Weakening... but not down to nothing. It's a lot harder to be found guilty of libel in the US than in the UK, and that's a good thing. You still can be, though, and that is also a good thing.

("Guilty" may be the wrong word, because it's not a criminal offense, but I'm not sure what the right one is here.)

Do folks going through law school grasp how proliferation of libelous and defamatory statements happens now, without friction and at the speed of light? And the outsized impact it can have as compared to times ago? I would posit that libel and defamation should be even weightier issues than when British common law was around. We live in a time of companies dropping employees like stones seconds after they've gone viral in a poor light and loonies across the globe being galvanized into partaking in many shades of atrocities at the prodding of people who are learned in the ways of persuasive and effective oratory. The import of community (religious or merely cultural) was stronger back then, if someone was saying something shitty in earlier times they'd get a stern talking to by peers and community leaders. Things have changed, the power of those institutions has waned, tort law should thus come back stronger than ever to fill in the new gaps.

I'm encouraged in seeing the turnout of Alex Jones ordeal and am anxiously waiting to see how Dominion vs Fox News unfolds. I am hoping that the aftermath of all this is that journalists/people-pretending-to-be-journalists/anyone-with-a-sizable-platform will be more careful about their reporting and statements. Of course this is all a murky area because many times it's hard to decide what is true and even harder to decide who gets to do the deciding but for getting the obvious things wrong and when signs of bad faith are clearly there the hammer should get dropped more often, I think such an environment would reduce chaos and extremism that we are seeing more and more of.