politics

I'd love it if massive class action suits could completely destroy these asshole ~~propagandists~~, oops, I mean, "influencers" 🙄 and make them go find an honest living.

Even better: finding a way to imprison those involved in the more egregious cases of disinformation and misinformation. I'd love to see lil' Alex Jones behind bars. Same with this Nick Shirley.

But especially Benny Johnson, that smug little prick. He is a Russian asset trying to destroy this country from within and he should be rotting in prison.

Hungry people dont wait for lawsuits. They just cook whatever meat is at hand

It does seem like we need to figure that out. We have lost the distinction that you have free speech, but you’re not free of the consequences of your speech.

We have a fundamental change with the internet, where people’s words can have a much larger impact on the world, while at the same time you’re getting more distance from those impacts, more insulation from the consequences.

In the olden days you could say “the sky is falling” all you want but people will think you’re weird and you’ll be ostracized. You face consequences for your words. Similarly you could scream. “FIRE” in a crowded theater subject to arrest for the panic you cause, for endangering people’s lives. You face the consequences of your words.

Now whatever you say on the internet has a broad enough reach that there will always be susceptible listeners, those who believe or who can be easily convinced. Now with sensationalistic and outrage culture, media, and politics, there will always be someone to “ride the wave” for their own benefit. But when there are consequences, it’s much easier to step away saying “wasn’t my fault”.

We as a society desperately need to reconnect those consequences back to those whose words caused them and those who “rode the wave” to profit their own needs

Unfortunately that just isn't something you can really sue for.

You can sue the administration putting the rules in place, but you can't sue someone for saying something that's then picked up by another person, and another, and so on until the president happens to hear about it.

It's why, for example, financial sites will always have the disclaimer "this is not financial advice, seek the advice of a licensed financial professional, etc, etc", because financial harms are often covered, (while other things affected by lies are not in most circumstances) when that lie is something you took action on, and that action caused you harm (e.g. "this stock is going to double tomorrow", you buy it, it crashes)

But you can't sue when that lie caused someone else to do something that indirectly caused you harm. (e.g. "this stock will crash in a week", billionaire sells a ton of the stock, your retirement portfolio drops in value) In that case, only the billionaire would be eligible to sue the person who lied to them.

You might be able to sue Nick Shirley if you ran a daycare business and his false claims about your daycare caused your daycare to get attacked, but you couldn't sue him if he lied about a daycare down the road and mobs started attacking every daycare in town because they just assumed all of them were at fault, and you certainly couldn't sue if the claims he made then got to the social media feeds of some locals, which then caused local food banks run by those locals to stop offering food because they thought there's a chance it could be obtained by scammers instead of those in need.