Satire · first published 2022-10-14
The Alex Jones verdict, PayPal and two identical appeals | Weekly Wiseguys, 14 October 2022
A four-handed special: Sami Miettinen, Tere Sammallahti and MP Onni Rostila on Ivan Puopolo's Weekly Wiseguys, 14 October 2022. The episode is unusual in that a free-speech programme ends up defending the basis of the Alex Jones verdict and arguing only about the size of it — and in that it sets out the difference between the US and Finnish thresholds for defamation with real precision. The last third supplies two concrete examples of official discretion: a library that refused a venue to someone who had been acquitted, and two word-for-word identical appeals that produced opposite decisions at the same employment office.
The Alex Jones verdict, PayPal and two identical appeals | Weekly Wiseguys, 14 October 2022
Summary: A four-handed special: Sami Miettinen, Tere Sammallahti and MP Onni Rostila on Ivan Puopolo’s Weekly Wiseguys, 14 October 2022. The episode is unusual in that a free-speech programme ends up defending the basis of the Alex Jones verdict and arguing only about the size of it — and in that it sets out the difference between the US and Finnish thresholds for defamation with real precision. The last third supplies two concrete examples of official discretion: a library that refused a venue to someone who had been acquitted, and two word-for-word identical appeals that produced opposite decisions at the same employment office.
This is a summary on Neuvottelija AI. The episode itself is on Ivan Puopolo’s channel and is his — watch the original. The appearance is catalogued at neuvottelija.com/media, which is the canonical home of this content.
A note on reading this. Weekly Wiseguys is a tongue-in-cheek political panel, not a news broadcast. The speakers are right-of-centre commentators and politicians talking in their own names, sharpening for effect and joking as they go. This article sorts their arguments and marks who said what; it takes no position on who is right, and it does not reproduce the personal jabs. Speakers are named only where the recording itself identifies who is talking: the transcript carries no speaker labels, so uncertain passages are attributed to the panel or to “one of the guests” rather than to a name. The opinions are the speakers’ own.
The panel
Ivan Puopolo opens as host, with Sami Miettinen, Tere Sammallahti and MP Onni Rostila. The episode was recorded before the programme’s Christmas party, and the host leaves partway through — the hosting duty passes to Miettinen, which is announced on air at the start.
A free-speech programme that defends a verdict
The most interesting thing about this episode is what it does not do. On the programme’s usual line, the Alex Jones damages verdict would be easy to present as a free-speech violation. The panel does not do that.
It says three things in sequence, and the order matters:
- The conduct was morally repugnant. Portraying the parents of children killed in a school shooting as actors, making money from it, and directing harassers at the victims — the panel looks for no defence of any of it.
- Defamation law is necessary. “Of course there has to be defamation law. It is a perfectly good law.”
- The dispute is about the amount and the motive, not the basis.
The episode then does the thing that is its best single contribution: it sets out the difference in threshold between the two legal systems.
- In the United States a defamation verdict requires that the statement is false and that the person defamed suffered measurable, objective harm.
- In Finland the offence is one of abstract endangerment: it is enough that the statement is capable of causing harm. The harm itself does not have to be shown.
The panel’s conclusion is that in Finland the threshold is crossed by acts too trivial to warrant it, and that the absence of a proof requirement is the heart of the problem. That is a precise and checkable claim, and it holds regardless of anyone’s view of Jones.
One of the guests says he examined the US damages system in his own thesis, and his attention goes to the structure of the award: Texas imposed 50 million in punitive damages, while Connecticut’s near-billion was technically compensatory — compensation for established harm. He finds the gap hard to explain. The Finnish equivalent would be impossible because of the bar on enrichment: damages may not leave the injured party better off than before the injury.
As a counterweight the panel describes what weakened Jones’s position: his own lawyer accidentally sent the entire contents of his phone to the other side, and Jones was caught lying in court. The panel does not present this as an injustice.
The claim of a political motive is the episode’s clearest interpretation rather than observation: one speaker suspects the organisations backing the plaintiffs also aimed to destroy Jones’s media operation. He notes himself that he does not know the details.
Two comparisons are brought in that illuminate the same threshold: David Beckham, whose claim failed because no measurable harm existed, and Johnny Depp, where harm was demonstrable in lost roles.
