but if you could surely those children are worth a billion and more, so they just took the money from Jones (the nearest lying person they hated) instead of the broke murderer. Bernhard Gaetz famously said (accurately) the victims family never got a dime from him after the lawsuit. It's quite likely similar will be said from Jones, although they can take the scraps of Infowars which is worth very little without their star loon. They are grasping at straws while being yanked around by attorneys, while the brutal truth is the real enemy that murdered their children is in a grave and they will never be able to truly dish out justice to him while they flail around looking for it elsewhere.
      - CJefferson 2y ago
        I think Jones hurt them more than the murderer. People do have their children murdered, and it's terrible, but they often go on with their lives. Because of Jones, these parents were harrassed for years, forced to move home and go into hiding. Yes, it wasn't Jones doing the harrassing directly, but he was the one accussing them of being actors for years.
        capybaraStorm 2y ago
        I don't at all agree with what Jones said. I find it disgusting. But you should take a look at some of the videos of the parents. There is one, where the dad is laughing and smiling and suddenly goes up to the microphone and switches to sad dad mode. Now being a thinking, somewhat empathetic human being I understand people handle grief differently. I don't think he was an actor. But I understand why he might be viewed that way. It seems insane to me that somehow it was lawfared that Jone's real interpretation that it looked like acting to him (it looked like acting to me, but I know it wasn't and those kids really were killed) and somehow it is his fault that he is liable for harrassment others do under the flag of agreeing with Jones' take. That has an incredibly chilling effect on speech. Jones did lose the civil case but it was a weird one, in the right venue, at the right time, in the worst possible light, and with pretty bad representation both of himself and spotty counsel. It's not something to look at to rest your hat on for how these things will continue to be interpreted in the future.
- akira2501 2y ago
  > exactly had happened here It actually wasn't. The case was decided on a default in discovery and no facts were ever tried. Then the separate penalty trial was started immediately afterwards. The judgement is being appealed, but in Texas, you can collect anyways. If the appeal is successful, then the claimants may have to pay any difference back, or reduce the total amount they can expect to receive from escrow. I really don't think people appreciate the precedents involved here. Including that one of the claimants is was an active FBI agent at the time and was suing over claims involving his job performance which has never been done before. > Jones as a deliberate lair Well, it could be that he actually believes what he says, if so, what exactly should happen then? This was never heard by a jury or judged on those merits.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
moomin 2y ago
I feel like if this is your position, you should make it clear you’re not talking about the first amendment here, which is subject to interpretation by US courts. I’m not sure how you would do this succinctly though. Maybe “Unamerican Free Speech”?
jmull 2y ago
> Right, and how do you obtain that "proof of deliberateness"? Or measure that non-physical harm in a way that doesn't give power to people who just don't like what you're saying (possibly the truth)? If only there were a system of formal rules and a process where evidence is presented by highly trained and experienced experts, presided over by an impartial arbiter, with deliberation, established precedent, a system of appeals, and if only that system had been used here.
skywhopper 2y ago
There’s a long history of law and court cases that have set the rules for making this determination. Do you think this is the first such case in history, that no one has thought of this before? These sorts of laws go back thousands of years in general and hundreds of years specifically in the US. You are not some super genius who just realized it’s hard to figure out if people are intentionally lying. That part of the case is long over with here.

logicchains 2y ago

>If you’re a deliberate liar who provably lies to profit and harm others, you can and should be punished. The first amendment absolutely gives you the right to lie, and the right to profit from that lying if you're not explicitly committing fraud or defaming anyone. You may disagree with it, but that's what the law is.

JamesSwift 2y ago
Well I hate to break it to you but profiting by lying is the definition of fraud. In general if someone is impacted by your actions you are open to legal ramifications. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fraud https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fraud
- commandlinefan 2y ago
  That's incredibly pedantic. What Alex Jones engaged in was nothing remotely like "fraud". The poster you're replying to is correct, the first amendment does protect "liars".
kiba 2y ago
Defamation is basically lying about someone to damage their reputation. So I don't think that the first amendment gives you the right to lie? Also, doctors and lawyers are subjected to discipline by their respective guild. So even if it's your right to say bullshit, you might lose your job and license. Arguably, there's no to little consequence of being a nobody and lying about something like autism and vaccine. It's probably isn't worth the effort to sue folks. That said, misinformation is clearly harmful and we shouldn't let people lie unchecked.
- dublin 2y ago
  Yeah, that self-policing guild discipline by doctors and lawyers has really worked out well, hasn't it?
skywhopper 2y ago
You really should read up on these things before you make statements like this.

thatcat 2y ago

The media is routinely used for psyops to bully people into certain policies for profit using known lies with no accountability, either all media companies should be held accountable for this or none should.

jeltz 2y ago
I am totally fine with holding all media accountable.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- thatcat 2y ago
  If the Judaical system enforces content regulation selectively, that is objectively worse than pure free speech since it encourages propaganda AND suppresses dissent of that propaganda. Also no one cares what you're ok with, go report some facebook posts if you want to feel like an idea authority.

mynameishere 2y ago

[flagged]

nilamo 2y ago
And the death threats those people have been living with for decades because of Jones? That's just acceptable and normal to you? The amount of whataboutism and history rewriting going on in these comments is impressive
zztop44 2y ago
Most people who have this opinion going in tend to change it when the learn the particulars of the case. Jones absolutely knew he was lying, he did it deliberately, the lies caused incredible real world harm, he knew they were causing harm and he kept doing it because that’s his business model and that’s how he gets rich.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

pookha 2y ago

You're stretching it. In the US the government can't arrest for causing offense to someone specifically because of the 1st amendment...You can get sued for libel (very high bar and it's notoriously difficult in the US) but you're not going to be rounded up and put into a corrections facility for being offensive. This is the perfect illustration of the first amendment in the US vs the UK. In the UK a violent Maoist (red guard-like) police mob went after teenager for causing offense: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12399911/Revealed-Mother-autistic-daughter-16-dragged-home-police-saying-female-officer-lesbian-like-nana-set-SUE-force.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12399911/Revealed-M...

latexr 2y ago
> for being offensive. The Sandy Hook parents received death threats for years because of him. That’s not “being offensive”, it’s tormenting people and putting their lives in peril. https://archive.ph/20221013141353/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/29/us/politics/alex-jones-sandy-hook-parker.html https://archive.ph/20221013141353/https://www.nytimes.com/20...
- zer8k 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - roland35 2y ago
    Dude you are uninformed! Jones profited off the sandy hook families, elevated people like halzig, and accused the parents of being crisis actors which directly led to harassment. Jones is the one with the platform spreading these lies and that is why he got sued. Also he certainly may have won the defamation cases against him. Too bad he totally made a joke of the process which led to the default judgement. Maybe he thought providing the discovery info was worse? Listen to his depositions yourself if you don't believe me. Jones is a sociopath.
  - buttercraft 2y ago
    FFS, nobody is stopping him from speaking! He's being held accountable for his own words. You have it completely backwards: this is Free Speech in action.

akira2501 2y ago

> are the ones who least understand it. It's horrifying to me that when people don't like a defendant they're willing to justify almost any reduction of that person's rights in an effort to see them "punished." > you can and should be punished. This is a civil case. Why should he be "punished?" Shouldn't he just have to pay a settlement? Why is a billion dollars a reasonable penalty for his actions? Why must he necessarily sell his platform when the platform will make the most money staying in Jones' control? Why is it important to the victims in this case to ensure that a specific owner controls these assets? > I’m reminded of the Twitter engineer who said Okay, does that have any bearing on this particular case, or it's details?