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Comment by scotty79 | Hacker News Reader

It's probably healthier for them if they can afford it. Otherwise they would blame themselves for so badly losing track about where their son was mentally.

In reality suicidality is most likely a disease of the brain and probability of saving him was very low regardless of circumstances. The damage was most likely accumulating for many years.

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I remember how relieved the Sandy Hook families were after the Alex Jones judgement. Alex Jones said some vile things, but the biggest thing bothering those families was the death of their kids.

But the families couldn't go after the murderer (who killed himself), or even the murderer's upbringing by the mother (Lanza shot her). They desperately needed someone to clamp down on, but everything directly proximal was out of grasp. They couldn't get the gun laws changed either. It drove them insane.

The families started blaming Alex Jones, the closest vile person around with big pockets (who did say some pretty insane lies about their kids), for everything wrong with their lives and eventually won a settlement large enough you would think he killed the kids themselves. And from what I can tell, it was a weight off their shoulders when they did. Whatever in their brains that needed to hold someone accountable, they did it, and it was soothing to them.

Alex Jones made his money by convincing people that the parents of children murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary were actors in a conspiracy, which resulted in them bein harassed endlessly. He even continued to attack them during the defamation trials. I think it's unfair to say he was merely "the closest vile person around with big pockets," he really was the cause of a lot of pain.

I don't know how anyone can look at the $1B judgement and not decide it was about $10M of "lied about the kids" and $990M of "we can't get the murderer so here's some money from the nearest evil rich guy we could pin something on."

As far as I know they didn't assign those kind of liabilities to the individuals that actually contacted the families to harass them, it's pretty clear the $1B wasn't just about harassment by people (who weren't Jones) that did it informed by his lies.

> I don't know how anyone can look at the $1B judgement and not decide

There's more to the case than that number.

> $10M of "lied about the kids"

Ridiculous. I'm not going to waste any more of my time replying to you.

Sure, and if you ignore the number, which is quite convenient for you after you oh so lamentedly "wasted" a few sentences of your guarded time, you can rightly surmise that Jones lied and was made to pay injuries for it. Once you look and see the number is the size of the GDP of Granada at the time, then you realize it was about more than telling lies that some entirely different people used for purposes of harassments.

The fact that Jones did do something wrong after all are what opened him to being the nearest proximal vile guy with deep pockets to go after and take the brunt of what was dished out. The interesting piece here isn't that the victims got a check from Jones, it's that they got a blank check.

I’m not sure why you have such an axe to grind with the parents of innocent kids who were murdered while at school, then terrorized by mobs of idiots incited on purpose to sell overpriced supplements by yet another idiot.

It’s not the parents who set the award. If you don’t think as a parent who has gone through hell not just once when your kid was gunned down in cold blood but then proceeded to have total strangers harass them on a daily basis would push for the most punishing award possible, you are pretty out of touch.

If you feel that award was not proportional to the damage, why don’t you pick a bone with the judge or jury? They are the ones who ultimately decided the verdict after all.

You have to look at the but for cause. Would there have been throngs of people harassing these people if not for Alex Jones goading them on, over and over and over?

Do you understand what punitive damages are?

you're kidding right? Alex Jones would not stop telling everybody that the families made everything up to the point the families were getting death threats and phone calls non-stop, years after their children were murdered.

What's you theory as to why Jones got a $1B judgement against him for vicious lies, while the people making death threats (none of which were Alex Jones) did not?

What sounds more like reality, awarding the entire GDP of the nation of Granada to compensate for dead kids, or because lies were told that other idiots used to propagate mean threats?

Why shouldn't they get judgements too? Some people's voices are more outspoken than others. They deserve to be punished more when they break the law and cause harm.

> They desperately needed someone to clamp down on … It drove them insane.

> Whatever in their brains that needed to hold someone accountable, they did it, and it was soothing to them.

Now do Peter Thiel & Gawker.

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