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The amount of folks here supporting Alex Jones is completely shocking to me. He built a business out of attacking and re-victimizing parents whose children wer

• deleted 2y ago
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• Eextra953 2y ago
  It shocking to me too. I can't understand how people are 'both sides-ing' this or just supporting him under some free speech argument. Free speech has limits and a court found Jones went too far and that cost him his business.
  • kypro 2y ago
    People have been arguing the same bogus free speech point in the UK recently because people have been arrested for saying things that are anti-immigration and offensive online. People have free speech, but obviously that doesn't mean you are free to say things that could be considered hateful or factually untrue. If you go around tweeting hateful things about the Royal family and the courts find you guilty, don't be surprised if that costs you your freedom. It's pretty simple. Alex is legally free to saying whatever he wants, but he had the wrong views on Sandy Hook and his wrong views hurt the families affected, therefore he deserves to lose his business.
    • deleted 2y ago
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    • lesuorac 2y ago
      It's really Alex Jones was alleged to pay people to harass Sandy Hook families at all hours of the day. He then proceeded to lie in court and after it become known refused to continue to participate and had a default judgement entered against him. If I were to follow you around 24/7 for weeks shouting into a microphone is that not illegal?
    • leadingthenet 2y ago
      > People have free speech, but obviously that doesn't mean you are free to say things that could be considered hateful or factually untrue. So people don't actually have free speech.
    • throw10920 2y ago
      > because people have been arrested for saying things that are anti-immigration and offensive online. What does immigration have to do with this? Nobody has a right to immigrate. Pointing out that there have been a massive influx of immigrants in the UK by any reasonable standard, that the majority of the UK population supports limiting/restricting immigration to at least some extent, that the UK does not have the resources to support the current rate of immigration, that the number of rapes in the UK has quintupled over the past 12 years, and that the rape increase coincides with the increase in immigration are all (1) factually true (2) non-hateful and (3) covered by free speech. > People have free speech, but obviously that doesn't mean you are free to say things that could be considered hateful or factually untrue That's literally the definition of "free speech". "Free speech" does not have clauses for "hateful" or "truthiness". Additionally, any normal person who thinks about the problem for more than a few seconds can easily see that even if free speech did have those clauses, deciding whether things are "true" or "hateful" in general is completely impossible - it's not that hard to understand. It's also certainly not something you'd want the government deciding. The arguments made by free speech advocates are not "bogus" - what's bogus is ignorant statements of yours that get the definition of "free speech" wrong and ignore basic knowledge about reality.
  • llamaimperative 2y ago
    Reflexive contrarianism runs amok in these parts. It’s pretty pathetic.
• dnissley 2y ago
  To be clear I haven't seen a single comment that could be charitably characterized as "supporting Alex Jones". I see a lot of comments that are pointing out that the judgment against him seems unreasonable given the damage he did to these families.
  • Pxtl 2y ago
    Torts are not just about damage, they're also about deterrence. Jones repeatedly demonstrated in the court battle that no deterrence would work on him. His entire business is built on this kind of defamation -- how much proceeds of this kind of business should he be allowed to keep?
    • thfuran 2y ago
      About -200% seems fair to me.
  • hoten 2y ago
    It is unreasonable imo. He deserves to see jail time.
    • ThunderSizzle 2y ago
      Free speech means protecting speech of people you disagree with. So what if he claims Sandy Hook was an FBI psy-op. Don't agree with him? Then just walk the other way. The amount of vitoral against the theory just goes to prove that perhaps the FBI and ATF knew a lot more than they like to admit.
      • krapp 2y ago
        >The amount of vitoral against the theory just goes to prove that perhaps the FBI and ATF knew a lot more than they like to admit. The vitriol is because the spread of the "theory" led directly to the harassment of Sandy Hook victims by people who believed they were "crisis actors." Most people possessed of common decency and a moral core would find that objectionable.
• archagon 2y ago
  Consciously or unconsciously, people begin with an unshakable feeling of “my tribe good,” then reverse engineer a justification for whatever issue is being politicized. Even if it involves defending a repugnant conman and slanderer like Jones. It just goes to show that far too many people have no fundamental values, only political affiliations.
• talldayo 2y ago
  It's Hacker News. I hate to say it, but this is all the website is known for at this point. Bring it up in passing conversation with the in-crowd and you'll get laughed out of the room for using "Orange Site" and fraternizing with drug-addled Elon worshipers and "soloprenuers" that beg for recognition for their dogshit SaaS product. The score has been known for years, the political leaning of Hacker News is basically the same as the "curious individuals" that inform themselves via JRE and random X accounts from Russia. The people using Hacker News are regularly a stone's throw away from the sort of people that use 4chan. Except Hacker News has usernames and karma so it tends to create cults of personality around people that say what people want to hear.
  • LordDragonfang 2y ago
    The thing is, this (admittedly common) opinion is as facile as the opinions of progressives who act as though all of reddit is /r/TheDonald. Overall, both are actually very left-leaning websites (in reddit's case, almost overwhelmingly so), they just tolerate the existence of pockets of very right-leaning individuals - because of lofty ideals of "free speech". However, even then, you'll usually see legitimate social conservatism get downvoted pretty heavily, and even fiscal conservatism will garner rapid disagree in most cases. (That said, to a lot of those people, it doesn't matter if the "majority" are left leaning. And for some of those (e.g. trans people), they're even somewhat justified in that stance, since it doesn't make a difference if the harassment they get from being brought to the attention of "orange site" users comes from the majority or the minority)
    • WWLink 2y ago
      Eh? I always figured hackernews was full of silicon valley types who listen to peter thiel podcasts on their way home in their stickshift subaru (or FSD tesla).
