Agree that it should be more, but what sort of margins do you realize that 1/3 of _revenue_ seems small?

This kind of comment comes up a lot On The Internet and it tells me that the commenter has never worked at a company that has lost a massive lawsuit. As someone who has worked at one of those companies, I can tell you that losing a suit like this will absolutely lead to huge operational changes to avoid it happening again.

Whether or not those changes actually change the "character" of the company is a different question (IMHO Newsmax is morally defunct and cannot be saved) but no company anywhere would just shrug something like this off as "the cost of doing business".

They've never turned a profit though, so this only adds to their financial problems.

I imagine they likely have insurance for things like this. Or at least I would, if my business model was largely based on libel.

Annual revenue is not profit. This is the money earned without all the costs of running the business.

For instance, the total revenue was 171m in 2024. But the cost of revenue was 86m. Then you need to remove the operation expenses, that are 153m. So in 2024, the before taxes net income was a loss of 69 million.

In 2025 they are currently at -30m because it seems they cut in their Operating Expense. Explains some of the anchors leaving in 2024 (the impact of big cuts are often only felt the next year)

Here is a very important titbit:

> Newsmax and Newsmax Broadcasting LLC agreed to pay Dominion and its affiliates over three installments, starting with $27 million that was paid on Friday. Newsmax will pay $20 million on January 15 and another $20 million on January 15, 2027.

In other words, they are not able to pay out the 67m in 2025, and are paying it off over 3 years. Given the negative income it has, combined with the now extra payments for then next 3 years...

They are going to be cutting even more staff, what will affect their ability to generate revenue. It may look like a good deal, only 1/3 of their revenue, a 3 year payment plan. But its more of a survival plan.

Why did Dominion accept this? Because its guaranteed money. Dominion is not out to destroy newsmax, no, Dominion wants cheese and a dead newsmax means no cheese. But the effect will be hard on the newsmax, do not underestimate this. Let alone internally...

Some people will see this as a newsmax win, because most people do not know the difference between revenue. And why payment plans are not good indicator. But in reality, the company was already on a bankruptcy route, and its not going to get better. So unless somebody Musk steps in with major $$$ to buyout and finance them for a long time, ...

I wouldn't say it's 100% fool proof, but paper does require a lot more people to be "In" on it.

Paper ballots can be faked. Or lost. Or stuffed.

Anyways, haven’t most/all districts gone to paper ballots, the electronic part is just auto tabulation. They can be counted manually if necessary.

unpopular for many valid and party leaning ressons.

> Unpopular opinion: Paper ballots with in person voting (with an ID) is the only 100% fool proof and verifiable voting system.

I don't know that it's that unpopular. I disagree with the 100% fool proof and verifiable claim though. I can think of lots of interesting ways of screwing with it, e.x. manipulating the chain of custody or tampering with the ballots to make errors likely.

Everything is a balance. Paper ballots aren't magically 100% secure, and in person voting comes with trade offs. Ex making it difficult for the military to vote, and making it such a big production for my highly disabled sister that she probably wouldn't bother.

I happen to think the pros aren't worth the cons and that most of the handwringing around mail in ballots and machines are FUD rather than measured concerns. That doesn't mean I disagree that in person isn't "more" secure.

The counterargument is that mail in ballots help increase voter turnouts and that requiring id will turn people away. It's a weak argument because you shouldn't try to increase turnout by making voting less secure. Any other solution should be found instead.

The arguments pro and con are purely motivated by partisan concerns. its believed that more democratic voters are less likely to have an id, therefore voter id laws supposedly favors republicans. that supposed fact is at the heart of the entire debate and as far as i know there is nothing more to it.

There were literally Russian-sourced bomb threats at several major democratic strongholds' polling locations in the last presidential election. https://www.npr.org/2024/11/06/nx-s1-5181834/election-day-vo...

Voter ID and blocking mail-in / early voting are just a few examples of contemporary Republican voter suppression efforts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_Unite...

How on Earth are we able to have a global digital financial system that is able to keep track of trillions in transactions per year but running a seasonal election with < 100 million participants through a digital system seems too hard?

Where there is a will, there is a way. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44899415

Im so old I can remember when this used to be a common left-wing opinion.

BTW, Dominion is actually diebold amalgamated with a couple other "voting" machine vendors into a single corporation.

Human marked, human and machine readable both is good practice. Risk limiting audits after elections is good practice. CA, WA and CO at least do all this.

What does in person (with an ID) add to election security? That practice most certainly restricts voting unless there's a holiday for election day.

What keeps in person voting from being manipulated less than other good practice elections?

Why did in person voting become a big issue only just before and after 2020 election?

Why didn't anybody pay attention to what some states did after 2000 election?

100% Agree.

Let's get back to brass tacks and stop all the monkey business. Even if there is no tomfoolery goin on (and I believe there is) why not make it beyond doubt?

disagree, I think paper ballots are just as easily hacked(printers are cheap). I think that while technical mechanisms are nice and should be used, they should not be depended on to secure the election. The only real solution is to have a politically neutral well motivated uncorrupted election officer corps. and if this sounds hard, it is. Thus why people keep trying to turn to technical means to secure an election and are baffled when it lets them down.

Among it's many faults, I think this is one advantage of the weird US method of running elections at the county level. While it is probably easier to corrupt individual election corps, due to it's distributed nature it is harder to systematically corrupt all of them. This does mean that US elections are strangly inconsistent from county to county, but that is the price you pay for a distributed system.

