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I really don't understand how a judgement this large can be reasonable in a case where nobody has had his house burned down. A billion dollars is ten billion c

I really don't understand how a judgement this large can be reasonable in a case where nobody has had his house burned down. A billion dollars is ten billion crowns, that's 10 000 million crowns, or around 5 000 apartments. I don't understand how 5 000 apartments can be a judgement handed out to an individual over something he says. It doesn't really matter what he says, when it's this kind of huge amounts. One can't fine somebody the value of an entire town unless he's done destruction of that order, or at least a fraction of that order.

PessimalDecimal 2y ago
[flagged]
- russdill 2y ago
  Defamation is free speech now?
  - d357r0y3r 2y ago
    It's not, as defamation should have legal consequences. A one billion dollar payout verdict is just orders of magnitude off in terms of proportionality. Unfortunately, Alex Jones the person and the nature of Sandy Hook means that most people won't be able to look at this situation with any sort of sanity. The verdict could have been 100 trillion and people would have said it was deserved.
    - Eisenstein 2y ago
      I'm not sure that is the argument that you think it is. If a jury awarded it after seeing all the evidence and the majority of people agree with it, wouldn't that indicate that it is fair? What criteria do you have that overrides the vast majority of people's sense of fairness?
      - AustinDev 2y ago
        A jury isn't involved in a default judgement afaik
        Eisenstein 2y ago
        They come up with damages.
  - hajile 2y ago
    No defamation was ever proven in court. It was a default judgement.
    - russdill 2y ago
      Allowing a default judgement in a civil case is equivalent to pleading guilty in a criminal case
- enraged_camel 2y ago
  As has been noted in other threads on this page: free speech doesn't mean you can say whatever you want without consequence. It specifically does NOT mean you cannot get sued for saying something that demonstrably causes immense harm to someone.
  - impossiblefork 2y ago
    But a billion dollars. The order of magnitude isn't 'immense stress to an individual', it's on the order of burning down tens or hundreds of houses.
    - PessimalDecimal 2y ago
      Right the problem here is the targeted, selective enforcement -- really, overenforcement -- of laws. Nobody would argue that people hit with $100 million judgments for copyright violations while torrenting music actually had copyright on that music. They didn't. But the point of the eye watering judgments was to send a message. Same here.
      - impossiblefork 2y ago
        >Nobody would argue that people hit with $100 million judgments for copyright violations while torrenting music actually had copyright on that music I don't understand the above, but they've actually made this judgement, and it's much too large. A firm worth as little as 30 million can be an incredible innovative company, supported by a government and serious effort, and here we have people just handing out a 1 billion dollar fine over something where nothing even close to that value has been destroyed. It's as I said in my initial comment, the value of a whole town.
    - booleandilemma 2y ago
      They know Alex Jones has money. They're coming after his money. I think it's as simple as that. And I wouldn't be surprised if the judge simply doesn't like the guy.
- arp242 2y ago
  By his own admission, Jones spent years spreading malicious lies about these people. Some people have had to go in to hiding because his unhinged followers started tracking these people down. As soon as you say "I think more gun control might be a good thing to prevent children from being murdered" you get threatened, bullied, and harassed by a lunatic unhinged fringe stoked up by dirty malicious lies. Is this free speech? Of course not. He has worked for years to shut people up by creating a hostile anger-filled environment where any normal person is afraid to go against him. Alex Jones hates free speech.
  - ganoushoreilly 2y ago
    [flagged]
- mywittyname 2y ago
  I think you'd feel differently if some person with a huge following spread lies about you and your family and those lies resulted in thousands of people threatening and harassing your family.
mdorazio 2y ago
Look up "nuclear verdicts". The unreasonably large dollar amount is intentional and not meant to reflect the real value of harm caused.
- impossiblefork 2y ago
  Yes, but a billion dollars. It's 30x the sale price of Minalyzer, a very cool Swedish firm which was bought by Veracio. It's a level where, when it is an international case, it makes sense for states to get involved with diplomatic pressure. Surely your legal system must be more reasonable than this, because if it's like this, how can it function?
  - fenomas 2y ago
    It wasn't a billion dollars for a single thing, it was awards to 15 different defendants, ranging from ~30-120 million each. More importantly, you're missing that this was a default judgment - Jones didn't defend himself, so the award is kind of the theoretical maximum. The results aren't comparable to regular court cases where both sides make their case.
    - impossiblefork 2y ago
      Yes, but it's still the value of a whole town. A legal system must be robust even to weird or peculiar people who refuse to work with its rules and still produce reasonable results.
      - pavlov 2y ago
        Why should the system accommodate people who refuse to defend themselves? I understand that in a system like Russia where dissidents face made-up charges and their attorneys are harassed by the state. But Alex Jones isn’t in that kind of position at all. He has no problem getting legal representation. The default judgment basically means he admitted guilt by his refusal. That was his choice.
preciousoo 2y ago