      • defrost 2y ago
        There's a few of them, if that's all it was I likely wouldn't be here quite so much.
• dtquad 2y ago
  >The amount of folks here supporting Alex Jones is completely shocking to me That shouldn't be a surprise considering how many American libertarian techbros are fans of Alex Jones Lite (Joe Rogan).
• anigbrowl 2y ago
  About 30% of people are assholes, and birds of a feather flock together.
• uv-depression 2y ago
  You're surprised? In any vaguely political thread HN is pretty much just a more well-spoken 4chan. Moderation here is entirely based on tone, not content, which along with its techno-libertarian origins makes it the perfect breeding ground for fascists and pseudo-intellectualism.
  • andrewmcwatters 2y ago
    > Moderation here is entirely based on tone, not content My least favorite thing about reading HN, by far. Glad someone else said it.
    • dang 2y ago
      I don't want to pick on you personally (so I apologize if it feels that way), but I also don't want to leave this unresponded to when we've had to ask you so many times to stop breaking the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40910766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40910766). I think most HN readers are glad that we ask users not to personally attack others (questioning whether they can read, calling them morons and rubes, telling them to grow up, that they should be ashamed, are out of touch with reality, and so on), —or that we ask commenters not to post that women are asking for too much, that European capital rightfully belongs to the United States, and so on. Is that "moderation based entirely on tone, not content"? I don't think so; I think that distinction is unsupportable. But whether it is or not, it's clear that we can't have people attacking each other like this, and I'm pretty confident that the community agrees.
      • andrewmcwatters 2y ago
        Of course it's based on tone. You repeatedly let users antagonize one other, until someone breaks guidelines, you advocated for a startup that was named "fucking awesome," after the concept that they were taking advantage of labor arbitrage, you seem to ignore the realities of mainstream sentiments when they are controversial in order to make your job as a message board janitor easier, and you pick and choose when to ignore hyperbole. All a reader has to do is observe your behavior, and it's clear what kind of person you are. You make it obvious by your retelling of your personal judgement of my commentaries here. I didn't realize you were St. Peter, Dan. So Dan, if you don't want people to think you're an asshole, don't be an asshole. But don't tell me Hacker News janitorial moderation isn't based on tone when the guidelines themselves dictate it. You're bullshitting every reader here and you're showing every user that you're comfortable opening up your admin tools and regurgitating pinned comments without context to stick it to me, and any other reader who dares question your methodology. Oh and by the way, thank you for privately downweighting my account and numerous other people's here when I had previously consistently been a top comment in a number of threads. When it was inconvenient for you and a comment had well over a hundred upvotes, it's so nice that you can hide behind moderation tools and just send that comment straight to the bottom of a thread. Don't lie. I have what, hundreds? Thousands? Of comments here? You thought a single percent? A tenth of a percent? Were distasteful? I've been here for probably 15 years and yeah, you pick on people personally. It's supportable, but unlike what moderation tools you have, Hacker News' codebase doesn't allow me to pin your comments unless I want them to end up in my general pool. And unlike you, I'm not paid a salary to pour over people's comments online. Don't do this. You do this bad faith stuff all the time and have for years. Don't lie to me and everyone else by saying sorry and then acting like an asshole the next few sentences. Oh whoops. Sorry, didn't mean to pick on you. Then reading off everything you can. Really? You think people are that stupid?
• ljsprague 2y ago
  >he built a business out of attacking and re-victimizing parents whose children were murdered That not what he built his business on. That was one (bad) thing he did.
  • lbwtaylor 2y ago
    That is exactly what he built his business on - attacking people with bald face lies and using the generated outrage to sell snake oil.
    • TheFreim 2y ago
      > He built a business out of attacking and re-victimizing *parents whose children were murdered.* He's scum of the earth. > attacking *people* with bald face lies and using the generated outrage to sell snake oil. You made a specific claim, were refuted because that specific claim is clearly false, and now you've made a general claim while presenting it as if it's the same as the specific claim. This is not intellectually honest.
      • lbwtaylor 2y ago
        The poster suggested that Jones actions on Sandy Hook were an outlier. One 'bad' action. They were not. He built his business on Sandy Hook and similar actions, and that's clearly what my original post intended and I stand by it. I think it's intellectually dishonest to suggest Jones faced consequences because of one bad action. I have stronger words for it honestly but I'm trying to stick to the rules of this forum. This whole thread only shows me it's time for me to leave HN. You're welcome to it.
        • TheFreim 2y ago
          You claimed: "He built a business out of attacking and re-victimizing parents whose children were murdered." This is false, as he obviously didn't build his operation solely on his claims about Sandy Hook as you claimed. The other comment pointed this out, so you changed what you were saying without admitting what you said was inaccurate. Now you are bizarrely claiming that you didn't say what you said, even though everyone can read what you wrote. Alex Jones was sued because of what he said about Sandy Hook, he was not sued for these other actions which were not relevant to the case. Whatever you think about Jones, it doesn't do anyone any good to portray the Sandy Hook case as being about other things.
• crossroadsguy 2y ago
  When the right wing Govt was elected in my country suddenly right wing nutjobs appeared out of the woodwork on country/cities subreddits (seen quite sometimes here on hn as well) overnight as if they were just always there and were just dormant waiting for a time to show up in the right climate. No, they were not immediate new inserts from some IT Cell at all. They were always there. I do not find anything shocking about Jones support in this post. A great social mistake has been thinking that people supporting nefarious stuff or shady, disgusting, and pathetic people do not know any better - but they do. Thing is - that is exactly what they want!
• aaron695 2y ago
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