Live data from Hacker News

The Onion buys Infowars

nytimes.com

651–660 of 1001 posts

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a civil case, so no government/prosecutor, and the jury awarded much more than plaintiffs asked for. EDIT: Also you can disagree with the amount, but the award is literally the jury saying that the plaintiffs “prevailed with better arguments”

That doesnt mean it was a reasonable amount.

It depends. If the courts went through the regular processes and he did nothing but defy them, you could argue that on top of the money, he should have been in jail by now.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#652
post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

No, I don’t. Those situations aren’t remotely comparable. I suspect you already know this but are using the Sandy Hook victims as a jumping off point to discuss something unrelated. Please don’t do that.

Then make a full argument, not just implying that "making money from dead school shooting victims" is somehow immoral. Every newspaper does just that! Very low quality comment, not worthy of HN (but of course useful for woke virtue signalling about "how bad is Alex Jones").

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is censorship? How does he make future money, you know for living? The judgement basically means the courts get to garnish his wages until the judgement is paid. Jones is a goof to me and I like seeing him rant and rave and wear foil hats. But I don't think anyone should have their livelihood taken from them by censorship of the courts. EDIT: remember all judgments and penalties cut both ways. Today Jones tomor…

His livelihood wasn't taken. His assets were taken because he did damages and has to pay for those damages. He can go get all sorts of jobs. Yeah his wages will be garnished, but that doesn't mean his whole paycheck - just the lesser of 25% of the paycheck or 30x minimum wage. He can make money and a living with that just fine. Same as I'd expect for anyone intentionally lying and hurting people for money - whether I…

[flagged]

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#655

[flagged]

Are you implying that Alex Jones is just "doing a bit"? If so, could you explain to me what the comedic intent was behind the whole "denying a tragedy happened and encouraging the harassment of families mourning the loss of their children" episode?

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#656

In one sense this is funny, in another it's justice, but I think from a broader perspective this is just more of the same tit-for-tat nonsense that moves the needle in the wrong direction. My hypothesis is that the U.S. didn't become more divided because of moron sites like I.W. but rather because of our collective reaction to them. These groups are far easier to ignore when we stop trying to silence them.

I had a friend who often said "sunlight is the best disinfectant". Of course, he was saying that in about 2010 and I'm pretty sure it's aged extremely poorly, because the increasing publicity around conspiracy theories has only made them more popular. It feels like a stretch to say "but people were trying to silence the conspiracy theories, that's why they caught on!"

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter/X Why not call it one or the other?

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

I think the product should be called Twitter and the company called X. Sort of like Facebook/Meta. Which is what Musk should have done from the beginning, but we can fix it for him.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the internet, telling people what they want to hear will always attract an audience. If the audience is larger than a thousand or so people, then you can make money by leveraging your audience's trust in you to sell them supplements, cash for gold schemes, boxed mattresses, meal delivery kits, or VPNs.

nfts, crypto, low poly trucks etc.

> low poly trucks

My lego builds from when I was 5 were a scam?

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#659
post #405

I hope that they can keep the spirit of the infowars conspiracy genre alive. > “US seeks to destabilize Canada into a war with Mexico to solve the border crisis “

I'll take the bait: Is that from Infowars or from The Onion?

Gotta be the onion. Infowars publishes higher quality conspiracy theories that is fit to print.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#660
post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One of the two echo chambers was bound to be correct in terms of vote counting.
Post reply on HN