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

Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 1001 posts

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#411

Post by pclmulqdq »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #397
pclmulqdq wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> you have posited a theoretical framework for how a bankruptcy court theoretically should work. None of this is how bankruptcy court actually works Literally started by saying I'm holding judgement until reading the opinion. My point is simply that if the reason the judge raised for re-starting the process is solely around the bids being sealed, they're wrong in a provable way.

Oh, it's not that at all. The problem with auction procedures in this case wasn't the actual auction methodology, but the lack of notice and the difficulty of submitting a bid. In any case, a judge does make the decisions in a bankruptcy court when the parties disagree about things. In this case, the creditors are not in agreement that this was okay.

A sealed-bid auction is a bit non-standard in a bankruptcy, but there should be no problem if all the bids get revealed post-facto. I wouldn't be surprised if this was mentioned in the opinion because it doesn't help you say that the auction was fair in light of everything else (if you're going to do non-standard stiff, do it in a very clean-looking way).

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#412

Post by rbanffy »

jason-phillips wrote: post #402
jmward01 wrote: post #42

It is clear that Jones and his relatives have moved money and assets around in order to shield them from the verdict. Now, money that should have been already given to the victims is being used to steal back the megaphone that caused harmed in the first place. The end effect will probably be even more subscribers and money for Jones which he will use with even less restraint since he knows there are no consequences.…

> What recourse is left when the legal system is this broken? Exactly. The lawfare must stop.

They won a defamation lawsuit when what he did was way more than just defamation. He deliberately made the families' lives hell, and did that for profit.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#413

Post by devops99 »

ethbr1 wrote: post #136
wakawaka28 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> mere defamation I think what Alex Jones did is more than mere defamation. Repeatedly lying about the reality of a school mass shooting, over years, in such a way that he caused threats to be made against the families of victims? Incitement to credible threats of violence, and especially continuing to do so even after you're aware that's what your listeners are doing, deserves severe consequences.

> in such a way that he caused threats

In such a way that somebody else decided on their own do something...

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#414

Post by sidewndr46 »

pdpi wrote: post #288
goodluckchuck wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what the internet says, it didn’t go to the highest bidder.

Put simply, the internet is wrong. FUAC's offer was all cash. The Onion offered less cash, but offered other incentives (AIUI, a share of whatever revenue they make from Infowars in the future). Saying that The Onion's bid was lower requires you to put a dollar value on those other incentives. The fact that the two creditors (read: victims' families) that would benefit from those incentives were willing to sacrifice…

The idea that Global Tetrahedron would generate revenue from InfoWars is a farce. Jones is InfoWars. Any market value assigned to InfoWars without Jones explicitly involvement is a farce. Even a non bankruptcy sale of InfoWars would require him to participate in the business for an extended period of time. Even then, it'd just be some investor bankrolling Jones.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#415

Post by wat10000 »

wakawaka28 wrote: post #346
ternnoburn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking the man's source of income is absolutely a way to get paid. He can work a day job like anyone else.

No, it's not. He will not be paying that. He might have paid a smaller yet still large amount, but he's certainly not going to work in McDonalds to pay off $1 billion dollars. He has the same legal rights as anyone else to not be a debt slave.

I don’t think they’ll throw him in jail if he sells off all his assets, pays everything he can, but refuses to work a job so he can pay more.

Being liable for an amount more than you have means the people you owe won’t be able to get the full amount, but it doesn’t mean you get to keep all your stuff and pay them nothing.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#416

Post by devops99 »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #349
ethbr1 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mere defamation I think what Alex Jones did is more than mere defamation. Repeatedly lying about the reality of a school mass shooting, over years, in such a way that he caused threats to be made against the families of victims? Incitement to credible threats of violence, and especially continuing to do so even after you're aware that's what your listeners are doing, deserves severe consequences.

I haven’t been following closely - I wonder if the people who made the death threats were charged? I haven’t heard anything about that.

