Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Onion buys Infowars

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

781–790 of 1001 posts

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#781

Post by jkubicek »

notatoad wrote: post #514
bilbo0s wrote: post #225

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 also restarted the print newspaper (I'm a subscriber)

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#782

Post by pupdogg »

djfobbz wrote: post #770

I hate to burst everyone’s bubble, but this is fake news. This deal is not final. The judge in the liquidation case is holding an evidentiary hearing next week to understand how and why secret bidding was set up and why it was not open to the general public. Sounds like a BIG loss for The Onion, not to mention the potential defamation cases that could arise from news outlets publishing an unverified story about a sal…

I read your comment with skepticism but it looks like you are correct. Very odd that they would publish this story so prematurely.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#784

Post by briantakita »

jsheard wrote: post #2

The announcement by America's Finest News Source: https://theonion.com/heres-why-i-decided-to-buy-infowars/ Alex Jones response: https://x.com/RealAlexJones/status/1857058831135645739

There was an emergency hearing to challenge the sale to the onion.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/not-funny-onion-buys-inf...

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#785

Post by briantakita »

pupdogg wrote: post #782
djfobbz wrote: post #770

I hate to burst everyone’s bubble, but this is fake news. This deal is not final. The judge in the liquidation case is holding an evidentiary hearing next week to understand how and why secret bidding was set up and why it was not open to the general public. Sounds like a BIG loss for The Onion, not to mention the potential defamation cases that could arise from news outlets publishing an unverified story about a sal…

I read your comment with skepticism but it looks like you are correct. Very odd that they would publish this story so prematurely.

Odd but not surprising. There are political implications so any press is good press.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#786

Post by tailrecursion »

maxerickson wrote: post #682
tailrecursion wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it that left wingers feel that "community notes" isn't effective or sufficient to combat right wing beliefs that are wrong? The people on the right seem satisfied for now that they can "combat misinformation with more information". (That's a misquote by the way, I believe he said better information, not more. On second thought, he may have said it both ways.) Has anyone discussed why the right believes this ca…

The problem isn't "beliefs that are wrong", the problem is that it's Calvinball. Say something happened, they'll say you don't have proof. Show proof that it happened, they'll say it isn't a big deal. Demonstrate a negative consequence, they'll say it's an isolated incident. Show that it happens a lot, they'll say the victims deserve it. And so on. Of course I don't have any proof.

[flagged]

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#788

Post by hajile »

OJ Simpson payed 33.5M to the family of the woman he murdered.

It's insanity that you can flat-out kill someone and get paid less in civil court than denying a murder ever happened.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#789

Post by dicknuckle »

consteval wrote: post #560
kobalsky wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not from the US so naturally they've confused me in the past. more than once I caught myself clicking on a shared headline of theirs, so I've added them to my DNS blocklist to avoid giving them clicks, decades ago. my problem is not with their obviously ridiculous headlines, but the ones that hit the grey area, where it's as much good humor as a screamer is good horror.

The thing is the onion is pretty much always ridiculous, so if some of them are in a "gray area" I think that moreso speaks to the overall climate or your own personal biases.

More likely to be a case of not being familiar with US politics and events. We're not the world, and plenty of Americans forget that.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#790

Post by tailrecursion »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #678
tailrecursion wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it that left wingers feel that "community notes" isn't effective or sufficient to combat right wing beliefs that are wrong? The people on the right seem satisfied for now that they can "combat misinformation with more information". (That's a misquote by the way, I believe he said better information, not more. On second thought, he may have said it both ways.) Has anyone discussed why the right believes this ca…

Bullshit Asymmetry Principle[0] always applies. By the time Community Notes has appeared, tens or even hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of people will have seen the misinformation. Even once Community Notes have appeared, many won't read them. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_asymmetry_principle

Those are all valid disadvantages of community notes, and free speech in general.

How do you explain that there are smart people who have known about these very disadvantages for many years, and still respond positively to "the solution to misinformation is more/better information"?

I don't suppose you know of a solution (to a problem that I admit I haven't fully specified) that has no disadvantages. The proposed solutions I've seen appearing on the left are frightening.

Post reply on HN