How about in a case where libel was relentlessly thrown at families over the course of years, on one of the internets largest and most engaged audiences, leading to harassment, threats, and assault? What should the judgment be for that?
- impossiblefork 2y ago
  Not a billion dollars anyway. But 500k per person maybe, if it really heinous?
  - giancarlostoro 2y ago
    If that's the case, I sure hope nobody finds my post history from my teen years, or the history of anyone who was a rebellious teen on the internet in the 2000s.
  - Eisenstein 2y ago
    That's why we have courts and juries, to make these evaluations. Why should your number should be used over theirs?
    - impossiblefork 2y ago
      Because it's obviously crazy. 1 billion dollars is the 588 people's entire life income. It's just excessive.
      - mikeyouse 2y ago
        Alex jones sold something like $165M in supplements in the 3 years preceding this case… this is somehow the opposite of people complaining that judgements against FB are too small based on the Revenue.
      - pythonaut_16 2y ago
        So you're saying the legal system should hinge on the judgement of what random people believe is "crazy" rather than judges, juries, laws, etc. One opinion should outweigh everyone and everything else?
d357r0y3r 2y ago
Same reason Ross Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison for conspiracy charges and CCE. Unusually harsh for those convictions and a first time offender. The point is, as cliche as it sounds, to send a message.
probably_wrong 2y ago
Stealing from an earlier comment of mine [1] in case you want to read the comments. Alex Jones declared in court that his show reaches about a hundred million people. If that's true then he's paying $10 for every person who heard him defaming the families of dead children. This would be the same principle as those fines in Nordic countries sometimes that depend on how rich someone is. If you can influence one hundred million people and use that power in a criminally irresponsible way, you get a proportionate fine. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33182728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33182728
- impossiblefork 2y ago
  Yeah, we don't have that in Sweden except for criminal acts, and then the fines are a certain number of days of your income as a substitute for imprisonment. In civil cases our judgements are usually not enormous. I don't feel that your reasoning above makes the judgement more reasonable. Maybe he does reach that many people, but he obviously makes nowhere near that amount of money and it's out of line with other defamation judgements.
  - probably_wrong 2y ago
    > it's out of line with other defamation judgements. This point made me curious so I quickly looked around. Fox News paid a $787.5 million settlement [1] for making false claims about Dominion. Given that this happened as the trial was about to start, it's reasonable to assume that Fox News expected to lose even more if the issue went to trial. And that's for a party that arguably would have followed court orders, something Alex Jones refused to do. Next in line is Rudy Giuliani, who was ordered to pay $150 million for defaming two election workers [2]. If Alex Jones defamed 12 families then it comes out roughly the same. [1] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/18/media/fox-dominion-settlement/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/18/media/fox-dominion-settle... [2] https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/rudy-giuliani-defamation-trial-verdict/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/rudy-giuliani-def...
    - impossiblefork 2y ago
sophacles 2y ago
Because damages are easy to calculate - how much money did Jones make from intentionally lying about the victim? That money is the result of him selling their repuation without their consent - the market decided what the value of that act was.
- johnecheck 2y ago
  Sooooooooo, if release a YouTube video defaming someone, and only made $0.35 off ad revenue, I only did $0.35 in damage? Definitely how that works. If I burn down somebody's house and sell tickets to watch, the damages are easy to calculate! It's just my ticket revenue! THE MARKET DECIDED! Gotta give you some credit though, you beat out some real competition for dumbest take in the thread.
  - sophacles 2y ago
    Well partly true... The part where no one wants to watch your videos seems extremely reasonable. Unfortunately you veer way out of reasonableness when you compare the crime of arson with the civil law of defamation. Criminal law and civil law are very different things... So much so that im not even sure what you're trying to get at with your analogy. You do seem upset about it though, and that does make sense... I'd imagine the world would be scary without even a basic understanding of the rules that you're held to. Fortunately this information is readily available... Some review material for junior high civics classes will cover most of what you need to know, and should only take you an hour or two to go through.
bArray 2y ago
[flagged]
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  > It wasn't $1 bn USD worth of damages done. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_damages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_damages is very much a normal thing. > He has been charged the equivalent of the GDP of Samoa He probably did more human damage than all of Samoa's citizens combined.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- lewdev 2y ago
  He lead a mob of his audience to threaten families that just had a child in their family murdered based on lies. There's no price on how horrible that is. Argue all you want, it went through a long process to get to that number so good luck with that.
jaimsam 2y ago
[flagged]
- jazzyjackson 2y ago
  Sorry, should law not be punitive?
elzbardico 2y ago
It was a Moscow Trials things. Not that Jones was not guilty of this specific crime, he was, but the goal was never punishing him just for that.

