Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion • Hacker News Board

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#321

Post by fenomas » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 3:08 PM UTC

impossiblefork wrote: post #285

mdorazio wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look up "nuclear verdicts". The unreasonably large dollar amount is intentional and not meant to reflect the real value of harm caused.

Yes, but a billion dollars. It's 30x the sale price of Minalyzer, a very cool Swedish firm which was bought by Veracio. It's a level where, when it is an international case, it makes sense for states to get involved with diplomatic pressure. Surely your legal system must be more reasonable than this, because if it's like this, how can it function?

It wasn't a billion dollars for a single thing, it was awards to 15 different defendants, ranging from ~30-120 million each.

More importantly, you're missing that this was a default judgment - Jones didn't defend himself, so the award is kind of the theoretical maximum. The results aren't comparable to regular court cases where both sides make their case.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#322

Post by impossiblefork » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 3:09 PM UTC

probably_wrong wrote: post #312

impossiblefork wrote: post #249

I really don't understand how a judgement this large can be reasonable in a case where nobody has had his house burned down. A billion dollars is ten billion crowns, that's 10 000 million crowns, or around 5 000 apartments. I don't understand how 5 000 apartments can be a judgement handed out to an individual over something he says. It doesn't really matter what he says, when it's this kind of huge amounts. One can't…

Stealing from an earlier comment of mine [1] in case you want to read the comments. Alex Jones declared in court that his show reaches about a hundred million people. If that's true then he's paying $10 for every person who heard him defaming the families of dead children. This would be the same principle as those fines in Nordic countries sometimes that depend on how rich someone is. If you can influence one hundred…

Yeah, we don't have that in Sweden except for criminal acts, and then the fines are a certain number of days of your income as a substitute for imprisonment.

In civil cases our judgements are usually not enormous.

I don't feel that your reasoning above makes the judgement more reasonable. Maybe he does reach that many people, but he obviously makes nowhere near that amount of money and it's out of line with other defamation judgements.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#323

Post by wakawaka28 » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 3:09 PM UTC

avs733 wrote: post #264

wakawaka28 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no public auction of InfoWars. That alone is a stain on the whole process. The objective of a bankruptcy court is not to institute some arbitrary meta-ethical standard. It is to deliver maximum cash to the creditors in a fair manner. >Is the issue that there are other creditors who are unhappy with this, who would get paid before the aggrieved families' damages would? The lawyers seem to be fine with it, as…

> There was no public auction of InfoWars. That alone is a stain on the whole process. The objective of a bankruptcy court is not to institute some arbitrary meta-ethical standard. It is to deliver maximum cash to the creditors in a fair manner. Again, maximimum value not cash.

I say cash loosely speaking. You at least cannot pledge income from debt that is presently being negotiated down or cancelled. That kind of thing isn't "value" because it's imaginary.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#324

Post by pclmulqdq » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 3:09 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #231

pclmulqdq wrote: post #6

This is probably the correct decision. Alex Jones's vitamin company offered 2x more cash, and in the case of a bankruptcy, cash completely trumps any notion of "giving up debt." Especially when the debt being settled is astronomically large and you are giving up a very small portion of it ($7 million out of $1.5 billion). The other creditors are far better off getting more cash, and those $7 million of claims are wor…

Will hold judgement until I read the judge’s opinion, but this bit: “‘It seemed doomed almost from the moment they decided to go to a sealed bid,’ Judge Lopez said.” is nonsense from an auction theoretical perspective. First-price sealed-bid auctions are a vetted auction system [1]—almost all real estate and corporate mergers, for example, are sold like this, as are government tenders [2]. (They’re not as efficient a…

Like other commenters, you have posited a theoretical framework for how a bankruptcy court theoretically should work. None of this is how bankruptcy court actually works.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#325

Post by wakawaka28 » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 3:10 PM UTC

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #242

wakawaka28 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

"steal someone's stuff through improper processes" How is a bankruptcy case "stealing stuff through improper process"?

The trustee here did not follow acceptable processes. Sorry I thought that was clear from the article.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#326

Post by munk-a » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 3:10 PM UTC

adolph wrote: post #309

munk-a wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's complicated - it went to the bidder that would result in the two largest debtors being the happiest with the outcome but that bidder didn't bid the most money in a regular manner. The structure of the bid was quite complex but essentially the largest debtor agreed to enlarge the share the second largest debtor would receive by supplementing it from their own share due to the awards in the two court cases being s…

That’s a lot of text to say “yes, it didn’t go to the highest bidder.“

That's incorrect - it's a lot of text to say it went to the second highest bidder. The onion bid was the one that provided more value to the creditors.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#327

Post by hibikir » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 3:11 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #232

ajb wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what this judgement says. It actually says the sale did not generate enough money for the creditors and the process should be run again. I think the Judge maybe naive in thinking that re-running an auction will generate more money (normally it will generate less, as the losing bidders will drop out) but he did not agree with Jones' claims.

Will the losing bidders drop out, or not? In a sealed bid you have to guess what others will bid - you want to bid $1 more than your competitors (or if you will lose the bid make your competitor pay as much as possible). The judge is saying because the bids were seals losing bidders had no clue what their correct bid is and some are likely to have bid less than they would have in open bidding. Who is right I don't kn…

You can test this in boardgames about auctioning: See Modern Art, a game about profiting from art, where you have multiple forma of bidding. Part of the game is to figure out when each auction will provide the most money.

Blind bidding doesn't let people improve their bid, but it also lets someone bid much higher than the second best bid, so it can be extremely profitable in some situations. Compare to a version of said auction where you bid only once, but where the winner will only pay the second best bid plus one.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#328

Post by a12k » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 3:11 PM UTC

ensignavenger wrote: post #302

a12k wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The creditors agreed to and supported the Global Tetrahedron plan to purchase Infowars and settle the bankruptcy. Seems like the judge is overstepping given Delaware law on this matter.

Bankruptcy law is federal law, Delaware law has nothing to do with it.

They typically file in the United States Court for the District of Delaware, a federal court located in Delaware. Delaware law plays a significant part in these cases even though they’re in Fed court. Corporate charters, filings, fiduciary duties, property rights, choice of laws, etc etc etc are all determined by Delaware law and used in the federal court.

Federal Bankruptcy Law provides the procedural framework.

So, Delaware law does in fact have nearly everything to do with it.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#329

Post by stavros » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 3:12 PM UTC

munk-a wrote: post #295

stavros wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, I wonder why they stopped at 20.

They didn't - it was a more modest amount that they put daily compounding interest on. The number keeps growing larger and larger by the day.

Well, that makes sense, at least.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#330

Post by munk-a » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 3:12 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #307

munk-a wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's complicated - it went to the bidder that would result in the two largest debtors being the happiest with the outcome but that bidder didn't bid the most money in a regular manner. The structure of the bid was quite complex but essentially the largest debtor agreed to enlarge the share the second largest debtor would receive by supplementing it from their own share due to the awards in the two court cases being s…

> went to the bidder that would result in the two largest debtors being the happiest with the outcome but that bidder didn't bid the most money in a regular manner The creditors own the asset. If every dollar the creditors are owed voted, which bid would they choose?

The onion bid - by far. If the bid was chosen by creditors weighted by owed value the Connecticut families would solely dictate the terms as they are owed more than 90% of the value resulting from this auction.