From this follows the episode’s most general free-speech argument: if spreading falsehood is criminalised broadly, the power of definition passes to whoever decides what counts as false — and in political and economic debate there is research to cite in either direction.
PayPal and the reach of platform power
The episode opens on a clause that had slipped into PayPal’s terms allowing a $2,500 charge for spreading “misinformation”. It was withdrawn after the company’s former chairman criticised it publicly.
The panel makes two observations of different kinds, and they sit in tension — which is to the episode’s credit:
- A legal clarification. This is not a fine but a contractual pre-agreed sum (liquidated damages) that a user accepts along with the terms. The panel’s question is procedural: is the user heard before the amount is taken from the account?
- A market answer. Another speaker judges that PayPal’s position will not survive this, because alternative payment routes are now plentiful — he recalls that when he moved abroad in 2009 PayPal was effectively the only convenient way to move money, and that this is no longer the case.
The claim that PayPal holds over 90 per cent of the US market is offered without a source.
A survey whose numbers are corrected mid-conversation
A small passage, but it says more about the format than many larger ones.
The panel discusses an EVA survey on Finnish attitudes to free speech and first cites 54 per cent. Another speaker corrects him: on his recollection over 60 per cent supported free speech in all situations, while 54 per cent saw the restriction of critical opinions as the threat. The first accepts the correction and revises his own characterisation too.
The numbers should not be quoted from this episode — they are cited from memory. But the fact that they are corrected out loud, twice, is worth noting.
The observation the panel draws from the survey is self-critical: they had themselves been convinced free speech had no constituency in Finland — because only one position is visible in the media. “I was completely convinced Finns no longer wanted free speech at all.”
Attached to this is a fair point about journalists: one speaker notes that visibility is dictated not by the strength of an argument but by position — a university researcher’s statement clears the publication threshold more easily than an outsider saying the same thing. It is an explanation rather than an accusation.
Two examples of official discretion
The most concrete material comes at the end, in two cases that work as arguments without requiring any ideological reading.
A library. A library refused to provide space for a civic association’s event because a participant, though not convicted, had been described by a district court as having acted in a reprehensible manner. The panel’s argument is structural: had the rules for use of library premises been written precisely, an individual official would have had no discretion here at all. A free room is a free room.
An employment office. One speaker says he interviewed a nurse who lost his job after declining vaccination. His spouse was in the same position — same employer, same circumstances. Both were given a benefit sanction, both applied for the same vacancy, and both appeals were word for word identical. Two different officials handled them: one reversed the decision, the other did not.
When the office’s management was asked about it, the answer changed mid-conversation: first “everyone must be treated the same”, and then, once it emerged that the decisions differed, “these are case-by-case; each involves discretion.”
This is a second-hand account of a single case in the episode, and should be read as one. But as an argument it needs no generalisation: it shows what discretion means when two identical cases produce opposite outcomes.
Both attach to the same principle that has run through the autumn’s episodes: legislation is written against the assumption you make about the official. The panel puts it most directly here: most of them are surely well-intentioned, but the rule has to be written so that misuse is impossible for the one who is not.
An official interpreting more strictly than the EU
On alcohol distance selling the panel makes a claim checkable against the news of the week: customs and the supervising authority had decided to inspect every alcohol shipment arriving from the EU area, and a complaint had been filed on the basis that categorical inspection conflicts with free movement. According to the episode, the matter was simultaneously in the Commission’s pilot procedure.
The more general claim is that Finnish officials interpret EU rules more strictly than the EU requires, at the expense of Finnish firms. The explanation offered is conviction: where an official holds a strong view of his own, he uses the authority he has been given to its full extent.
Rostila adds an observation worth noting, because it is aimed at the regulatory structure rather than at individuals: the answer is not to replace the official but to write the law so that the interpretation is not available. It is the same argument as on the targeting law, turned the other way round.
Bankruptcy, debt adjustment and an entrepreneur’s second chance
A short but interesting passage in which the panel ends up defending American practice.
The argument: in the United States personal bankruptcy offers a way to start again, whereas in Finland the equivalent situation can mean effectively permanent liability. On the panel’s account this bears particularly on entrepreneurs, and they regard ending a person’s productive career for good as a loss to society.
The objection comes immediately from inside the group: Finland does have debt adjustment. The reply is a concession plus a qualification — it does, but the conditions could be loosened, and in practice it is available once. This is the clearest example in the episode of the panel correcting itself from within.