As a counterpoint to the "electronic election transactions are impossible to secure" platform, look at the credit card processing systems, yes there is fraud, but compared to the volume of daily transactions it is insignificant. the point being, large scale trusted electronic transactions are possible.

Are you just talking about the part of election security that ensures that only eligible voters vote (and each only once)? Because paper ballots have little to do with many other aspects of election security.

It's unpopular because it's stupid and wrong, not because we are stupid and wrong.

I don't think that in person voting with ID is a fool proof way to guarantee that only the people who "should be voting" get to vote.

I also think you disenfranchise too many people when you do that.

- People who work on oil rigs won't get to vote

- People who do shift work covering the hours the polls are open wont get to vote

- People who are of sound mind, but too unwell to travel to a polling location wont get to vote

- November is Red/blue king crab season in Alaska, guess those people don't get to vote

- Flight attendants & pilots might be away from home that day.

- People in the military might be on exercise that day, we're cutting them off (though I'll assume deployed service members will get to vote wherever they are)

- Long haul truckers are out of luck

- Anyone on vacation is missing their chance

- College students are always a wildcard, do they cast a ballot where they are (ID could be from a different state) or go home for the weekend?

Should ID's be free and easy to get, because if not, this would amount to a poll tax, which has been deemed unconstitutional.

We are also not required to have or carry ID to carry out any of our constitutionally protected rights.

We would need to set up a service where a representative from the government would come to your house on demand, verify your identity, and issue you a free ID whether you live in downtown DC, rural New Mexico, or somewhere in Puerto Rico. Otherwise this is a non-starter.

Except it doesn’t matter whether it’s foolproof or verifiable.

The only thing that matters is seizing on a narrative and running with it, whipping up fear and discontent.

The solution is to heal the partisanship in US society that infects everything there, and acts like poison on public discourse and trust.

Is there evidence that in person voting is meaningfully more secure than other forms (like mail in voting) let alone 100% fool proof?

Even assuming it is, how do we solve the other issues it causes if it's the only way to vote? e.g.:

- How do US citizens that don't live or are not at the time of voting physically in the US vote? e.g. overseas military personnel.

- People that live in remote areas of the country without easy access to in person voting stations?

- Those with limited mobility and have a hard time physically getting to a voting station?

- Those with limited transportation options? e.g. don't have reliable access to a car.

- Those that do shift work and can't or can't afford to take the time off?

- The estimated millions of Americans that don't have a valid form of ID?

End of the day, even if in person voting with a valid ID is the only reliable way to vote, we also need to evaluate the marginal reduction in voting fraud against disenfranchising voters.

Sounds good until a strongman recruits tens of thousands of masked thugs to patrol cities and beat up anyone who looks like they might vote for the opponent of said strongman.

Related:

“I find all of this so weird because of how it _elevates_ finance. [Various cases] imply that we are not entitled to be protected from pollution as _citizens_, or as _humans_. [Another] implies that we are not entitled to be told the truth _as citizens_. (Which: is true!) Rather, in each case, we are only entitled to be protected from lies _as shareholders_. The great harm of pollution, or of political dishonesty, is that it might lower the share prices of the companies we own.”

— Matt Levine

Here he is talking about shareholder lawsuits (securities fraud) being the primary mechanism of holding social responsibility.

During Dominion's case against Fox News around this same issue Fox News' own lawyers stated that they were not stating actual facts about the topics under discussion and instead were engaged in exaggeration and non-literal commentary. It's not news, it's infotainment.

Hogan (Thiel) vs Gawker and Sandy Hook vs Alex Jones provided a blueprint to weaponize defamation law for political change in an environment where right-wing journalism has turned into a defamation pipeline and then a defamation -> moral-panic -> stochastic-terror cannon that would impress Gerald Bull. These are supposed journalistic institutions, and that used to mean something, legally and culturally speaking. Making them terrified of losing the public trust once again, using some type of fast-moving wrecking ball, is a necessary component of a future where we make it out of this.

So all we need now is an angry left-wing billionaire who can launch a thousand defamation lawsuits, or the most sympathetic group of parents of dead children in history.

The last great nightly news anchor was Dan Rather, who was fired symbolically because their organization merely neutrally reported the existence of a sketchy story about possible documents that turned out to be fabricated about George W Bush's military service.

$67 million is ticky-tacky? Did the "Russian Collusion" narrative not imply the election was stolen? Were they any ticky-tacky lawsuits over that one?

Wouldn't that damage the right to free speech? Regulating what the media is and isn't allowed to say is a very slippery slope and it is open to abuse. If the government was responsible for this task what would prevent Trump and the republicans from hijacking it? It might be frustrating but free speech is one of the cornerstones of democracy and we are much better off with it then without it.

> And that wasn't even the problem, it's that their lies created damages for another corporation

That's the first time i've ever seen anyone on HN sympathize with a billion dollar company:)

But that is exactly what the article was about! Dominion was libelled by Newsmax, so they was able to claim damages from them in a court of law. The law didn't allow them to get away with it. The First Amendment is working as inteneded. Some damage to society is tolerated to protect a much bigger and longer term benefit.

> holding these "news" networks responsible for brazen repeated lies that are hugely damaging to our society

But that moron in WH is still spreading lies about that election; he has no shame, no remorse, no nothing. On the contrary, he was successful in portraying himself a victim and win people’s sympathy. Even though he’s the one who called insurrection. There’s no accountability for him.

Look at South Korea, who indicted their politician who did same act. As well at Brazil, who’s rogue politician is in house arrest. But, fking only here, they are awarded with a 2nd term.