I'm of two minds here:
As a society we should be putting a stop to profiting off hate and scare mongering and calling people names.
However, $1B is not compensatory damages for "8 families and 1 first responder": $1B is the economic output of 400 people for their entire life! Given two wrongs don't make a right - I don't feel good about the mis-labeling of the award simply to get around the appeals angle. I understand why it was done, but I don't feel good about it...I'd rather there was a better way.
It speaks to my sadness of the growing trend to "it's ok to 'stick it to the rich and powerful, because they are rich and powerful" - it de-humanizes those people (as heinous as they may be), which puts us as no better than them... just with fewer resources. It's not ok to "stick it to" anyone...
Exactly, it's not compensatory damages. It's punitive. The idea is to charge a value that will stop Alex Jones (and other rich fucks!) from
deliberately harming people in this way. A big part of the case has been establishing how much money Jones made from his
deliberate lies, but ultimately that's irrelevant... Punitive damages would still be necessary if he spread these lies pro-bono, or squandered the monetization.
It's like the infamous McDonalds coffee incident. The idea wasn't to make the victim whole, it was to charge McD's enough money that they (and other corporations) would stop
deliberately harming people. They had a policy that they knew was hurting people, but saved them money. They wagered that no one would successfully sue them over something so "trivial", and they did pervert justice after the trial by making the woman into a laughingstock in the public eye. But they stopped scalding people for money, and other chains knew that they would receive equal or *worse* punitive damages if they tried that same shit again.
We might be in a situation where any amount of punitive damage isn't going to stop Alex Jones from harming these families in the future, but at least it can unravel the media operation he uses. He's never ONCE going to go hungry but at least he won't have his own show.
This is the *nice* way to handle him. Normally someone so harmful and unrepentant would incarcerated or executed to protect society. Instead he gets to declare bankruptcy and retire happy, continuing to sell his sob story with Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson and whoever else. That's the price we pay for freedom- if he got what he
deserves, we'd live in a much worse society.
I know it's trendy to hate the people who own our mass media and politicians, and hold them responsible for our situation. I don't see a problem with that. They never face
real consequences anyway. None of those vampires is ever going to be poor, just have a smaller multiplier on their "more money than one person could ever legitimately earn or need". If we went by "eye for an eye" for deliberate harm, every one of these ghouls would be DEAD several times over... but it's better for society if we just ding their bank accounts (the ones we can even find).