[prepend]

> They reached the sum by multiplying the state law’s $5,000 per-violation fine by the 550 million social media exposures Jones’s audience received on his Facebook, YouTube and Twitter accounts in the three years following a school shooting that claimed the lives of 20 first graders and six educators in 2012.

Is this defamation calculation valid? Is the calculation based on the number of people who listen or read? If so, they would need to see how many actually viewed as not every follower sees every post by people they follow.

Maybe one of the nice upsides is that these social media firms are forced to reveal the source to how they display posts.

[karmakurtisaani]

I think the amount they receive can only go down in court, so you want to start with the highest number you can justify in any way. This is just a way to get the initial number up.

[permo-w]

it’s cockthumb

[chrismcb]

I would assume the per violation has nothing to do with his many people witnessed it.

[hnbear]

From the article:

---

They reached the trillion-dollar sum by multiplying the state law’s up-to $5,000 per-violation fine by the 550 million social media exposures Jones’s audience received on his Facebook, YouTube and Twitter accounts in the three years following a school shooting that claimed the lives

---

So if you argue that each post to each person is an instance of aa violation as it's an attempted sale of his products, then they multiply out that way.

It's the lawyers role to advocate for a particular reading of the law.

You could argue it other ways too, eg. every actual sale, or every post is a single instance of an attempted sale (but in aggregate, rather than per individual).

But, I'm not a lawyer, and I'm interpreting the law as written in that except from the Bloomberg article, not the statute, so, don't put much legal weight on the above.

[cykros]

This is a bit like if you stood in the town square, yelled out "Bob's a pedophile, and btw, buy my book" and Bob charged you for each individual person who happened to be in earshot.

But, you know, it happened on the big bad internet, so let's just throw all precedent out and act like it's different.

Anyway, we get the point: 9/11 really was an inside job after all.

[prepend]

That’s why I quotes the part of the article that goes against my assumption and they estimate based on the readers.