Who determines that the information is endangering lives?
A jury, for a given case
If Trump wins the election do you want him determining these things?
I wouldn’t put it past him to try and do that, knowing him.
But that’s not how laws work. Determining if a given case is or is not disinformation would be up to a jury to deliberate, based on facts presented by the lawyers.
As that’s how the justice system works. Or us supposed to at least.
And yes, proving it is disinformation is super hard, so the prosecutor must have a pretty iron tight case. You’d likely need witnesses that can attest to the defendant outright admitting to the act, or their behaviors that signal intent, or evidence on their devices, etc.
This is exactly how Libel and Slander / Defamation cases work right now, you have to prove the defendant knew they were lying and or making a story up intentionally which is incredibly hard, cuz the dependant can just go “I really thought that was the truth!”
For example in the Heard v Depp case, they had to pull evidence of her doctoring photos and using makeup to really sell the case and win the jury over.
So it’s a huge gap to cross…
But…
If you do cross it, I believe the penalty for it should be pretty severe. Especially if the defendant was:
Endangering people’s lives with bad advice
And/Or
Posing as an expert without actually being one
IE those people that dress up like a doctor or nurse or etc and then sell extremely bullshit stuff on social media. That should straight up result in some prison time if they gave out genuinely harmful disinformation.
Before a case makes it to a jury a federal prosecutor has to press charges, the prosecutor can decide which cases to take up and where to prosecute. If Trump wins his appointed prosecutors will go after democrats in Republican stronghold venues.
A jury, for a given case
A jury, for a given case
I wouldn’t put it past him to try and do that, knowing him.
But that’s not how laws work. Determining if a given case is or is not disinformation would be up to a jury to deliberate, based on facts presented by the lawyers.
As that’s how the justice system works. Or us supposed to at least.
And yes, proving it is disinformation is super hard, so the prosecutor must have a pretty iron tight case. You’d likely need witnesses that can attest to the defendant outright admitting to the act, or their behaviors that signal intent, or evidence on their devices, etc.
This is exactly how Libel and Slander / Defamation cases work right now, you have to prove the defendant knew they were lying and or making a story up intentionally which is incredibly hard, cuz the dependant can just go “I really thought that was the truth!”
For example in the Heard v Depp case, they had to pull evidence of her doctoring photos and using makeup to really sell the case and win the jury over.
So it’s a huge gap to cross…
But…
If you do cross it, I believe the penalty for it should be pretty severe. Especially if the defendant was:
IE those people that dress up like a doctor or nurse or etc and then sell extremely bullshit stuff on social media. That should straight up result in some prison time if they gave out genuinely harmful disinformation.
Before a case makes it to a jury a federal prosecutor has to press charges, the prosecutor can decide which cases to take up and where to prosecute. If Trump wins his appointed prosecutors will go after democrats in Republican stronghold venues.