On July 13, 2024, there was an attempt at assassinating a former president of the United States of America. It is broadly assumed that the motivation for the attack is that Donald Trump, the intended victim, is now running for the office of the president once more. Quite obviously, the country is horrified by this kind of political violence, and everyone from the current Democrat President, Joe Biden, to openly anti-trump celebrities like Jack Black have come out against such actions. Still, there are many who deny that this event even happened, or claim that it was “staged” in order to garner political support for the Trump campaign.
Recently, there were similar claims made concerning a different act of violence – the Sandy Hook shooting. The perpetrator of claims that the shooting wasn’t real, Alex Jones, lost his defamation suit and was court ordered to pay the families of the deceased children more than $1 billion. Having this precedent in mind, is it possible for the family of the man who was killed at Donald Trump’s rally, or even those who were critically injured, to sue the thousands upon thousands of social media users who claim this shooting was faked?
Social Media has long been a matter of debate in lawmaking circles as to how regulation should work, and whether or not sites such as X, Facebook, Instagram, Truth Social, Reddit, etc. should be considered ‘news ‘ organizations or not. Alex Jones, the man ordered to pay out over $1 billion dollars recently, runs a self-proclaimed news site known as Infowars – something which came up repeatedly throughout his trial. If users of X or Facebook are considered to be participating in posting to a news site, their claims of a hoax towards the Donald Trump assassination attempt may come under greater scrutiny and result in a risk of liability.
