What about newspaper stands that sold the libelous paper?
I think it's clear this ruling is totally incompatible with a free press and free speech. Only the original source should be held accountable.
Also if the purpose is to reduce the amount of blatant lies and misinformation I don't know that it would be very helpful as it seems like most of it actually has a byline just not one that any reasonable person would trust.
Forcing users to check for a byline and nothing else to avoid accidentally opting in to financial destruction wouldn't help much. Your idea needs expanding.
I see an additional test for the sharer as to whether they had reasonable expectation of knowing the information they were sharing was false and misleading.
Sharing from “Totally True News” (where sensational articles have no author and no source are quoted); that “you as a public figure are drinking the blood of babies.”
Comes to mind as probably valid ground to seek redress for defamation.
Also note that I'm more interested in what is moral/just, not legal according to any specific system, since this is a discussion about laws which vary across nations. The American/English system isn't necessarily ideal.
I recently found a subreddit where people had shared an article from a newspaper with a decent reputation. The story strongly implied that the government had engaged in crony capitalism. 96% upvoted, all the comments castigating the government. Normally I would have agreed and moved on. I certainly wouldn't have spent time fact checking an article that I agreed with. Except it was about something I knew a bit about (solar energy). The article was wrong and misleading. Perhaps even "fake", considering how many people had been misled.
When I tried to correct the record on the same subreddit, there was huge pushback. People nitpicked my fact check to death. It got a small fraction of the upvotes and comments the original fake/misleading article did.
None of those people did the due diligence, like you want them to. All of them took a journalist working for a reputable newspaper at face value. Should they all go to jail now for upvoting and commenting?
Defamation is not a criminal offense. Nobody goes to jail for defamation. You can be sued for damages from defamation in civil court.
I never said what I wanted, or gave any opinion. I'm just adding a bit of color to the conversation by stating relevant facts. The accusatory tone is not very conducive to interesting discussion.
More to your question, I highly doubt upvoting a reddit post counts as dissemination / publishing. The comments people wrote could themselves be defamatory, but I also doubt a reddit comment will cause demonstrable damages to a person's reputation. There has to be damages for you be sued, otherwise there is no reason for the suit.
I don't know the article you are referring to, but something to the general effect of "The government did a bad thing" is not defamation either. Again, you have to cause demonstrable damages to an individual for them to win a suit against you. If the article was something closer to "The government did a bad thing, This is the person responsible, This is where he lives, Let's get him fired", or if the reddit comments were of that flavor (as they often are), the case for defamation is a little stronger.
Since we're in a thread about Singapore…
Criminal defamation [1] is a thing here. :)
Of course, Singapore is famous for actually using it, but still, in many parts of the world defamation can technically be a criminal offence even if in practice the legal risk is low..
What about the case that you shared it after it was shown that the story was made up, and it can be proved that you knew this at the time?
What about the case that we find out the reason that the article was made up was that you fed the writer false information, in order to shield yourself from prosecution?
Bright line distinctions are difficult.