My current belief is that they’re extremely lopsided offense-biased weapons that people use to silence tons of legitimate criticism, and that it will have disastrous chilling effects on any discourse that it’s considered a plausible weapon in. It has long been on my to-do list to write a post arguing for this position sometime, I have taken this as a nudge to prioritize it a bit further.
(Also, actually following through on a threat of libel is not required for me to ban someone, I have on more than one occasion had an implicit or explicit threat of libel made at me with a clear intention of getting me to shut up or back down from publicly sharing true information, without the person following through.)
(Also also, I don’t promise to do investigations for every person I decide—for whatever reason—to not invite to events that I run. Even though it sounds fair, and even though I receive emails from people demanding this from me, that way leads madness, stress, and ultimately quitting my job.)
“A threat of libel” is worded as though threatening to sue someone for an injury were aggression, but an actionable injury was not. The substance of your comment reads to me consistently with this. The OP suffers from a similar flaw.
My current belief is that they’re extremely lopsided offense-biased weapons that people use to silence tons of legitimate criticism, and that it will have disastrous chilling effects on any discourse that it’s considered a plausible weapon in. It has long been on my to-do list to write a post arguing for this position sometime, I have taken this as a nudge to prioritize it a bit further.
(Also, actually following through on a threat of libel is not required for me to ban someone, I have on more than one occasion had an implicit or explicit threat of libel made at me with a clear intention of getting me to shut up or back down from publicly sharing true information, without the person following through.)
(Also also, I don’t promise to do investigations for every person I decide—for whatever reason—to not invite to events that I run. Even though it sounds fair, and even though I receive emails from people demanding this from me, that way leads madness, stress, and ultimately quitting my job.)
“A threat of libel” is worded as though threatening to sue someone for an injury were aggression, but an actionable injury was not. The substance of your comment reads to me consistently with this. The OP suffers from a similar flaw.