Sam Harris, and an inconsistency spotted on their own side
The panel describes a documentary whose screenings were cancelled at a festival on grounds of subject matter, and treats the loss of the maker’s livelihood as an example of where platform and venue discretion leads. Sam Harris is credited with raising the case.
The same person is then criticised: he had defended the removal of Donald Trump from Twitter. The panel’s argument is logical rather than political — if protecting democracy requires excluding a democratically elected figure, the justification consumes itself. This is the episode’s most generalisable formulation: “we protect free speech by denying somebody free speech.”
On the American court cases the panel adds an observation that cuts against its own sympathies: because the constitution protects speech strongly, restrictions are pursued by other routes — defamation suits and pressure on platforms. The same mechanism serves both sides.
Gang crime and what does not get said
The closing claim is psychological and presented as such: on the panel’s account, naming the phenomenon is blocked because naming it is feared to label the namer. Orwell’s doublethink is their analogy, and they attach a historical example from Soviet genetics, where a politically congenial result displaced the research.
Rostila adds an argument that is structural rather than rhetorical: Finland’s comparatively mild sentencing has worked and has been cheap, but it depends on the person sentenced sharing the same understanding of what the sanction means. If parallel communities emerge for whom a suspended sentence does not mean the same thing, the level has to be reassessed. That is a question that can be put without ideology.
The Swedish figures — annual explosions and unsolved killings — are given from memory.
Claims presented as claims
- The percentages from the EVA survey. Quoted from memory and corrected twice.
- PayPal’s US market share. No source.
- The claim of a political motive behind the Jones verdict. The speaker’s own estimate, which he marks as uncertain.
- The account of a university lecturer’s comment on Jordan Peterson. Second-hand.
- The employment-office case. A second-hand account of a single case.
- Swedish explosion and homicide counts. From memory.
What survives
Two things, and both are usable whichever direction a reader comes from.
The threshold difference. That defamation in Finland is an offence of abstract endangerment while in the United States harm must be proven explains a great deal of why the two countries’ free-speech debates look so different. The episode puts the distinction more clearly than most writing on the subject.
Two identical appeals. A single case, but effective precisely for that: when two word-for-word identical applications produce opposite decisions, the breadth of discretion has been demonstrated without anyone having to hold a view about it.
How the episode runs
- 00:00 — A special edition, the line-up, and a change of host
- 00:47 — The free-speech corner: PayPal’s $2,500 contractual penalty
- 02:33 — What liquidated damages means in practice
- 04:16 — Delaware forces the Twitter deal through
- 05:02 — Does PayPal’s position survive overreach
- 05:58 — An EVA survey — and two corrections mid-conversation
- 07:32 — Perspective distortion: the university, the media and source selection
- 09:20 — When position decides visibility, not argument
- 10:57 — The Alex Jones verdict: what the panel agrees about
- 12:31 — The threshold for defamation in the US and in Finland
- 14:16 — A billion dollars — what the number rests on
- 15:09 — Compensatory, punitive, and the Finnish bar on enrichment
- 16:41 — Why Jones lost: a lawyer’s error and lying in court
- 17:26 — Was there a political motive behind the verdict
- 18:23 — Beckham, Depp and measurable harm
- 22:17 — Misinformation as a concept: who defines a falsehood
- 23:05 — Personal bankruptcy versus permanent debt bondage
- 24:38 — Sam Harris, “Jihad Rehab” and an inconsistency
- 27:09 — Trump’s court cases and a politicised prosecutor
- 29:35 — When speech cannot be limited by law, it is limited otherwise
- 30:25 — Alcohol distance selling, customs and the regulator
- 32:15 — What to assume about an official — the same principle again
- 33:00 — Officials interpreting EU rules more strictly than the EU does
- 34:34 — A library refusal, and “almost a crime”
- 37:03 — Two identical appeals, two different decisions
- 41:03 — Fear of freedom, and some litmus tests
- 44:12 — Gang crime: what cannot be said out loud
- 46:38 — Doublethink, Lysenko, and ideology ahead of facts
- 49:02 — Parallel communities and rethinking sentencing
- 50:36 — A cartoonist’s police interview, and proving intent
- 52:10 — Why Finland fools itself for decades
- 55:22 — Closing