[flagged]

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#417

Post by austin-cheney »

trollbridge wrote: post #216
amalcon wrote: post #170

I am just some guy who doesn't actually know much about this. This being the internet, though: If I understand, it's pretty routine in real estate foreclosures for a creditor to win the auction simply by bidding the outstanding value of the debt. Thus not needing to actually come up with much or any cash. This gains the ability to use or resell the property however you want. How is one situation different from the ot…

Bankruptcy runs by different rules than foreclosures (which is why people about to be foreclosed on often file bankruptcy). Specifically, junior creditors are protected, and everyone gets a proportionate share of the proceeds. In a foreclosure, the senior lienholder usually gets the property and the junior lienholders either get nothing or get what’s left over after the senior creditor gets whatever they were owed. I…

> I’m really not sure why the creditors in this case did a shady no bid deal…

The reason is because there were two civil judgements against Alex Jones to satisfy with the second judgement being about 27x larger than the first. As a result, it is mathematically impossible to run an auction that triggers an outcome large enough to satisfy both judgements proportionally and positively. Many members of the second judgement decided to forego any winnings from this auction so as to satisfy the first judgement positively on the condition they would earn a share of ad revenue from the intellectual property in the future. Their primary motivation was not ad revenue or any other form of income, but instead ensuring the concerned intellectual property rests with an owner not friendly to Alex Jones.

That is the reason the Onion won the auction despite offering the lower of two bids, because the larger bid did not positively satisfy the parties to the first judgement.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#418

Post by jefftk »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #373
rtkwe wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exact form of the auction is really really important though. A Vickery auction is single round and sealed but is critically a second price auction so bidder are incentivized to bid their maximum because they will get the second price which wasn't the case in this auction. Without the second price you're trying to bid just enough to outbid the other party/parties which won't maximize bid size. > Isn't it also mean…

> exact form of the auction is really really important though Sure. But nobody uses Vickrey because it's impossible to explain to the public why the highest bid wasn't accepted. > Without the second price you're trying to bid just enough to outbid the other party/parties which won't maximize bid size Which is exactly what happens in any single-round first-price format. The only thing an open auction does is facilitat…

> nobody uses Vickrey because it's impossible to explain to the public why the highest bid wasn't accepted

Google used to use second-price for all their ads, though I think they've stopped: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/10858748

(Which I think, sadly, supports your claim around them being confusing)

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#419

Post by pythonaut_16 »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #348
snowwrestler wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it the correct decision that Alex Jones has a judgment against him for more money than he claims to have, but also Alex Jones has enough money to enter a bid to satisfy the judgement? It’s a farce.

My comment has nothing to do with moral righteousness, merely legal correctness. However, the idea that the InfoWars brand is worth less than $10 million is a bit silly to me given its reach among crazy (and highly manipulable) people, and the low size of both bids (and the fact that only people intimately involved in bankruptcy procedures knew when and how to put in bids) suggests that the auction process was probab…

So where were all the other bidders offering $10 million plus?

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#420

Post by wat10000 »

cthalupa wrote: post #338
wakawaka28 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not arguing against bankruptcy. I'm saying that bankruptcy is a structured process that is supposed to generate monetary outcomes for everyone. Selling off assets in a non-competitive process is basically a criminal move, especially if you collude with one of the bidders who is also a creditor. Bankruptcy itself aside, the judgement against Alex Jones here is huge. I haven't looked it up but I'm sure it broke rec…

Sealed auctions are a competitive manner and the sandy hook families are in all practical reality the only creditors of note. Their damages absolutely dwarf his other creditors to the point where they were already in line to effectively receive nothing. Going against the will of the families is absurd to begin with. > But clearly restitution is not the objective. Sure. And damages can be punitive in nature.

In this case, about half a billion dollars in punitive damages.

Free advice, kids: stay in school, don’t do drugs, and comply with court orders when you’re sued.

Post reply on HN