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The Onion buys Infowars

nytimes.com

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Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#831

Post by mvelbaum »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #444

The NPR article conveys that this was more than just a very clever stunt > "The Connecticut families agreed to forgo a portion of their recovery to increase the overall value of The Onion's bid, enabling its success," according to their lawyers. ... Jones was hoping a bidder ideologically aligned with him would have bought Infowars and hired him back to keep doing his show. https://www.npr.org/2024/11/14/nx-s1-518939…

This is actually one of the dumbest stunts I'd ever seen. InfoWars is nothing without Alex Jones. They've wasted all their money since Alex will start a new project and his viewership will move.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#832

Post by defrost »

lmm wrote: post #829
int0x29 wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linus Torvalds political opinions, to the extent I've seen him express them, are hardly in line with Alex Jones. So this feels odd.

I remember a claim that the wokies were trying to take down Linus Torvalds doing the rounds at some point. E.g. https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2015/11/04/feminists-are-tryi...

The source being Eric S. Raymond covering for why women avoid him checks out.

Woke scaremongering makes the old red scare hysteria look like a mild panic attack.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#833

Post by guappa »

wyager wrote: post #572
sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since Musk's acquisition of Twitter, it has increasingly become a right wing echo chamber and place to promote conspiracy theories. And Alex Jones' InfoWars and Elon Musk's Twitter are both likely to show you advertisements for supplements of dubious effectiveness and other generally scammy products. So yeah, Jones fits right in there.

So on the one hand you had Twitter, where the impression you would have had in the first few days of November is that Trump was probably going to win the election. On the other hand you had most other platforms like Reddit, with relatively heavy-handed moderation, where the impression you would have had in the first few days of November is that Trump was probably going to lose the election. So when you want to make a…

Reddit depends very much on which subreddit you are. There's plenty of racists, trump supporters and so on on reddit.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#834

Post by alt187 »

joezydeco wrote: post #328
ceejayoz wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This seems like an incredible opportunity to see if it's possible to reprogram InfoWars readers away from the hate and the conspiracy theories. Not a chance; they just flee to other outlets. Even Fox News saw huge numbers of people jump to NewsMax and OANN and whatnot.

The trick is to do it without the readers noticing .

> The trick is to lie to them to get them away from their hateful and conspiracy theories

I can't articulate what you're admitting to exactly, but it's an interesting admission.

On a more serious note, most of the readers of these kinds of outlets aren't stupid in this specific sense. They go looking for confirmation, rather than new information. This is why they're hard to untangle.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#835

Post by SCdF »

wyager wrote: post #572
sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since Musk's acquisition of Twitter, it has increasingly become a right wing echo chamber and place to promote conspiracy theories. And Alex Jones' InfoWars and Elon Musk's Twitter are both likely to show you advertisements for supplements of dubious effectiveness and other generally scammy products. So yeah, Jones fits right in there.

So on the one hand you had Twitter, where the impression you would have had in the first few days of November is that Trump was probably going to win the election. On the other hand you had most other platforms like Reddit, with relatively heavy-handed moderation, where the impression you would have had in the first few days of November is that Trump was probably going to lose the election. So when you want to make a…

The vibe on other platforms was that it was going to be close, not that Kamala was going to win, which is the correct even handed judgement, and now all the votes have being counted, was correct.

The idea that I stopped clock is right twice a day but because it's twitter that means it's always right is a bit... come on. Hackernews commenters are supposed to be better than that.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#836

Post by soco »

andrepd wrote: post #357
soco wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now if we want to get into dirty details, no bureaucrat is ever elected. You elect the representatives, and they nominate in turn whoever bureaucrats they feel comfy to work with. Or is this in the UK different?

The EU is governed by the European Commission, which is not elected. Say what you will about reactionary British conservatives, the fact remains that the EU is not a particularly democratic organisation.

A bit ironic hearing that critique coming from a monarchy... maybe because it takes one to recognize one?

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#837

Post by guappa »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #343
frankhorrigan wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Infowars is a supplements business. It’s grifts all the way down.

Anyone ever wonder why there are very few far-right comedians?

Because their idea of comedy is something like: "foreigners, am I right?" *shaking head

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#838

Post by PaulRobinson »

sverhagen wrote: post #725
NelsonMinar wrote: post #444

The NPR article conveys that this was more than just a very clever stunt > "The Connecticut families agreed to forgo a portion of their recovery to increase the overall value of The Onion's bid, enabling its success," according to their lawyers. ... Jones was hoping a bidder ideologically aligned with him would have bought Infowars and hired him back to keep doing his show. https://www.npr.org/2024/11/14/nx-s1-518939…

>bought Infowars and hired him back to keep doing his show So, if any, where's the value? In InfoWars, or with Jones? I.e., can't he just go into a new venture, or go onto someone's payroll?

Making life harder for Alex Jones, making him start again with nothing, is quite a satisfying thing to do for many counter-parties here.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#839

Post by 71bw »

consumer451 wrote: post #408
latexr wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those links don’t work for me. But these do: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:x4qyokjtdzgl7gmqhsw4ajqj/po... https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:x4qyokjtdzgl7gmqhsw4ajqj/po...

Interesting. They should.. but Bksy is bouncing between 15 to 133 new users per second at the moment, and they are on bare metal. There is major service degradation at the moment. Pour one out for their team.

Only for the platform to die in a month anyway, when everybody inadvertenly runs back to Twitter...

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#840

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

the_optimist wrote: post #701
tim333 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The threats were made by Jones followers rather than Jones personally.

If I understand correctly: if I threaten a third party based on something you’ve said, you now face legal liability?

A single person reacting that way is unlikely to make the speaker liable, but when a large crowd reacts the same way and the speaker does not make attempts to defuse the situation, then liability should be assigned.
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