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Jones seems like a nut, but the way he's being taken to the cleaners and sued for comical amounts of money are just absurd. I'm not being hyperbolic saying peop
by hbn 2y ago
Jones seems like a nut, but the way he's being taken to the cleaners and sued for comical amounts of money are just absurd. I'm not being hyperbolic saying people would be less mad at him if he had done the shooting himself.
And it's especially rich in a time where the most popular podcast genre is women commenting on brutal murder cases as they're fresh and being investigated, and throwing out their pet theories about real living people being responsible. What's the difference?
- Andrex 2y agoAs a CT native, you'll never coax an ounce of sympathy for Jones from me. He made his bed, doubled down, and faced justice. The system worked at least one time.
- acdha 2y agoJones continued to inflict harm on families who’d lost children, and profited significantly from it both financially and politically. He defied multiple courts, too, so there was no question of premeditation or incapacity, just repeated decisions to cause harm year after year. That’s the difference: true crime podcasts don’t cause harm on that scale, and few people are going to defy the authority of the legal system the way he did.
- roenxi 2y agoWhile that is terrible, I don't know if you can argue it is terrible to the tune of what they've done to Jones. Every major media outlet has some instances of, effectively, targeted harassment in their history. Whether the public endorses that harassment is more a question of how effective the reporters are than anything else. It makes sense that Jones would lose the case, but the scale of the judgements was eye watering and is difficult to justify. The scale of the compensation is in a different world to the amount of damage done (intentionally, the bulk is punative). That changes the nature of what is going on.
- acdha 2y ago> Every major media outlet has some instances of, effectively, targeted harassment in their history. Whether the public endorses that harassment is more a question of how effective the reporters are than anything else. Do you have any examples supporting the equivalence you’re claiming? The high judgements were caused by his defiance of earlier judgements so that pattern is really what we’re looking for.
- vizzier 2y agoNot OP, but Fox Settled the dominion lawsuit for $725M [1]. So this type of harassment means big judgments against you. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Voting_Systems_v._Fox_News_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Voting_Systems_v._Fox...
- acdha 2y agoHow was that harassment? They directed a baseless smear campaign which posed a significant risk to Dominion’s business. Unless we’re defining “harassment” as “accountability”, that seems fair.
- vizzier 2y agoYou're right, harassment might not be the right term when applied to a corporate entity. Either way these were both defamation suits.
- acdha 2y agoI think the more important aspect is that both of these were cases where someone knowingly promulgated false information fully aware that their story was not supported by the facts. Real journalists don’t tend to do that both because it’s unethical and because it can be financially ruinous. The situation is different in cases where the truth isn’t clear or where supporting evidence turns out to be fake because in those cases a real journalistic organization will retract or update their story. Had either of them been willing to do so, they almost certainly wouldn’t have even been sued. The Sandy Hook settlement was so large because it was obvious that Jones simply wasn’t going to leave the victims alone.
- hbn 2y agoWhen was the last time he was profiting from Sandy Hook conspiracies? I heard him apologize for it years ago and say he doesn't believe it. And true crime podcasts definitely do cause harm, the fans of those shows love playing vigilante detective, stalking and harassing people close to the case to get information. I remember a few years ago there was an incident where they were protesting outside of some guy's house because he was a suspect in his girlfriend's disappearance, so he couldn't even go outside. True crime is an entire industry monetizing tragedies in realtime on a scale the Sandy Hook conspiracies never came anywhere close to.
- m-ee 2y agoThe deposition of his father clearly laid out that they saw spikes in sales when the sandy hook conspiracy was mentioned and actively sought to replicate it.
- JacobThreeThree 2y agoThis doesn't answer the question about when this was occurring.
- Gazoo101 2y agoWith someone like Alex Jones, the statement 'I heard him apologize for it' is pretty much meaningless as he demonstrably changes his stance constantly to fit the most useful minute-to-minute narrative for himself. You basically need to look at the long-term complete picture of how he characterizes his role (I'd suggest https://knowledgefight.com/ https://knowledgefight.com/ as a great source for this) in relation to Sandy Hook. I cannot recall a specific instance of him apologizing, but I'm convinced he has at one point or another done so. But the number of times he's minimized, ignored, mischaracterized or outright lied about his involvement and impact on the Sandy Hook victims far, far, (FAR) outweighs the actual times he's ever admitted fault and/or apologized.
