Military pilot Jo Ellis said she had to hire private armed security for her family because of the false claims, which went viral on social media.
A transgender military pilot filed a defamation lawsuit Wednesday against a conservative influencer who falsely claimed on social media that she was flying the helicopter that collided with a commercial jet near Reagan National Airport in January, killing 67 people.
“I want to hold this person accountable for what they did to me,” Jo Ellis, a pilot who has served more than 15 years in the Virginia Army National Guard, said in a statement to NBC News. “It’s become too common that people can say horrible things about someone, profit at their expense, and get away with it.”
On Jan. 30, less than 24 hours after the crash, conservative influencer Matt Wallace, who has 2.2 million followers on the social media platform X, shared a post from another account he operates stating that the helicopter pilot was transgender, according to the lawsuit. Wallace included a photo of Ellis, and the post went viral, the lawsuit states.
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Because it’s just going to make them more popular. One can argue that the failed assassination of Trump was actually key to his victory. Or if that’s not clear enough, look at what happened with Charlie Hebdo - it just made muslims look petty and violent to the point where most people would rather side with the paper that was bullying a religious minority than recognize their concerns.
Losing a lawsuit, meanwhile, makes them unpopular and poor at the same time.
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I’m confused as to why you are getting so many upvotes because either though misreading or misplaced focus, you only replied to one half of one sentence of my reply, constructing an alternate reality in which my point was the opposite of what it actually was. And to be blunt, both the reply and the upvotes reflects so much of the knee-jerk hyperemotionalism in online debates.
As for the rest, I think we can all acknowledge that people in general will take more offense to a paper insulting a powerless minority than the powerful majority. But in this case they didn’t, hence my point that violence is counterproductive to a cause, which you seem to think was the opposite point.
You should watch the apprentice. Losing law suites is how Trump started his cult
Edit: not sure if people don’t know what I’m talking about or think a biopic isn’t a reliable source: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/donald-trump-roy-cohn-race-discrimination-lawsuit-fight-documentary-excerpt/
Because killing people is wrong and can very very easily get out of hand. Consider The Terror, which followed the French revolution - edit: clarified myself by mentioning The Terror
I’m starting to wonder if we’re going to get killed while we scream how wrong it is.
And the solution is not to kill people who say awful things. EDIT: if ur downvoting me, say why
The solution is to kill people trying to do awful things before they do them.
Have you ever heard of predictive policing? https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/07/17/1005396/predictive-policing-algorithms-racist-dismantled-machine-learning-bias-criminal-justice/
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The French Revolution that was massively successful in removing scum from the country?
Yeah I’m considering it alright. :)
I mean the part right after it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror - most of the people killed in it werent nobles or anything like that, just ordinary people
Both of the monarchies that bookended it showed those to be rookie numbers, and Louis XVI wasn’t even the worst Louis.
That doesn’t make it right, but I have trouble calling them the bad guys even with it getting a little… Extra.
Ending 20,000 lives is still pretty horrible. Sometimes in history there are no good guys
I’m not sure I would call it successful in the long (or even medium) term given the events that directly followed…
Based on a study of your usage of Lemmy, I’m not sure you are capable of having any ideas that are sure.
You came along to one of my messages and said “What a sad, pathetic waste of time this comment was” just a few minutes ago. I think you are here to promote anti-intellectualism on Lemmy media systems.
I think it promoted anti-intellectualism and violence, which many people in April 2025 on electric media systems of Twitter, Lemmy, Mastodon, Bluesky, Reddit, TikTok, Fox News HDTV, CNN HDTV seem to adore. The idea of killing and murdering human beings they disagree with, the machine powers of guns and weapons to dehumanize others.
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“There is something wrong with our world, something fundamentally and basically wrong. I don’t think we have to look too far to see that. I’m sure that most of you would agree with me in making that assertion. And when we stop to analyze the cause of our world’s ills, many things come to mind. We begin to wonder if it is due to the fact that we don’t know enough. But it can’t be that. Because in terms of accumulated knowledge we know more today than men have known in any period of human history. We have the facts at our disposal. We know more about mathematics, about science, about social science, and philosophy than we’ve ever known in any period of the world’s history. So it can’t be because we don’t know enough. And then we wonder if it is due to the fact that our scientific genius lags behind. That is, if we have not made enough progress scientifically. Well then, it can’t be that. For our scientific progress over the past years has been amazing. Man through his scientific genius has been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains, so that today it’s possible to eat breakfast in New York City and supper in London, England. Back in about 1753 it took a letter three days to go from New York City to Washington, and today you can go from here to China in less time than that. It can’t be because man is stagnant in his scientific progress. Man’s scientific genius has been amazing. I think we have to look much deeper than that if we are to find the real cause of man’s problems and the real cause of the world’s ills today. If we are to really find it I think we will have to look in the hearts and souls of men.”