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The Onion buys Infowars

nytimes.com

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Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#861

Post by randomdata »

sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #432
dionian wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your point

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.

> it has increasingly become a right wing echo chamber and place to promote conspiracy theories.

In what way? I still only see the very same industry-focused information that I first started using Twitter for. If anything, X has improved in pulling in information from more industry players than I was seeing before, so I consider it to be an even more compelling product now.

But perhaps that same algorithm improvement is what you ultimately mean? As in, that X has become better at finding the information you want to see, so if you have an interest in "right wing" or conspiracy content then it is a greater likelihood of it exposing you to that than the Twitter of yore did?

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#862

Post by libertine »

arethuza wrote: post #16
tgv wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wonderful news. I'm glad their CEO recognizes the great value of CEOs. My only worry is that this acquisition makes Global Tetraeder so large that it attracts the attention of those pesky EU bureaucrats, who will want to split it up into multiple imperfect solids.

If Brexit taught me anything it was that the correct phrase is pesky unelected EU bureaucrats!

This resistance people have to learn from both history and short-term events (on a historical scale) is impressive.

It has the same soundbites, and the narrative same structure, and the gullible still takes it.

Now the true question: are they gullible people, or just people pretending to be gullible to push an agenda?

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#864

Post by wasmitnetzen »

TeeMassive wrote: post #293
blackguardx wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? What was the offer? They won a judgement over $1B. Also, I don’t think their agenda is political, it is personal.

Jones is not worth $1B. He's barely worth a million with the lawsuits and legal costs; thus the bankruptcy. He offered them about $100M over 20 years or something like that but the SH families lawyers refused. I've watched the trial, the SH lawyers are not loyal to the victims and families.

They already got $73M from Remington. I wouldn't be after more money if I were in that position.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#865

Post by exodust »

threeseed wrote: post #704
tailrecursion wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it that left wingers feel that "community notes" isn't effective or sufficient to combat right wing beliefs that are wrong? The people on the right seem satisfied for now that they can "combat misinformation with more information". (That's a misquote by the way, I believe he said better information, not more. On second thought, he may have said it both ways.) Has anyone discussed why the right believes this ca…

Community notes isn’t scalable. So when you have people like Musk constantly posting by the time a note is added the value of it has long since diminished. Also your left/right wing argument is entirely something you’ve invented.

> "Community notes isn’t scalable."

Of course it's scalable. Community notes are written by people, so increasing the amount of people writing notes means it's scalable. Users find the added context helpful, so more notes are rated by more people more often. That's the definition of scale.

> the value of it has long since diminished.

No. The note remains forever on the tweet. There is no "diminishing". Anyone who has interacted with that post in the past is notified about the note. Our own Prime Minister here in Australia has had a few of his posts community noted. Politicians love to make bold claims about how awesome they are. They are note magnets. It's not a perfect system, but it's a good system.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#867

Post by 9cb14c1ec0 »

joezydeco wrote: post #262
sed_zeppelin wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a whim, I decided to peek at the InfoWars homepage. At this moment, I cannot determine which of the headlines are genuine InfoWars content and which are the product of Onion writers. (I assume it's genuine due to the recency of the sale closing?)

This seems like an incredible opportunity to see if it's possible to reprogram InfoWars readers away from the hate and the conspiracy theories. It would be a massive undertaking but wouldn't it be funny if the savior of modern media turned out to be a student newspaper from Madison, Wisconsin?

InfoWars audience is loyal only to Jones himself and will never visit InfoWars again. Jones will go elsewhere, 100% of his audience will follow, and the Onion is in for a big letdown. If you are dreaming about reprogramming Jone's followers by taking over InfoWars, it just shows that you know nothing about the typical InfoWars consumer.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#868

Post by bamboozled »

shadowvoxing wrote: post #866

I know you on HN aren't actually interested in the truth, but here it is anyway. The Onion did not purchase Infowars: https://x.com/RealAlexJones/status/1857223561754059168?t=7Q-...

You're linking to a video from a guy who has lied so hard he is now bankrupt, to tell us it's a lie that his company got bought due to his lies, all while being hosted on a platform elusively catered to lying...

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#869

Post by 0points »

shadowvoxing wrote: post #866

I know you on HN aren't actually interested in the truth, but here it is anyway. The Onion did not purchase Infowars: https://x.com/RealAlexJones/status/1857223561754059168?t=7Q-...

Why'd anyone take Jones words as truth anymore? He's a convicted serial lier.

The domain obviously has changed owners.

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