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The Onion buys Infowars

nytimes.com

571–580 of 1001 posts

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Flagging you from the left here. Harris outperformed Biden among only two demo groups[1]: -College educated whites -People with income > $100,000 Please, consider the possibility, that the Dems are now the party of wealthy elites, and that the diverse coalition making is happening on the R side of the aisle. [1] Edit for sourcing: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/13/opinion/obama-ezra-klein-...

The Dems are the party of wealthy elites as Trump’s campaign was funded by wealthy elites. $44billion from Elon ring a bell?

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#572

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.

So on the one hand you had Twitter, where the impression you would have had in the first few days of November is that Trump was probably going to win the election.

On the other hand you had most other platforms like Reddit, with relatively heavy-handed moderation, where the impression you would have had in the first few days of November is that Trump was probably going to lose the election.

So when you want to make a prior judgement on an extremely consequential outcome, which a posteriori was not even close, and one information ecosystem gives you the right answer, and most of the other information ecosystems give you the wrong answer, which information ecosystems do you classify as "echo chambers"?

It's possible that this was just a fluke, but it should certainly make you update your priors on which ecosystems provide a more representative sample of base reality.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#573

Referring to Jones as "...the hapless owner of InfoWars (a forgettable man with an already-forgotten name)..." in the announcement is a masterstroke given Jones' ridiculous ego. I hope Jones is never named on the new site, but frequently and flagrantly referenced in a manner like this.

I hope for the opposite, Jones has so much video and audio content available cloning him digitally and shoving an AI generated fist, ahem, somewhere, and using his likeness as the satire would be cathartic. Better yet he himself argued in court that the person live on Info Wars is a character inseparable from the brand.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#574
post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, crazy to watch all the bootlickers and nutters in his feed who are angry about this.

They're all "verified" (paid) accounts too, which is why Twitter is such a cesspool. They sort paid accounts to the top.

Freemium speech?

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this seems like a clear-cut "We want justice, not money" decision. We don't know how much the families gave up (could be a little, could be significant), but whatever it was was the difference between Infowars remaining what it is or utterly destroying Infowars' credibility. Because now the Wikipedia entry is going to say "parody site" at the top.

> We don't know how much the families gave up (could be a little, could be significant) It's hard to put yourself in someone else's shoes but as a parent I can imagine the money not playing an important factor at all in this. Money would hopefully be the least of my worries.

[deleted]

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call it Twitter. Everyone knows what you mean, and it annoys Elon.

Call it X. Everyone knows what you mean and it really stirs shit up with people who are emotionally attached to the old brand name.

Use both and get everybody!

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#577
post #81

Funny concept. Shame that The Onion's writing these days so mid.

I think the Babylon Bee has been a good replacement.

Browsing their site I found an article that is making light of the suppression of women voters by using sexist tropes.

> Hundreds of thousands of women across America were left standing utterly clueless as to what to do at a voting booth after their husbands failed to tell them who to vote for.

> Voting at several polling stations ground to a halt after all of the booths became occupied by bewildered women. "This is a disaster," said poll worker John Bingham. "We've had thirty women taking up every booth for the past three hours, just staring like deer in headlights. We offered to bring them lunch while they made their choice, but they couldn't decide on a restaurant."

> At publishing time, voting stations had been forced to designate one voting booth for men only to allow voting to continue.

Given the history of women's right to vote, current laws causing women to needlessly die, and that many women today are undoubtedly being coerced by spouses to vote a certain way, calling this simply tone deaf would be extremely charitable. It is only truly funny if you have "women, am I right" as one of your shibboleths. Without that, it is clear misogyny.

All this to say I don't think a site promoting sexist views is a good alternative for a site that has made a master-class punchline out of trying to take a terrorist bigot off the air.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#578
post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>CNN has called all conservatives Nazis for years, and they are liars. This is a very disingenuous take. There's a litany of footage of Alex Jones saying everything he said about Sandy Hook being fake and speaking ill of those impacted family members - do you have a litany of footage of CNN anchors/staff calling all conservatives Nazis?

CNN did participate in the Russiagate conspiracy which probably had wider effects on US democracy.

You mean the conspiracy that everyone, CNN included, thought had teeth at first, but then realized it didn't and shifted their reporting accordingly? That one?

Unless you can show me where, this year, CNN repeatedly said Trump shouldn't be elected because he explicitly colluded with Russia in 2016, you're trying to compare apples and oranges.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps The Onion should ask - who gets most promotion of this? Well, we’re all talking about the onion. And I, personally, haven’t read onion content in a long, long while. So this kind of put them back on the radar for me. But I could be one of only a few people who fell out of onion readership? More likely is that they believe the next four years will provide them a lot of comedy fodder and they’re setting their p…

>I, personally, haven’t read onion content in a long, long while The onion was kind of dead for a while under various shitty owners, but was bought this year by Jeff Lawson of Twilio and is now being run by former NBC reporter Ben Collins. The new stuff since the acquisition has been a bit hit or miss, but at least they're trying again.

They have posted great news segment videos again

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#580
post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He has for some time been telling his listeners to buy supplements from a new company set up in his father's name that is a thin cutout for the one ostensibly run by himself. It seems likely a good lawyer could pierce that corporate veil and go after the new company, but I don't know if that has happened.

> It seems likely a good lawyer could pierce that corporate veil and go after the new company, but I don't know if that has happened. He's spent the whole time since losing the lawsuit illegally shifting assets to his parents and they bankruptcy courts haven't seemed to be able to stop that.

For what it's worth, a lawyer _did_ ask the presiding Judge Christopher Lopez to tell Alex Jones he definitely can't do that and solidify this in writing the terms of bankruptcy, and the judge simply refused to even try on the basis that everyone involved is an adult and ought to know better.
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