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The Onion buys Infowars

nytimes.com

491–500 of 1001 posts

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#491
post #313

What's wild is that if I go to the Infowars website I can't actually tell if The Onion is controlling it yet or not. It all looks like satire already, full of absolutely ridiculous headlines.

Imagine there are humans who read those headlines and think to themselves that it is real.

Worse yet, imagine that those humans are armed, and many of them routinely fantasize about what they do when "it's time". My local gun store has sported an InfoWars sticker for many years now.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#492
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this is about the domain name infowars.com which belongs to a bankrupt company. Alex Jones is such a big name and has other channels (x.com, Joe Rogan etc.) that he can easily build a similar site/business under a new domain name. Perhaps The Onion should ask - who gets most promotion of this?

> Alex Jones is such a big name and has other channels (x.com, Joe Rogan etc.) that he can easily build a similar site/business under a new domain name. Maybe but the judgement was for 1B USD. So any profits would probably be garnished away. Basically, lawfare was used to censor Alex Jones. I wonder if this is a case for the Supreme Court and First Amendment rights?

Lawfare? This is literally how defamation works.

If someone said on the Internet said that rs999gti was a "tax-evading, pyramid-scheming, mullet-wearing, karaoke-ruining, ferret-hoarding, snake-oil-selling, cereal-with-water-eating, grammar-mangling, table-manner-less, engagement-ring-pawning, salad-dodging, traffic-cone-stealing, apology-dodger," and it wasn’t true, I think you’d probably like to sue them and take their money too.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... Infowars had a supplements business?

Most of these things are DTC operations and usually for supplements since they are relatively unregulated. Turning viewership into money is usually done through ads but these guys are fairly toxic to most advertisers. Supplements are a good alternative for podcasters. They’re like merch is for musicians etc. but usually run as a recurring revenue stream. Scratch the surface of any of these people and you’ll find they…

There is a reason the archetypal scam artist is referred to as a ‘snake oil salesman’.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#494

[flagged]

I really hate this lazy argument, that what happened to Alex Jones is another step on the slippery slope to fascism or something. He was sued for defamation and lost. Defamation has been a tort in the US this entire time. Defamation as a concept goes back centuries before the US was even founded. There wasn’t some change to defamation laws that brought down Alex Jones, there wasn’t some novel interpretation of the st…

Jones has been wrong about multiple things. So has every media outlet especially since someone came down some escalators. I don't personally think someone should lose their entire business for being wrong. CNN has called all conservatives Nazis for years, and they are liars. Do you think CNN should be sued out of existence? Personally I think CNN has every right to lie. They've now done it so much that they self-destructed over it, and no one watches CNN because it's well KNOWN that they lie. All that's needed is more sunlight, not more politically motivate lawfare.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your point

Since Musk's acquisition of Twitter, it has increasingly become a right wing echo chamber and place to promote conspiracy theories. And Alex Jones' InfoWars and Elon Musk's Twitter are both likely to show you advertisements for supplements of dubious effectiveness and other generally scammy products. So yeah, Jones fits right in there.

It really hasn’t.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#497
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Somewhat ironic since The Onion could be brought down in the same way by defamation lawsuits. Unlikely. It's worth remembering that Jones was never actually tried for defamation. He instead received a default judgment. In the US, both sides of a civil case have the right to a fair and speedy trial. If there's delays, you had better have a good reason for them and they need to fit the rules of procedure. Jones and h…

Jones' lawyers at one point forwarded a full phone dump of Jones' phone by accident to opposing council. They of course notified Jones' lawyers immediately to ask if this was a mistake that they should delete/disregard, as was their right. Jones' lawyers promptly ignored this, or didn't understand what was going on, resulting it becoming fair game after X days had passed. This goody bag of text messages and pictures…

I wonder if attorneys have any liability at all. Granted, lawyers do not provide any guarantees, and I usually tend to be more forgiving of genuine fuckups, but this seems a bit too much. The very least you expect from a hired lawyer is not to single-handedly destroy all your defense.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#499
post #367
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seems like the article is really gleeful. Good! It should be. Alex Jones is a ghoul making money from dead school shooting victims. Anything that embarrasses him is entitled to as much glee as it wants.

[flagged]

Explain what would make the two comparable.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#500
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those links don’t work for me. But these do: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:x4qyokjtdzgl7gmqhsw4ajqj/po... https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:x4qyokjtdzgl7gmqhsw4ajqj/po...

Interesting. They should.. but Bksy is bouncing between 15 to 133 new users per second at the moment, and they are on bare metal. There is major service degradation at the moment. Pour one out for their team.

Indeed, your links now work for me. My post got a few upvotes, so I don’t think I was the only one experiencing the failure.
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