- netbioserror 2y ago[flagged]
- Sparkle-san 2y agoHow about having people threatening to rape and murder your family because they're convinced your lying and know where you live so you constantly have to move and try to hide your whereabouts. https://apnews.com/article/shootings-school-connecticut-alex-jones-waterbury-782e495a3ece4753d857a9b47d444385 https://apnews.com/article/shootings-school-connecticut-alex...
- netbioserror 2y ago[flagged]
- acdha 2y agoThis was extensively covered in multiple court cases which are public record. Why don’t you familiarize yourself with them and come back go this thread once you have a better understanding of what it’s about?
- netbioserror 2y ago[flagged]
- highcountess 2y ago[flagged]
- assanineass 2y ago[flagged]
- jeltz 2y ago> And it's especially rich in a time where the most popular podcast genre is women commenting on brutal murder cases as they're fresh and being investigated, and throwing out their pet theories about real living people being responsible. What's the difference? I am totally fine with convicting those for slander too. It is a pretty disgusting market.
- happytoexplain 2y agoThe sentence you're claiming isn't hyperbolic is hyperbolic. While you can absolutely reasonably disagree with the judgement, I don't believe you can reasonably use a phrase like "seems like a nut" to summarize his part in this, if you're at all familiar with it and are being honest. "Immoral" would be the absolute minimum descriptor one could employ, even in the context of cold objectivity. And why should we compare this to the podcast you're describing? They're two completely different kinds of immorality, and are not teams I must pick from.
- bowsamic 2y agoI feel like your first paragraph has some slight sense, but then you demolish it with the second paragraph which just shows that you actually have no idea who Alex Jones is or what he has done
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- giancarlostoro 2y agoNancy Grace comes to mind, who has far more reach being on national television. She made claims about people who were later found to be guilty. Her speculation pushed harassment.
- jjeaff 2y agoAlex Jones has far more listeners than Nancy Grace has ever had. He was pulling down 8 figures selling fake boner pills and tin foil hats on his merch website.
- giancarlostoro 2y agoI'm unable to find a number about how many people listened to him around the time period, but still arguably, she was a very well known public figure, even if some people didn't watch her. My mom would watch her show religiously.
- giancarlostoro 2y agolater found to be NOT Guilty* I typod.
- newZWhoDis 2y agoLet’s talk about scale: Jones has to pay ~5x what Boeing did. Boeing killed 346 people https://apnews.com/article/boeing-guilty-plea-crashes-245a38dc6d3082f4ddff1f6f74f274f2 https://apnews.com/article/boeing-guilty-plea-crashes-245a38...
- gretch 2y agoBoeing killed people while making a not-good-enough design for a highly complex airplane system. And even though it killed 346 ppl, it continues to get millions people safely from point to point safely. It's negligent and they need to change, but it's pretty forgivable. Jones went on a mic and ripped false info, enriching no one but himself and grieving these families repeatedly.
- Nathanba 2y agoThis is misrepresentation, they didn't just happen to make a mistake in a complex situation. The crime was to know about the mistake and still not fix it - on purpose. The crime was to know that they should be giving people training on this system for safety reasons but they didn't anyway. Afaik it is an additional misrepresentation that the same system is now continuing on to fly. It is not, they fixed it and patched it.
- gretch 2y agoSome of the issues were reported and a decision maker thought "we can get by without this". Pretty much the same reason the Challenger exploded. With a large company, there's gonna be reports about all sorts of stuff all the time, and you have to sort through the noise. They failed to do that here. But is there any shred of doubt that no one, including the greediest most-souless bureaucrat, actually tried to make an airplane crash and kill people? Crashing airplanes is VERY predictably bad for the stock price.
- Nathanba 2y ago>But is there any shred of doubt that no one, including the greediest most-souless bureaucrat, actually tried to make an airplane crash and kill people? This is not taking into account how humans are. People raise their children really badly all the time even though they know what they are doing is bad but they just don't care in the moment. Who wants a bad child? But they still make all the mistakes and end up producing bad children. Incompetence and malice are often nearly identical.
- pessimizer 2y ago> Jones seems like a nut, but the way he's being taken to the cleaners and sued for comical amounts of money are just absurd. I'm normally extremely sympathetic to this argument, but not only was this a conspiracy theory about dead children, but it implicated the bereaved, devastated parents and all of the relatives of those children. It's so many people that you can't really make up for it, ever. There's no number of dollars or good deeds that will get him into paradise. The fact that he still operates in much the same way as before makes me think he's blessed by intelligence agencies to use as pretense for what they want to do or as distraction from what they are doing.
