<story><title>Man fined for sharing a Facebook link ruled as defamation in Singapore</title><url>https://restofworld.org/2021/singapore-facebook-ruling/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dilippkumar</author><text>I seem to be on the other side of the consensus here on HN.&lt;p&gt;If you accept defamation laws (and defamation laws are a thing in Singapore and many other places), then the question is whether you actively participated in the creation or dissemination of slander (again, assuming that creation and dissemination are both illegal).&lt;p&gt;We in the tech world have optimized various mechanisms to enable sharing information- we have gotten so good at it that our users don’t pause for a moment and think about their responsibility they bear when hitting that share button.&lt;p&gt;It’s like picking up cleanly packaged meat from the grocery store or filling up on gas from a gas station- the experience is so clean and polished that one doesn’t really think about where the meat&amp;#x2F;crude oil is coming from and what it means to be paying for it.&lt;p&gt;I think the courts held that one is responsible for what they share. It isn’t “merely” sharing a news article on facebook - the person had to decide to hit that share button.&lt;p&gt;Now, there are a lot of things wrong with this. But most of the problems come from having some defamation law to begin with.&lt;p&gt;I take issue with the law itself, but this interpretation of it doesn’t bother me.&lt;p&gt;IANAL, and I don’t know if dissemination is somehow different from creation in defamation cases. I expect it has to be - otherwise “Mr. X is a pedophile” can be illegal while “I heard that Mr. X is a pedophile” isn’t. Which seems dumb if one’s intent was to make defamation illegal in all ways.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>perennate</author><text>&amp;gt; then the question is whether you actively participated in&lt;p&gt;There is another important question: intention. In the US, &amp;quot;for a public official (or other legitimate public figure) to win a libel case in the United States, the statement must have been published knowing it to be false or with reckless disregard to its truth&amp;quot; [1].&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that most of the problems come not from having the defamation law to begin with like you said, but from the law applying even to defendants who believed the information they were creating or disseminating was true.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Defamation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Defamation&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Man fined for sharing a Facebook link ruled as defamation in Singapore</title><url>https://restofworld.org/2021/singapore-facebook-ruling/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dilippkumar</author><text>I seem to be on the other side of the consensus here on HN.&lt;p&gt;If you accept defamation laws (and defamation laws are a thing in Singapore and many other places), then the question is whether you actively participated in the creation or dissemination of slander (again, assuming that creation and dissemination are both illegal).&lt;p&gt;We in the tech world have optimized various mechanisms to enable sharing information- we have gotten so good at it that our users don’t pause for a moment and think about their responsibility they bear when hitting that share button.&lt;p&gt;It’s like picking up cleanly packaged meat from the grocery store or filling up on gas from a gas station- the experience is so clean and polished that one doesn’t really think about where the meat&amp;#x2F;crude oil is coming from and what it means to be paying for it.&lt;p&gt;I think the courts held that one is responsible for what they share. It isn’t “merely” sharing a news article on facebook - the person had to decide to hit that share button.&lt;p&gt;Now, there are a lot of things wrong with this. But most of the problems come from having some defamation law to begin with.&lt;p&gt;I take issue with the law itself, but this interpretation of it doesn’t bother me.&lt;p&gt;IANAL, and I don’t know if dissemination is somehow different from creation in defamation cases. I expect it has to be - otherwise “Mr. X is a pedophile” can be illegal while “I heard that Mr. X is a pedophile” isn’t. Which seems dumb if one’s intent was to make defamation illegal in all ways.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pjc50</author><text>Uneven enforcement is a problem in and of itself. Doing nothing to a thousand people and then slamming a fine like this on one guy is not conducive to rule of law.&lt;p&gt;But this is Singapore, it&amp;#x27;s not a very free country.</text></comment>