Slashdot Mirror
Man Fined $4,000 For 'Liking' Defamatory Posts on Facebook (cnn.com)
In what appears to be a first, a court in Switzerland has fined a man the equivalent of over $4,000 just for clicking the "like" button on what a judge said were defamatory Facebook comments. From a report: The court in Zurich found that the man indirectly endorsed and further distributed the comments by using the ubiquitous Facebook "like" button. The man, who was not named in the court's statement, "liked" several posts written by a third party that accused an animal rights activist of antisemitism, racism and fascism. In court, the man was not able to prove that the claims were accurate or could reasonably be held to be true. "The defendant clearly endorsed the unseemly content and made it his own," a statement from the court said. The court fined the man a total of 4,000 Swiss francs ($4,100). He has the right to appeal his sentence. Facebook said the case had "no direct link" to the company, and a spokesperson declined to comment.
Are you kidding? Trump would cream his pants if he was allowed to levy $4,000 fines against anyone who likes something he deems to be fake news.
Isn't the Slashdot moderation system based on likes? If moderators can get sued for promoting a post, Slashdot isn't long for the Internet.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
Thoughtcrime!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I was about to start throwing my weight around in here, moderating up/down, but then I realised I could face legal consequences for endorsing anyones views. :-/
"Like with his treasonous collaboration with Russia's crimes in the USA,"
Your Trump aren't you? Or do you also like to say stupid things?
"exposed as a traitor by firing FBI director James Comey"
Are you sure you are not Trump? This unsupported drivel sounds like something Trump would say. And every anti-Trump protester have been wanting Comey fired since last July. And now when he is actually fired they complain and accuse. These people change sides and reverse course using another set of facts faster than Trump does.
If you want to describe someone as a traitor you will need some actual facts to back up your accusations or your reasoning facilities are no better than Trump.
We don't know anything about the third party. Maybe they're the subject of a separate case. Maybe they've already settled their differences. Maybe, and this is what I suspect, they're not in Switzerland and not within the reach of the Swiss courts.
But the guy in Switzerland is within reach of those courts, and if they think that he's breached their law - and they are the ultimate authority on that question, if nothing else - then they're completely within their rights to punish him for it.
Defamation is not so much about what you say (well, write), but more about who you say it to. If I walk up to you and say to your face "I know you fucked that hamster last week", that's nasty - but assuming no-one else hears it, it's not defamatory, because it doesn't affect your reputation. But if I say to a random third person "I know Theovon fucked his hamster last week", that's defamatory. And if I publish it, e.g. on Slashdot, that's libel.
It's the publication that's punishable, not the words. By clicking 'Like', the court says, he made it likely that more people (his Facebook friends/followers, presumably) would see those messages than would otherwise have done. This is no different from, e.g., forwarding an email, or showing a letter to a friend - which is well within the definition of "publishing", as far as libel is concerned.
There's scope for argument about whether the comments were defamatory, but if that's granted, then liability for "Liking" them seems reasonable.
I've described this treason in detail many times.
I don't have to repeat the well reported and verified evidence of Donald Trump's treasonous behavior.
I realize that opens me up to criticism from people that have no response to the news reports covering Donald Trump's treasonous activity and subsequent coverup.
That's a price I'm willing to pay to keep my comments brief and avoid being too repetitive. Feel free to review my past comments where I laid out the publicly known, widely reported evidence of Donald Trump's treasonous and criminal behavior.
And if he clicked "angry" or "sad", indicating he didn't like the news, He'd still be "intentionally distributing" it to everyone in his network.
So even if he disapproved of the post and was angry about it, under your theory, he's still guilty.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
That may only be secondary to their intention, Facebook does a lot of weird stuff behind the scenes to create feeds and it's not always explicit as to what is the catalyst, and it may nor be the intention of the person, and may not be understood, that by using that function it will enact some other peripheral 'features'
Twinstiq, game news