this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
576 points (95.7% liked)

Canada

7185 readers
511 users here now

What's going on Canada?

Communities

🍁 Meta

🗺️ Provinces / Territories

🏙️ Cities / Local Communities

🏒 SportsHockey

Football (NFL)

  • List of All Teams: unknown

Football (CFL)

  • List of All Teams: unknown

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer

💻 Universities

💵 Finance / Shopping

🗣️ Politics

🍁 Social and Culture

Rules

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage:

https://lemmy.ca

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
576
Right-Wing Trolls Are Freaking Out After Learning They Can Get Sued For Calling People 'Groomers' On The Internet (pressprogress.ca)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
169 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Other right-wing accounts variously reacted by describing the move as Orwellian, lamenting the death of free speech and even contemplating leaving Canada for good.

Oh no. Not that. Please no.

<Tee hee!>

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Defamation isn't protected under US laws either. It might not be super well enforced, especially on the internet, but that's also not really exclusive to the US. A lot of countries are just now really getting into the legalities of what happens on the internet, for better or worse in certain cases. But generally speaking, laws also apply to what you say online of course.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

There is a fundamental difference in the way defamation is treated in Canada(and other Common law countries like the UK and Australia) and the US. This is a simplification, but basically in the US you generally need to prove that the statement was knowingly false (in addition to other defamation requirements like proving damages). This is nearly impossible to do in most situations. In Common law the person who said the statement needs to prove they had a reasonable justification for thinking the statement true. This reverses who the onus of proof is on and makes winning defamation cases in Canada actually plausible.