881–890 of 1001 posts
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-...
I can see it looks a bit iffy saying there's an auction and then taking a private bid without letting others bid.
Referring to Jones as "...the hapless owner of InfoWars (a forgettable man with an already-forgotten name)..." in the announcement is a masterstroke given Jones' ridiculous ego. I hope Jones is never named on the new site, but frequently and flagrantly referenced in a manner like this.
I hope for the opposite, Jones has so much video and audio content available cloning him digitally and shoving an AI generated fist, ahem, somewhere, and using his likeness as the satire would be cathartic. Better yet he himself argued in court that the person live on Info Wars is a character inseparable from the brand.
Satire is protected in the US and many other countries, but "cloning" a person using AI implies that it makes difficult to distinguish between the real person and the clone. I guess it can pass if it is obvious that it is indeed satire, but that would be risky.
Maybe it could be remediated by having him wear a clown hat or something.
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And yet seeing the case through to the end instead of taking the first offer has seen Infowars taken from Alex Jones. I don't speak for the families, but if I were in their shoes that would be far more valuable to me than maximizing my payout.
Alex Jones just created a new company and be shielded by Texas very protective laws against civil damages. So they accomplished nothing and will get barely nothing after legal costs.
Unless Jones manages to limit himself to telling lies about people who use his new company he will be open to lawsuits outside of Texas.
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Right, the intention of the suit was to personally harm Jones as retribution for the immeasurable harm he has caused them. They don't need money, I'm sure they have enough. They denied his money because that isn't the point - they want to mock him. And, I fully support them. They're in a unique position and frankly I'm very impressed at their restraint in choosing the legal system over violence. If I were Jones, I wo…
Their intention was to silence him. Literally what they said; which is illegal. > They don't need money, These are normal people, what are you talking about? > I'm very impressed at their restraint in choosing the legal system over violence. That's not impressive, that's what the vast majority of people do.
The vast majority of people don’t have to endure someone with an audience of millions falsely claiming their murdered children were part of a government conspiracy. Under those circumstances, many might be driven to retaliate violently. It’s a testament to these individuals' strength and restraint that they pursued justice through the legal system instead.
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I'm sure Zombie Kaczynski will have cogent contributions to make still.
My next low budget horror film is going to be Zombie Kaczynski
Unless you’re going to go for Best of the Worst. Then I might actually watch the movie itself too.
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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…
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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.
Yeah — exactly. I’ve never seen anything that makes me doubt he’s a good person. But he seems utterly unable to distinguish between bullshit artists and genuine experts.
The announcement by America's Finest News Source: https://theonion.com/heres-why-i-decided-to-buy-infowars/ Alex Jones response: https://x.com/RealAlexJones/status/1857058831135645739
Seems like the article is really gleeful. Somewhat ironic since The Onion could be brought down in the same way by defamation lawsuits.
I hate to burst everyone’s bubble, but this is fake news. This deal is not final. The judge in the liquidation case is holding an evidentiary hearing next week to understand how and why secret bidding was set up and why it was not open to the general public. Sounds like a BIG loss for The Onion, not to mention the potential defamation cases that could arise from news outlets publishing an unverified story about a sal…
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I don't think the causation runs either direction. At most, I'd say that a site like InfoWars reflects the division, rather than either causing it or being caused by it. Divisiveness in the US goes much deeper than that, and long predates both the Internet and that kind of radio program. You could perhaps pick the early 70s as a starting point, with the US deeply divided by Vietnam and Civil Rights, at exactly the sa…
An outcome of two-party systems is polarization. A voter in a true multi-party democracy can vote in a multidimensional way, whereas a voter in a two-party system is forced into one of two "sides" on a one-dimensional line. As the values people hold dear are threatened, they will inevitably flatten their values and be pulled towards a pole.
Even when a system nominally has more than two parties, there are usually two dominant parties. Other parties either align with one or the other, or are sidelined. People associated with losing parties never seem to be pleased just that their voices were heard.