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At long last, InfoWars is ours

theonion.com

81–90 of 341 posts

Re: At long last, InfoWars is ours

#81

[flagged]

The amount of the judgment seems reasonable for years of harassment against a bunch of people, all done for a profit, plus a bunch of egregious misbehavior in court.

Reasonable by what metric? I've seen judgements that are tiny fractions of this for corporate crimes that affects hundreds or thousands of people. Is it reasonable because Alex Jones can afford it (hint: he can't, not even if he wasn't hiding his money)?

This judgement ends up being more akin to punishing him by forcing him off of his platform, which is actually unconstitutional even for a shitbag like him.

Re: At long last, InfoWars is ours

#82
post #9

Seems like it's still not theirs until a judge signs off on it. That sale was scuttled by a bankruptcy court. Now, The Onion has re-emerged with a new plan: licensing the website from Gregory Milligan, the court-appointed manager of the site. On Monday, Mr. Milligan asked Maya Guerra Gamble, a judge in Texas’s Travis County District Court overseeing the disposition of Infowars, to approve that licensing agreement in…

I’m surprised they’ve said it so confidently given how it completely collapsed last time…

Consider the fact this is a satirical news website; a fictional CEO; an imaginary corporation; and it literally proposes a vision of "Not just ads, but scams! Not just scams, but lies with no object [...] A digital platform where, every day, visitors sacrifice themselves at altars of delusion and misery"

I'm surprised you're surprised.

Re: At long last, InfoWars is ours

#86
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tim Heidecker, one of the comedians behind “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, has been hired to serve as “creative director of Infowars.” He said he initially plans to parody Mr. Jones’s “whole modus operandi.” > Mr. Heidecker has been working on his impression of Mr. Jones. But eventually, when that joke gets old, Mr. Heidecker said that he hoped to turn Infowars into a destin…

His brand of comedy is very hit-or-miss for me (the best way I can describe it is "smug"), but context drives me to wish him luck in his presumed efforts to turn InfoWars into a literal joke instead of just a figurative one.

I would describe it as absurdism.

Re: At long last, InfoWars is ours

#87
post #43

It was barely funny when I read the headline a few years ago. Really weird story, I guess I just don't understand the humor at all. I'd rather stop hearing about InfoWars entirely.

Bear in mind buying it to ruin it is a very real public service. Alex Jones was hoping a conservative ally would buy it and then just continue to let him do what he wants.

Jokes aside, The Onion is basically spending a giant pile of money to burn the website down.

Re: At long last, InfoWars is ours

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of the judgment seems reasonable for years of harassment against a bunch of people, all done for a profit, plus a bunch of egregious misbehavior in court.

Reasonable by what metric? I've seen judgements that are tiny fractions of this for corporate crimes that affects hundreds or thousands of people. Is it reasonable because Alex Jones can afford it (hint: he can't, not even if he wasn't hiding his money)? This judgement ends up being more akin to punishing him by forcing him off of his platform, which is actually unconstitutional even for a shitbag like him.

those judgements should be higher too

I think this one was high because alex jones harassed parents of murdered children to the point where they had to move out of the town their children were buried in. These people were harassed to the point of being afraid to visit the graves of their children. Sometimes examples need to be set in egregious cases.

Re: At long last, InfoWars is ours

#89
post #9

Seems like it's still not theirs until a judge signs off on it. That sale was scuttled by a bankruptcy court. Now, The Onion has re-emerged with a new plan: licensing the website from Gregory Milligan, the court-appointed manager of the site. On Monday, Mr. Milligan asked Maya Guerra Gamble, a judge in Texas’s Travis County District Court overseeing the disposition of Infowars, to approve that licensing agreement in…

I’m surprised they’ve said it so confidently given how it completely collapsed last time…

I believe its because its a different structure.

Previously, they were trying to buy the assets outright. That got into the "one group of families is owned $1.4 billion and another is owned $50 million" and the "how do you maximize the returns from Alex Jones assets to satisfy those claims?"

This is using a different structure.

> On Monday, Mr. Milligan asked Maya Guerra Gamble, a judge in Texas’s Travis County District Court overseeing the disposition of Infowars, to approve that licensing agreement in a court filing. Under the terms, The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, would pay $81,000 a month to license Infowars.com and its associated intellectual property — such as its name — for an initial six months, with an option to renew for another six months.

They're not buying it - they're licensing it from the victims families instead.

Re: At long last, InfoWars is ours

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of the judgment seems reasonable for years of harassment against a bunch of people, all done for a profit, plus a bunch of egregious misbehavior in court.

Reasonable by what metric? I've seen judgements that are tiny fractions of this for corporate crimes that affects hundreds or thousands of people. Is it reasonable because Alex Jones can afford it (hint: he can't, not even if he wasn't hiding his money)? This judgement ends up being more akin to punishing him by forcing him off of his platform, which is actually unconstitutional even for a shitbag like him.

When corporations are sued, they tend to take the lawsuits seriously, which is probably a big factor in why their outcomes are so different than Jones'.
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