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The Onion to Take over InfoWars

nytimes.com

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Re: The Onion to Take over InfoWars

#221

Post by freejazz »

tsimionescu wrote: post #123
triceratops wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government didn't bring this civil suit. Ruling on civil disputes is the government's role. That's not what prosecution means.

This is an absurd line, and plainly wrong. If I were to bring a civil suit against you because the comment above offended my sensibilities, it would be quickly thrown out of court because it is your first amendment right to say anything you like, with certain exceptions that the government recognizes as limitations of this right. Even though this is a civil matter, it is still a judgement on government law. This is n…

The ignorance on this website is both astonishing and incredibly obnoxious

Re: The Onion to Take over InfoWars

#222

Post by abernard1 »

fncypants wrote: post #183
tnelsond4 wrote: post #125

Organizations love to run controlled opposition. Just came out that the Southern poverty law center has been funding the KKK of all things. https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdal/pr/federal-grand-jury-char...

Are you not aware that that the credibility of the US DOJ under the present administration has been completely destroyed and you should not trust anything they say simply because they said it in a press release (perhaps especially because they said it in a press release)? Federal judges have repeatedly declined to give the DOJ the benefit of the doubt (called "presumption of regularity") and all but called them liars…

I'm definitely not aware that the credibility of the US DOJ has been destroyed.

And I question why a 501c3 charity would need "field informants" and to launder money through shell corporations. Especially to leaders of these organizations who were (1) coordinating some of these rallies and (2) due to the materially dishonest treatment of the "fine people hoax" for years.

Is the SPLC an intelligence organization? Am I missing something?

Re: The Onion to Take over InfoWars

#223

Post by flumes_whims_ »

phatfish wrote: post #93
noirscape wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides Jones and his lawyer absolutely botching his defense and basically giving up the case (and pissing off the courts as I understand it, which is a bad fucking idea and usually also leads to larger fines), the $1.4 billion is just what Jones managed to rack it up to before entering bankruptcy proceedings, which froze his debt collectors out for a bit. Alongside the class action, Jones was iirc also facing severa…

Surely he just waits for the Trump pardon in 2028? Or is this something he can't be pardoned for?

What is the last thing Trump said about Alex Jones?

Re: The Onion to Take over InfoWars

#224

Post by DFHippie »

tt24 wrote: post #204
jeroenhd wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. With how much money was made and direct attacks on individual members on the legal system, I think it's a breath of fresh air to see the rich and influential actually get punished. There's frustrating the legal system, and then there's lying under oath and executing smear campaigns against judges. If Alex Jones wanted a smaller settlement, he could've chosen to destroy fewer lies, comply with legal…

> rich and influential This unidimensional analysis is so funny to me. When your lens forces you to group together Alex Jones, Bill Gates, and George Soros as part of the same “rich and influential” clique, maybe it’s time to reconsider your dimension. Alex Jones is nothing. At best he can be described as a small business owner.

What is your threshold for rich and influential? You don't have to have Musk money to have sufficient pull to escape the consequences most people would face for action X. I don't think this is a difficult or controversial observation.

If you're net worth is above $15 million or so in the US, your in the 99th percentile. There are many orders of magnitude between you and Bezos, but you're rich. And if you have a media empire that is watched by millions, you're influential.

Re: The Onion to Take over InfoWars

#225

Post by flumes_whims_ »

mikeodds wrote: post #25

Maybe I’m out of touch, but doesn’t a $1.4b dollar settlement for this seem rather… large?

IIRC, the judge specifically said the amount was not about harm but specifically about shutting down InfoWars. So, give them such a heavy fine that would be impossible to pay.

Re: The Onion to Take over InfoWars

#226

Post by reactordev »

quisquous wrote: post #111
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brilliant plans for the future: https://theonion.info/?p=1 > Such is the InfoWars I envision: An infinite virtual surface teeming with ads. Not just ads, but scams! Not just scams, but lies with no object, free radical misinformation, sentences and images so poorly thought out that they are unhealthy even to view for just a few seconds. The InfoWars of old was only the prototype for the hell I know we can build toget…

It's like setting out to write "The King in Yellow"

"...brought to you by Squarespace."

Re: The Onion to Take over InfoWars

#227

Post by [deleted] »

some_random wrote: post #197
sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think your values are sufficient deterrent for the kind of behavior Alex Jones and InfoWars exhibited and substantially profited from. They made more than the 22-44 million you're suggesting. They would still have profited from their actions. I think it needs to be large enough to be a real deterrent. So it needs to be large enough that there is a real risk of turning substantial profit into substantial loss.…

So that kinda sums it up then, people who disagree with you (including me) think that the punitive damages should be rooted in punishing Alex Jones et al, not in destroying him forever.

[deleted]

Re: The Onion to Take over InfoWars

#229

Post by abernard1 »

One of the things I love about this is while Alex Jones was definitely negligent in his case, this pretty much does exactly what he wanted.

One of the things I've discovered in my long career of people being wrong about everything is how strong the team sports dynamic of social politics really is. I was high school friends with a writer for the Daily Show and the thing I realized is how humor and dismissal was a way of creating social superiority and evasion of legitimate arguments.

Right now, the world is changing greatly. Lots of people are retreating into a shell of humor in order to avoid it. Mass cognitive dissonance about the nature of reality. But reality and life goes on.

Re: The Onion to Take over InfoWars

#230

Post by smallmancontrov »

dmd wrote: post #220
z2 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No joke, I use Facebook every year or so to access the marketplace and at the time my feed was roughly half rage-bait, and the other half being what I can only describe as AI-generated almost-pornography. Both had thousands of what looked like genuinely real interactions per post, mostly from developing country users.

It's really amazing how different people's experiences with Facebook are. I have been on Facebook since it started (I was at one of the original schools, I was in that famous first million users). My feed is entirely photos of friends' kids, invitations to local events (things I actually attend), folk-dancing groups I'm involved with, and the like. I have literally never, not once, not ever, seen any rage-bait or pol…

Huh, I wonder if there's a flag on the first million users (or some proxy for "Zuck's cohort") from the worst of the slop shoveling. It would sure save him some pointed remarks.
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