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The Onion buys Infowars

nytimes.com

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Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#481

Post by quantadev »

akaru wrote: post #398
quantadev wrote: post #358

[flagged]

Yes, we will lose our first amendment rights if people can’t get rich off of telling obvious lies and slander against grieving parents. Look at yourself in the mirror and try again.

We all want lies to not happen online. But the problem with censorship is that it must be done by humans, and any human will always impose their own sense of morality and politics onto others. So since no human can be trusted to be put in charge of someone elses speech that means NONE of us can be allowed to be "in charge".

No human has the omniscience to be able to flag anything as "true" or "false". Best example in recent history: Hunter Laptop. People will flag it as "false" even knowing it's "true". The FBI and 51 officials did exactly that and it was enough to swing 2020 election all by itself. Not to mention the 100s of other political lies, everything from drinking bleach hoax, to "good people on both sides" hoax.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#482

Post by mdp2021 »

> striv[ing] to make life both scarier and longer

There are "weather", "climate" and "Climate"... And that above is "Climate". A concise definition of the Times.

Bless the Onion!

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#483

Post by hipadev23 »

drawkward wrote: post #437
leptons wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Have any of them been confirmed yet? No. You can't even bring yourself to mention that the Defense nominee has actually served in the Army, and is a decorated veteran. Stop acting like such a partisan; it is far too early to commence the bed-wetting.

> You can't even bring yourself to mention that the Defense nominee has actually served in the Army, and is a decorated veteran

The amount of copium with his pick is incredible. Hegseth is woefully underqualified to be the SecDef. He was in Army Natl Guard, not Army. He spent a year at Guantanamo in 2004, deployed to Iraq in 2005-2006 and Afghanistan in 2011-2012. That's it. The rest of the time was ARR and IRR. He has never held any public office at any level.

I'm not trying to dismiss his military service itself, it's fine, but to imply it remotely qualifies him to be the SecDef is beyond reason. He's a junior officer fit to lead a company (100-200 soliders) at best.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#485

Post by Kye »

BizarroLand wrote: post #458
criddell wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really criticizing The Onion's fact-checking? Can you spot any problems with their plan for the supplement inventory? > we plan to collect the entire stock of the InfoWars warehouses into a large vat and boil the contents down into a single candy bar–sized omnivitamin that one executive (I will not name names) may eat in order to increase his power and perhaps become immortal

I was a worker on that project. A crumb of the omnivitamin fell off and touched my right hand and now that hand doesn't age anymore like Bruce Willis's hands in Death Becomes Her

More like Death Becrumbs Her

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#486

Post by openasocket »

quantadev wrote: post #358

[flagged]

I really hate this lazy argument, that what happened to Alex Jones is another step on the slippery slope to fascism or something. He was sued for defamation and lost. Defamation has been a tort in the US this entire time. Defamation as a concept goes back centuries before the US was even founded. There wasn’t some change to defamation laws that brought down Alex Jones, there wasn’t some novel interpretation of the statutes or jurisprudence. The facts aren’t even novel, this is clearly defamation of the families of Sandy Hook. Alex Jones losing his lawsuit is the system working the way it always has. This isn’t a step towards fascism; it isn’t a step at all!

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#487

Post by standardUser »

xanderlewis wrote: post #474
standardUser wrote: post #453

Worth remembering that Donald Trump embraced Alex Jones after his sustained campaign of vicious, hateful and provably-false lies about dead child. So did Joe Rogan.

I actually kind of liked Joe Rogan (from the little I saw of him interviewing scientists and other ‘intellectuals’), but the more I think about it and learn the more I realise he’s just a moron.

He's a very likeable personality. But he offers the same platform and uses the same kids gloves on all of his guests, regardless of if they are world class professionals at the top of their field or the most deranged sicko fucks peddling insane conspiracy theories.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#488

Post by int_19h »

c-linkage wrote: post #223
rightbyte wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and he profits from fooling mentally ill people. Selling homeopatic pills and whatever. But I think the right to be wrong is way more important than getting at Alexander Jones. The precedent is bad.

The Paradox of Tolerance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance > A good reply I found online: The Paradox of Tolerance disappears if you look at tolerance not as a moral standard but as a social contract. If someone does not abide the terms of mutual tolerance, then they are not covered by the contract. By definition intolerant people do not follow the rules so they are no longer covered and should not…

That's awfully close to "terrorists shouldn't have rights", and problematic for the same reason.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#489

Post by rs999gti »

sophacles wrote: post #476
rs999gti wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Alex Jones is such a big name and has other channels (x.com, Joe Rogan etc.) that he can easily build a similar site/business under a new domain name. Maybe but the judgement was for 1B USD. So any profits would probably be garnished away. Basically, lawfare was used to censor Alex Jones. I wonder if this is a case for the Supreme Court and First Amendment rights?

Was it? The constitution lays out slander and libel as types of speech that can be censored. The trashy Jones then knowingly and maliciously lied about people for profit - aka libel and slander. Seems reasonable to take the money he made as well as punitive damages. How is censorship?

> How is censorship?

How does he make future money, you know for living?

The judgement basically means the courts get to garnish his wages until the judgement is paid.

Jones is a goof to me and I like seeing him rant and rave and wear foil hats. But I don't think anyone should have their livelihood taken from them by censorship of the courts. EDIT: remember all judgments and penalties cut both ways. Today Jones tomorrow someone you follow in the media.

Lower the judgement to 1M USD (EDIT: or something reasonable) and let's move on.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#490

Post by quantadev »

jjulius wrote: post #424
quantadev wrote: post #358

[flagged]

>Without people like Alex Jones and Free Speech... Neither of those things have gone away. Jones is still himself just not under the "InfoWars" banner, and the first amendment is still very much in place. Not sure what you think is actually happening here. >You can always tell who the liars and propagandists are... ... when they admit to lying about Sandy Hook in court. Like Jones did.

Freedom of Speech was never intended to, nor does it, cause more lies or less lies. What it does do, however, is ensure that the Gov't cannot have a monopoly on lies which is precisely what happens in Tyrannical Governments where the citizens are not allowed to publicly and openly disagree with their overlords.

There are people in Britain being jailed for what amounts "impoliteness" right now, and are simply not allowed to even politely speak out against their Gov't immigration policy for example. Once Freedom of Speech is taken away, the rest of the freedoms will also be taken away. Speech is always the first thing to go, because people tend to tolerate loosing it, due to not realizing until it's too late, that it's the most valuable thing of all.

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