Previous comments are spot on.

One thing I would add is that Lemmy is a particularly sensitive case, because we really want to encourage activity and growth at this stage. It pains me when communities without much activity get a meme post or something that makes it into /all and the mods remove it for being off-topic.

Overly strict moderation is one of the fastest ways to drive people away from a platform. Just follow your natural instincts and let people post what they want as long as it’s not harming anyone.

Sheesh guys, at least act like you’ve been there before. Bad look, but not unexpected considering the culprits

And this goes on and on and back and forth for 90 or so minutes until the movie just sort of… ends.

It’s just realistic. Koreans aren’t having sex anymore, their TFR is down to 0.72. That’s mind-bogglingly low.

Wow, that’s a crazy experience. Somebody jumped in and saved you?

Ah, a fellow man of culture.

Holy chrimbus! Nice activity bro. You’re like ThePicardManeuver of cats and anime

It seems they deleted their account. But yeah that thread was really funny, the responses were good too

ATProto is what Bluesky uses, right? It’d be nice if someone could give a quick summary of the features and what differentiates it compared to ActivityPub.

It seems like it would be a pretty big task to switch from ActivityPub, because each fediverse project would have to implement that independently.

I’ll never stop wondering why this guy was trying to not poop for 3 days.

That mystery still keeps me up at night sometimes. Looks like that account got deleted so it will probably remain unanswered.

Lol damn that’s a heck of a hike. They also have other stickers that say “This hiker climbed Mt. Washington”. Much more impressive.

The wind gusts on that mountain are pretty crazy.

Good stuff, it seems that he probably has no chance with this lawsuit. But still

a false statement purporting to be fact

Leaves a lot of wiggle room. How is “a false statement” defined? It’s ultimately a matter of semantics.

I read this article which indicates that the truthfulness of the statement isn’t even the relevant legal issue, and even if it were partially false it would still not constitute defamation.

Erroneous statement is protected, the Court asserted, there being no exception “for any test of truth.” Error is inevitable in any free debate and to place liability upon that score, and especially to place on the speaker the burden of proving truth, would introduce self-censorship and stifle the free expression which the First Amendment protects. Nor would injury to official reputation afford a warrant for repressing otherwise free speech.

The fact that expression contains falsehoods does not deprive it of protection, because otherwise such expression in the public interest would be deterred by monetary judgments and self-censorship imposed for fear of judgments.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-1/defamation-and-false-statements-overview

This agrees with what you are saying about knowingly false statements. But I never meant to say he could prove defamation, I just thought it was easier to claim than falsehood, because the story is obviously true 😅

But I guess defamation is actually harder to prove than I thought.

I dunno about that, because many statements are unfalsifiable. If someone accuses me of being a witch, how can I be expected to “show it’s false”? If you can show that they

acted with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not

Then it’s not necessary to prove that it’s false.

I understand and agree that the burden for proving defamation in the US is quite high, but it’s not always possible or necessary to demonstrate that the accusation is absolutely false.

Source: my ass

It’s amazing how much my ass has taught me over the years.

Sure, but you don’t need to prove that it’s false to claim defamation. As long as the defense is unable to prove that the accusation is definitively true, it could still be considered defamation. If he were to claim the report was false, then he’d have to provide evidence to that effect. By saying that it was defamatory, he only has to demonstrate that there is a lack of 100% certainty as to whether it is true or false, shifting the burden of proof onto CNN.

True. Though if you read the original CNN article, the circumstantial evidence is fairly damning. I don’t think he has any chance of getting out from under this.

Also, in a legal context, I think there very well may be a distinction between claiming a report is defamatory versus claiming it is false. As per Wikipedia:

The precise legal definition of defamation varies from country to country. It is not necessarily restricted to making assertions that are falsifiable

Mt. Washington in New Hampshire

AKA the bumper sticker capital of the world

No, it’s just a surgeon who lacks personality and operates with cold detachment.

Lol! Nice one

Nah, I bet he’s faking it. Continuity error