PessimalDecimal 2y ago

[flagged]

russdill 2y ago
Defamation is free speech now?
- d357r0y3r 2y ago
  It's not, as defamation should have legal consequences. A one billion dollar payout verdict is just orders of magnitude off in terms of proportionality. Unfortunately, Alex Jones the person and the nature of Sandy Hook means that most people won't be able to look at this situation with any sort of sanity. The verdict could have been 100 trillion and people would have said it was deserved.
  - Eisenstein 2y ago
    I'm not sure that is the argument that you think it is. If a jury awarded it after seeing all the evidence and the majority of people agree with it, wouldn't that indicate that it is fair? What criteria do you have that overrides the vast majority of people's sense of fairness?
    - AustinDev 2y ago
      A jury isn't involved in a default judgement afaik
      - Eisenstein 2y ago
        They come up with damages.
- hajile 2y ago
  No defamation was ever proven in court. It was a default judgement.
  - russdill 2y ago
    Allowing a default judgement in a civil case is equivalent to pleading guilty in a criminal case
enraged_camel 2y ago
As has been noted in other threads on this page: free speech doesn't mean you can say whatever you want without consequence. It specifically does NOT mean you cannot get sued for saying something that demonstrably causes immense harm to someone.
- impossiblefork 2y ago
  But a billion dollars. The order of magnitude isn't 'immense stress to an individual', it's on the order of burning down tens or hundreds of houses.
  - PessimalDecimal 2y ago
    Right the problem here is the targeted, selective enforcement -- really, overenforcement -- of laws. Nobody would argue that people hit with $100 million judgments for copyright violations while torrenting music actually had copyright on that music. They didn't. But the point of the eye watering judgments was to send a message. Same here.
    - impossiblefork 2y ago
      >Nobody would argue that people hit with $100 million judgments for copyright violations while torrenting music actually had copyright on that music I don't understand the above, but they've actually made this judgement, and it's much too large. A firm worth as little as 30 million can be an incredible innovative company, supported by a government and serious effort, and here we have people just handing out a 1 billion dollar fine over something where nothing even close to that value has been destroyed. It's as I said in my initial comment, the value of a whole town.
  - booleandilemma 2y ago
    They know Alex Jones has money. They're coming after his money. I think it's as simple as that. And I wouldn't be surprised if the judge simply doesn't like the guy.
arp242 2y ago
By his own admission, Jones spent years spreading malicious lies about these people. Some people have had to go in to hiding because his unhinged followers started tracking these people down. As soon as you say "I think more gun control might be a good thing to prevent children from being murdered" you get threatened, bullied, and harassed by a lunatic unhinged fringe stoked up by dirty malicious lies. Is this free speech? Of course not. He has worked for years to shut people up by creating a hostile anger-filled environment where any normal person is afraid to go against him. Alex Jones hates free speech.
- ganoushoreilly 2y ago
  [flagged]
mywittyname 2y ago
I think you'd feel differently if some person with a huge following spread lies about you and your family and those lies resulted in thousands of people threatening and harassing your family.

mdorazio 2y ago

Look up "nuclear verdicts". The unreasonably large dollar amount is intentional and not meant to reflect the real value of harm caused.

impossiblefork 2y ago
Yes, but a billion dollars. It's 30x the sale price of Minalyzer, a very cool Swedish firm which was bought by Veracio. It's a level where, when it is an international case, it makes sense for states to get involved with diplomatic pressure. Surely your legal system must be more reasonable than this, because if it's like this, how can it function?
- fenomas 2y ago
  It wasn't a billion dollars for a single thing, it was awards to 15 different defendants, ranging from ~30-120 million each. More importantly, you're missing that this was a default judgment - Jones didn't defend himself, so the award is kind of the theoretical maximum. The results aren't comparable to regular court cases where both sides make their case.
  - impossiblefork 2y ago
    Yes, but it's still the value of a whole town. A legal system must be robust even to weird or peculiar people who refuse to work with its rules and still produce reasonable results.
    - pavlov 2y ago
      Why should the system accommodate people who refuse to defend themselves? I understand that in a system like Russia where dissidents face made-up charges and their attorneys are harassed by the state. But Alex Jones isn’t in that kind of position at all. He has no problem getting legal representation. The default judgment basically means he admitted guilt by his refusal. That was his choice.

