Libel laws are too weak [View all]
Everyone's freaking out over Trump saying libel laws are too weak.
Frankly, if libel laws were stronger, a decent chunk of conservative media outlets would have been sued out of existence.
For example, Alex Jones got away with inciting some gun nut to shoot up a pizza place by saying "Oops, my bad!" And all the pizzagate bullshit has been harming business at that pizza place and the surrounding area because customers are afraid of exactly that happening. But it all went away because Alex said my bad. Maybe Trump, for all his bumbling has stumbled onto a point: Our libel laws are laughably weak. If you can spread a bunch of rumors about a pizza shop being a front for a child sex trafficking operation, have it snowball into a dude shooting up the place, and walk away with no material consequences because you make a half-assed apology, that's a problem.
Frankly, I hope Trump goes ahead. Because Infowars, Breitbart, etc. are going to have a lot to answer for. Mass shooting hoaxers, pizzagaters, the Gamergate crap and a whole host of libelous conspiracy theories that make up the majority of the conservative media sphere.
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