- jancsika 2y ago> Jones seems like a nut, but the way he's being taken to the cleaners and sued for comical amounts of money are just absurd. I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is the Jones/Sandy Hook case-- like the Fox/Dominion case-- was an outlier because there is nearly never that amount of evidence to be able to pass the high bar for defamation. So I think it's the other way around-- Jones was comically brazen in the claims he made. Hence the huge amounts in the Jones cases. (And if the podcasters are as brazen, go tell the real living people about their open-and-shut defamation cases and collect a nice finders fee for yourself. :) Edit: clarification
- loeg 2y agoJones was also completely hostile to the courts and legal process. That will get you a larger punishment than someone who did the same actions but respected the court.
- Nathanba 2y agoI watched some of his videos at the time and to me it seemed mostly like the exact same content that he always does. Very much not brazen claims of facts, just musing and speculating that it's all fake and the parents are smiling so they might be actors. That's it. And the entire time he was emphasizing that he doesn't know for sure and it's all theory.
- jjeaff 2y agohe specifically called out parents by name, constantly made claims that they were obviously crisis actors, showed pictures of the parents, and did nothing when his listeners started harassing the parents daily.
- Nathanba 2y agoYou probably mean parents who went on live television to give interviews? Well obviously he can show "pictures" of people who were on TV with their name.
- mintplant 2y agoPopping open Podcast Addict, the top 10 podcasts right now are: 1. No Such Thing As A Fish; 2. My Brother, My Brother And Me; 3. Planet Money; 4. Revolutions; 5. 99% Invisible; 6. Stuff You Should Know; 7. The Adventure Zone; 8. This American Life; 9. Freakinomics Radio; 10. The Rest Is History I had to scroll to #32 to find Casefile which sorta fits your criteria, except it's hosted by a dude and I think he generally discusses older cases.
- j2kun 2y agoYeah OP is out of their mind on this point. Even spotify doesn't have many true crime podcasts in their top 50.
- FergusArgyll 2y ago#3 after comedy and news, ahead of sports. https://www.statista.com/statistics/786938/top-podcast-genres/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/786938/top-podcast-genre...
- afavour 2y ago> And it's especially rich in a time where the most popular podcast genre is women commenting on brutal murder cases as they're fresh and being investigated, and throwing out their pet theories about real living people being responsible. What's the difference? Can you cite any data on that at all? I’m aware of the genre of podcast you’re referring to but I’ve never been aware of it even remotely being the most popular genre.
- FergusArgyll 2y agoit's #3 after comedy and news https://www.statista.com/statistics/786938/top-podcast-genres/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/786938/top-podcast-genre...
- davidt84 2y agoTrue Crime as a whole may be. That says nothing about "women commenting on brutal murder cases as they're fresh and being investigated, and throwing out their pet theories about real living people being responsible" even existing at all. (Although I'm sure there's some examples of it somewhere.)
- afavour 2y agoTo conflate "true crime" and what the OP was referring to strikes me as pretty dishonest.
- Pxtl 2y agoHis wealth is primarily the proceeds of slander and fraud. He should not have any of it. Unfortunately, slander and fraud are really hard to enforce. In a just system he'd have never earned that money in the first place. Fortunately, his legal defense was comedically incompetent. So I'll take "all his money goes to his most-harmed victims" as a compromise.
- elzbardico 2y agoI don't agree with Jones' political positions, but as someone who was not born in America, I think I can see the issue in a less passionate and partisan way. For me it is clear that the this judgment had a gigantic political vector. I fully agree on the guilty verdict, but the sentence, frankly, was meant as a political message for Jones and everyone else on his side of the political spectrum: Stop talking the things you talk, because we are coming for you, and we get you, you won't like it. As someone who was born in a corrupt small town in a corrupt banana republic, and was somewhat familiar with this kind of thing, it was pretty easy to see it for what it was.
- acdha 2y agoDoes that sound as worrisome when you remember that his “talk” was repeatedly accusing parents of faking their own dead children, to the point that many of them were receiving violent threats from his listeners? Nobody went after him because he had weird views on tax policy or international relations, it was because he refused to leave suffering families alone. This is also a good time to consider what you are saying by calling it a “political vector”. Lying about a mass shooting snd harassment aren’t traditionally a partisan position so by using that framing you’re implicitly saying they belong to his party.
- jari_mustonen 2y ago[flagged]