preciousoo 2y ago

How about in a case where libel was relentlessly thrown at families over the course of years, on one of the internets largest and most engaged audiences, leading to harassment, threats, and assault? What should the judgment be for that?

impossiblefork 2y ago
Not a billion dollars anyway. But 500k per person maybe, if it really heinous?
- giancarlostoro 2y ago
  If that's the case, I sure hope nobody finds my post history from my teen years, or the history of anyone who was a rebellious teen on the internet in the 2000s.
- Eisenstein 2y ago
  That's why we have courts and juries, to make these evaluations. Why should your number should be used over theirs?
  - impossiblefork 2y ago
    Because it's obviously crazy. 1 billion dollars is the 588 people's entire life income. It's just excessive.
    - mikeyouse 2y ago
      Alex jones sold something like $165M in supplements in the 3 years preceding this case… this is somehow the opposite of people complaining that judgements against FB are too small based on the Revenue.
    - pythonaut_16 2y ago
      So you're saying the legal system should hinge on the judgement of what random people believe is "crazy" rather than judges, juries, laws, etc. One opinion should outweigh everyone and everything else?

d357r0y3r 2y ago

Same reason Ross Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison for conspiracy charges and CCE. Unusually harsh for those convictions and a first time offender. The point is, as cliche as it sounds, to send a message.

probably_wrong 2y ago

Stealing from an earlier comment of mine [1] in case you want to read the comments. Alex Jones declared in court that his show reaches about a hundred million people. If that's true then he's paying $10 for every person who heard him defaming the families of dead children. This would be the same principle as those fines in Nordic countries sometimes that depend on how rich someone is. If you can influence one hundred million people and use that power in a criminally irresponsible way, you get a proportionate fine. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33182728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33182728

impossiblefork 2y ago
Yeah, we don't have that in Sweden except for criminal acts, and then the fines are a certain number of days of your income as a substitute for imprisonment. In civil cases our judgements are usually not enormous. I don't feel that your reasoning above makes the judgement more reasonable. Maybe he does reach that many people, but he obviously makes nowhere near that amount of money and it's out of line with other defamation judgements.
- probably_wrong 2y ago
  > it's out of line with other defamation judgements. This point made me curious so I quickly looked around. Fox News paid a $787.5 million settlement [1] for making false claims about Dominion. Given that this happened as the trial was about to start, it's reasonable to assume that Fox News expected to lose even more if the issue went to trial. And that's for a party that arguably would have followed court orders, something Alex Jones refused to do. Next in line is Rudy Giuliani, who was ordered to pay $150 million for defaming two election workers [2]. If Alex Jones defamed 12 families then it comes out roughly the same. [1] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/18/media/fox-dominion-settlement/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/18/media/fox-dominion-settle... [2] https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/rudy-giuliani-defamation-trial-verdict/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/rudy-giuliani-def...
  - impossiblefork 2y ago

sophacles 2y ago

Because damages are easy to calculate - how much money did Jones make from intentionally lying about the victim? That money is the result of him selling their repuation without their consent - the market decided what the value of that act was.

johnecheck 2y ago
Sooooooooo, if release a YouTube video defaming someone, and only made $0.35 off ad revenue, I only did $0.35 in damage? Definitely how that works. If I burn down somebody's house and sell tickets to watch, the damages are easy to calculate! It's just my ticket revenue! THE MARKET DECIDED! Gotta give you some credit though, you beat out some real competition for dumbest take in the thread.
- sophacles 2y ago
  Well partly true... The part where no one wants to watch your videos seems extremely reasonable. Unfortunately you veer way out of reasonableness when you compare the crime of arson with the civil law of defamation. Criminal law and civil law are very different things... So much so that im not even sure what you're trying to get at with your analogy. You do seem upset about it though, and that does make sense... I'd imagine the world would be scary without even a basic understanding of the rules that you're held to. Fortunately this information is readily available... Some review material for junior high civics classes will cover most of what you need to know, and should only take you an hour or two to go through.

bArray 2y ago

[flagged]

ceejayoz 2y ago
> It wasn't $1 bn USD worth of damages done. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_damages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_damages is very much a normal thing. > He has been charged the equivalent of the GDP of Samoa He probably did more human damage than all of Samoa's citizens combined.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
lewdev 2y ago
He lead a mob of his audience to threaten families that just had a child in their family murdered based on lies. There's no price on how horrible that is. Argue all you want, it went through a long process to get to that number so good luck with that.

jaimsam 2y ago

[flagged]

jazzyjackson 2y ago
Sorry, should law not be punitive?

elzbardico 2y ago

It was a Moscow Trials things. Not that Jones was not guilty of this specific crime, he was, but the goal was never punishing him just for that.