We are glad to see the consequences for the devastating lies that conspiracist Alex Jones promoted about the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre begin to materialize this week in an Austin courtroom.
But as much as Jones is the culprit for the defamation campaign that painted the families who lost children as liars or actors, and that caused at least one family to move a dozen times after being doxxed and threatened, so too are the social media companies that allowed this false narrative to catch fire on their platforms.
When users on these websites make baseless, incendiary and defamatory claims in the way Jones did — describing the murder of children as a government plot and saying families faked their own children’s deaths — it can create echo chambers in comment sections or topical pages that suck in casual scrollers. Algorithms often facilitate and even boost this material. For their role in this, social media giants enjoy near total immunity from any liability.
