[thwayunion]

Oof. I'll do the sentence diagramming for you.

OP said: "It's not a BILLION. It's a BILLION divided by fifteen plaintiffs, which brings the per-plaintiff number to a high-but-precedented number."

Th adjective "precedented" modifies "number". In this sentence, "number" refers to the quantity "a BILLION divided by fifteen plaintiffs".

Clearly, it's the per-plaintiff number that OP refers to as "precedented", not the total sum.

Figuring out that "precedented" refers to 1B/15 in the above sentence requires roughly a fifth grade reading level. The fact that InfoWars has an audience is become less surprising by the comment.

[yucky]

Yes, you've defined what makes the judgement absurd. And because it's multiplicative and due solely to "mean words said on blog", then that leaves sane people to see how ridiculous the whole thing is.

Imagine for a minute if Trump decided to sue everyone who called him a Russian agent on TV or in writing. The award would be in the trillions.

[NikolaNovak]

I'm enjoying this educational thread from the side / all sides, and trying to stay a reader more than participant as I'm not a lawyer, but I don't feel this can be honestly characterized as "mean things said in internet". This was repeated, wilful, cognizant and extremely damaging willification of inocent people, as well as causing and inciting real action and damage, to a massive audience. If I repeatedly and authoritatively tell millions of people to kill themselves, that's not "mean thing said on blog". If I repeatedly and authoritatively tell millions of people that murdered children were actors and incite my audience to action, that's not "mean things said on a blog". Discussion is much more interesting and productive if everybody engages in basic intellectual honesty in making their argument.