Viral 'Free Potatoes' Post Cost This Farmer 150 Tons of Crops
42 comments
·October 22, 2025adzm
kulahan
Saw this similar quote:
>“One man came and said he took two bags because he went crazy when he saw the crowd,” Piotr said. “He apologized, and everything was fine. But there are also those who took dozens of tons.”
Literally always it's a few bad apples ruining the bunch. If a bunch of people came and took some for personal use, it would've been fine. I mean, still a problem, but the farmer would probably still have some damn crop left to sell or replant or whatever you'd do with those potatoes for the best recovery at that point.
alangibson
If you want to find who started the rumor, look for who took the 60 tons. That requires machinery which requires planning
Havoc
That’s genuinely evil by the original poster
Steven420
The poster needs to be identified, charged and sued
potato3732842
[flagged]
lenerdenator
A civil suit is exactly the government sticking their dick in the problem. You're having a government employee (the judge) either decide the case themselves in a government building at taxpayer expense, or impanel a jury in a government building at taxpayer expense. Either way you're going to be using laws and rules of civil procedure decided upon by the government in order to try the case. Then the trial hands down a verdict that the government has the ability to enforce through seizure of things of value or by curtailing a person's rights.
pavel_lishin
> This is exactly the sort of thing that a civil suit is perfect for.
... who do you think decides the outcome of a civil suit?
null
elicash
The interview with the farmer (distiller?) is here (0:33 in):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxTj9wwlbAU (Youtube has a setting for translation you'll need to turn on)
SunshineTheCat
The person who made the post should face consequences for sure, but one thing I wonder about: if during the frenzy even one person (under the impression these were being given away for free) even thought to go find the farmer and say "thank you."
I realize he wasn't home, but discovering that fact I would imagine (maybe?) would raise some flags.
silexia
Hopefully the original poster is prosecuted for theft. The farmer needs to report this to the police.
OutOfHere
[flagged]
bloomingeek
Harm was caused by the prank performer, so there is a forgery case possibility. Your post proves why a "jury of your peers" is a flawed concept--most people don't know the law, they just have opinions.
OutOfHere
A forgery case seems to make sense, but a theft case doesn't (unless for example evidence is retrieved from the poster in the form of stolen potatoes).
As for a jury, I think that perhaps it makes more sense to free a person than to find them guilty.
dghlsakjg
There are a number of legal principles that you are completely, and totally, incorrect on.
The key legal principle is causation. The poster's false statement was the direct cause of the farmer's losses. Under general tort principles, a person who makes false statements that cause foreseeable harm to another can be held liable for damages, regardless of whether they participated in the actual harmful act.
Negligent Misrepresentation: The poster could be liable for negligently spreading false information without verifying its accuracy. Even if there was no intent to harm, the law recognizes liability when someone carelessly disseminates false information that a reasonable person would know could cause harm.
Proximate Cause Doctrine: The legal reasoning follows the principle that the poster's false statement was the "but for" cause of the theft. Without the false Facebook post, hundreds of people wouldn't have descended on the farm believing they had permission to take the potatoes. The intervening acts of the potato-takers doesn't break the chain of causation because the mass theft was a foreseeable consequence of the false post.
I don't know if all of these exist in Polish Law, but they tend to hold across most western legal systems in some form or other.
To bring it down to the "its a prank, bro" defense you are invoking. The accepted counterargument is "doesn't matter if it was a prank, bro. The actions of the poster were the direct cause for the damages."
OutOfHere
[flagged]
jncfhnb
> I guess they don't teach objective reasoning in school.
You should have gone to school!
OutOfHere
Didn't we just establish that they don't teach objective logical reasoning in school? I urge you to re-read the comments, carefully this time.
IncreasePosts
Poland doesn't use juries. This case, if brought, would be decided by a panel of professional and lay judges.
hollerith
Meh. In the US, this prankster would stand a good chance of getting charged with some crime. Also the farmer could probably obtain a civil judgement against the prankster in the amount of the estimated market value of the potatoes.
(I don't know enough about the criminal code of any of the 50 states to say what crime specifically.)
IncreasePosts
Inciting people to commit a criminal act is a criminal act in itself.
snozolli
A couple of similar examples from the United States
2007 Tacoma, WA https://www.cbsnews.com/news/house-stripped-in-craigslist-ho...
An online ad offering everything in the house for free left one landlord with quite a shock: By the time she realized what was going on, the house had been stripped of its light fixtures, hot water heater — even the kitchen sink.
2012 Woodstock, GA https://www.11alive.com/article/news/local/foreclosed-family...
But big crowds showed up early, while the family was out, breaking into the house and taking practically everything inside, in part because the way that the craigslist ad was written gave them the idea that everything on the property was up for grabs.
koakuma-chan
One day, when I can afford, I will live in a condo, because it feels like I'm deep inside a fortress.
DenisDolya
The Internet is a scary thing.
peterfirefly
Similar pranks happened in England back in the 1800's.
stuffn
> A rumor on Facebook said a farmer was giving away his potatoes. By sunrise, 150 tons of his hard-earned work had disappeared.
I don't know if you can blame the viral post itself. This has been my experience with humans in general. Take halloween. Leave a candy bowl out and ask people to take one or two 10-20% will comply and the rest will try to take the entire bowl.
The article itself said the farmer wanted people to "help themselves". It was his responsibility to set the rules and enforce them. Perhaps polish law is different but I doubt the police would do anything in the states (or any other western country). It's not theft when you say take what you want. I don't believe it's blaming the victim here to say that the farmer should've done a lot more work to meter out his potatoes.
This is just another example of the tragedy of the commons. You can't have truly shared resources because a minority will take the majority and ruin it for everyone. Every single time. This is also why food pantries and homeless shelters meter out food carefully. You even see this with super sales at the grocery store. I remember during COVID people were filling truck beds with discounted meat/fish/vegetables completely disregarding other people will need to eat too.
0_____0
You misread - the farmer himself had nothing to do with the post. Some random person trying to go viral took a video of the potatoes saying they were free.
egypturnash
The farmer didn't want any of this to happen, the post saying "free potatoes, help yourself" was by someone else.
AlienRobot
>I don't know if you can blame the viral post itself.
Edit: nevermind, I just read the article again and the viral post is 100% to blame.
OutOfHere
Is a farmer not supposed to have a basic locked fence around his farmed produce? (I'm not referring to the farm itself.)
potato3732842
So can I just take whatever materials the highway department or their contractors leave on the side of the road?
Just because something isn't under lock and key doesn't mean it's abandoned and fair game.
0_____0
I want to take you seriously but I feel like you have skin in this game somehow.
jackdh
Sounds like a nice way for someone to get a free fence.
Insanity
If you live in a rural village this probably doesn’t (or didn’t) seem necessary.
alangibson
No. Also, irrelevant.
> Others loaded up to 60 tons at a time.
I have a feeling these are the ones that are the problem rather than folk with a hand basket.