On December 14, 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza murdered 20 children and 6 teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary school with a Bushmaster XM-15 rifle before committing suicide after.
[1] Shortly afterwards, conspiracy theorists used Facebook, YouTube, blogs and other online platforms to claim the massacre was a hoax and a false flag operation and that the victims were actually crisis actors.
Most notable among them was radio show host Alex Jones, owner of InfoWars, who instructed his audience to rise up and "find out the truth", insisting that the shooting was staged by the federal government to destroy the Second Amendment.
US district judge James Cohn called Richards' actions towards Pozner "disturbing" and condemned those who spread false claims about the deaths of the victims.
[2] Pozner began attempting to remove defamatory content about his family, including defaced photos of Noah, from social media and web sites.
[2] In 2014 Pozner founded the HONR Network to "bring awareness to hoaxer activity" and "prosecute those who wittingly and publicly defame, harass and emotionally abuse the victims of high-profile tragedies".
[11][12] Pozner has also had success with other online platforms by flagging harmful content for violations such as invasions of privacy, threats and harassment, and copyright infringement.
[13] After the company's response generated controversy, Automattic apologized and enacted a policy to prohibit blogs from the "malicious publication of unauthorized, identifying images of minors".
A person cannot violate my civil rights to be free of harassment, bullying, or to have my likeness manipulated and my family targeted with death threats and intimidation and then simply attempt to hide behind 'free speech.
'"[15] In April 2018, in state district courts in Travis County, Texas, lawyers representing Pozner and his ex-wife Veronique de la Rosa launched a defamation suit against Alex Jones.
[19] In February 2019, in response to this suit, Judge Barbara Bellis ruled that Jones will have to submit to a sworn deposition, in addition to turning over internal financial, business, and marketing documents related to InfoWars' operations.
[21] The same law firm filed similar defamation cases against Alex Jones and Infowars on behalf of two other parents who lost children at Sandy Hook — Neil Heslin[22] and Scarlett Lewis.
[23] In a separate case by the same lawyers, Marcel Fontaine launched defamation proceedings against Jones for falsely identifying him as the gunman in the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.
"[29] In June 2019, Wisconsin judge Frank Remington ruled that Pozner had been defamed by the authors of "Nobody Died At Sandy Hook: It was a FEMA Drill to Promote Gun Control."
[citation needed] Pozner later said "If Mr Fetzer wants to believe that Sandy Hook never happened and that we are all crisis actors, even that my son never existed, he has the right to be wrong.
Gahary, who has published many books on conspiracies, said he had been inundated with hate mail from deniers of the Sandy Hook massacre since his change of heart had become public.