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.
They both are injuries? The same as punching someone in the face is injurious whether in self defense or as an attack. The correct thing to do when someone starts getting violent is to stop them from continuing. This sometimes requires violence, hence often injuries. Sometimes the violent person hasn’t yet actually punched anyone, but is doing things that strongly imply that they are planning on hurting someone. Such situations also call for stopping the violent person from continuing, even though no actual injury has happened yet.
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.
They both are injuries? The same as punching someone in the face is injurious whether in self defense or as an attack. The correct thing to do when someone starts getting violent is to stop them from continuing. This sometimes requires violence, hence often injuries. Sometimes the violent person hasn’t yet actually punched anyone, but is doing things that strongly imply that they are planning on hurting someone. Such situations also call for stopping the violent person from continuing, even though no actual injury has happened yet.