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But that’s not really the way information works. If you say that and don’t immediately follow up with saying “but Bob is an untrustworthy source of information and is often full of shit, don’t believe it”, then a person looking for information on whether or not Joe is a pedophile will take that as a ringing endorsement of Bob’s statement.

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how so? it's your responsibility as an adult to understand that Bob is some random guy you don't know, so you can't trust him

That's not how defamation works. You're saying that if the statement is out there, surely people will do a deep investigation into the correctness of it?

They won't.

OP was saying that even the sentence "bob says that jim is x" is defamation because readers will take it as "a ringing endorsement of bob's statement", which is patently untrue unless you are a little kid.

It is not patently untrue. It wholly depends on the reader’s opinion of Bob. Also most people’s intelligence is not that much greater than that of a little kid. They are only more knowledgeable, but not necessarily more intelligent.

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