[jbapple]

> Is there some meaningful distinction here that means false allegations about an organization of humans should go unrefuted, but false allegations about a single human should be refuted?

To me, false allegations against individuals are more serious than false allegations against organizations for a few reasons. First, I care about the well-being of organizations only to the extent they positively impact the well-being of humans (or, to a lesser extent, animals). Second, a single false allegation against an individual human seems to be able to have a much more damaging effect than one against an organization.

I suspect this is a well-worn topic and that I would consider many of the other objections to corporate personhood to be "meaningful distinctions".

[yummyfajitas]

In this case, the false allegations were spread with the implicit goal of getting the government to spend more money/resources fixing problems that may not exist. If successful, that would result in a huge amount of waste, which harms real humans.

Even if it were a private organization, such allegations could directly result in harm to the human owners. For example, false allegations about bad food at a restaurant would mean the human owners and employees lose money. In much the same way, false allegations about a human might result in them losing their job.

[jbapple]

While all of these are possible and all of these are bad outcomes, I think that their probability of happening and the magnitude of the result is less bad than what would occur if allegations of cruelty or incompetence were made against an individual.

I don't think we're going to be able to settle this argument here, so I'll just leave it at that.