Suppose you were a business making, say, voting machines. It’s a good business – there are a lot of elections, they have to be tabulated, and you have a way of making that tabulation easier to do. You’re not going to be Google or Microsoft, but you’re in a comfortable niche.
Then comes a bunch of dumbfuck conspiracy theorists who accuse you of rigging the vote against their favored candidate. You’re not happy about this, but this is just a bunch of nutjobs. To some extent, what can you do? Then this major news organization takes up what those conspiracy theorists are saying, and they’re doing this to enrich themselves by putting out news that these dumbfucks like to hear. This amplification is damaging to your business (because it’s costly to defend yourself and you’re losing business anyway), and you can prove that this major news organization is doing this on purpose, for their own profit.
You sue that major news organization. Discovery is a delight, because these people really did know that there was no evidence for any of these conspiracy theories, but they kept repeating them over and over again, damaging your business.
Does this sound familiar? That’s why we have laws so that victims of libel can recover some of those damages.
Now, I’m not saying Musk is justified. Musk can go threatening to sue, etc., and I’m sure ADL lawyers would be delighted to argue before a judge to tell Musk to fuck off, since he really doesn’t have grounds to stand on.
Suppose you were a business making, say, voting machines. It’s a good business – there are a lot of elections, they have to be tabulated, and you have a way of making that tabulation easier to do. You’re not going to be Google or Microsoft, but you’re in a comfortable niche.
Then comes a bunch of dumbfuck conspiracy theorists who accuse you of rigging the vote against their favored candidate. You’re not happy about this, but this is just a bunch of nutjobs. To some extent, what can you do? Then this major news organization takes up what those conspiracy theorists are saying, and they’re doing this to enrich themselves by putting out news that these dumbfucks like to hear. This amplification is damaging to your business (because it’s costly to defend yourself and you’re losing business anyway), and you can prove that this major news organization is doing this on purpose, for their own profit.
You sue that major news organization. Discovery is a delight, because these people really did know that there was no evidence for any of these conspiracy theories, but they kept repeating them over and over again, damaging your business.
Does this sound familiar? That’s why we have laws so that victims of libel can recover some of those damages.
Now, I’m not saying Musk is justified. Musk can go threatening to sue, etc., and I’m sure ADL lawyers would be delighted to argue before a judge to tell Musk to fuck off, since he really doesn’t have grounds to stand on.
As much as i love fox news losing money, i dont think any rich folks in Dominion have faced any real harm from the fiasco.
Same with pfizer over antivax nuts all the way up into federal government.
Now, harm over the disinformation to the general public on the other hand.