The Onion buys Infowars | Hacker News Reader

The Onion buys Infowars

nytimes.com

1,901 pointscoloneltcb1,233 comments

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

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.

They'd better think twice as long as Ted Kaczynski remains on The Onions editorial board[1], he also knows a few things about splitting things into multiple solids.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/iNDpZt2.png

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

The actual CEO, Ben Collins, has been running The Onion for a short while and his background was as a reporter for NBC. He covered a lot of internet topics very, very well (IMO).

> 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.

Based on what previous in-real-life examples is this a realistic worry? AFAIK, "EU bureaucrats" haven't broken up a single US-based company before so seems like a weird thing to be worried about.

Well a tetrahedron can be split into four tetrahedra and an octahedron...

dont get it twisted. this is a business move lol.

"Much like family members, our brands are abstract nodes of wealth, interchangeable assets for their patriarch to absorb and discard according to the opaque whims of the market. And just like family members, our brands regard one another with mutual suspicion and malice."

Glorious.

That part hurt a little bit, recently had to start looking at family just like this.

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?)

Are you trying to tell us that Infowars wasn't already outsourcing its content creation to Onion writers before the sale? Big, if true.

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?

It looks like it's down now?

Reading the article didn't give me any confidence it's actually real/true. Which could be seen as a compliment.

It is actually true! https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/14/business/media/alex-jones...

they are shutting us down even without a court order this morning

He seems surprised. I guess losing a multi-year court case, being fined $1,500,000,000.00 by a jury, and going through bankruptcy court wasn't enough of a warning?

Part of the MO of these outrage merchants is that they simultaneously claim that the government perpetrate the most vile acts (killing children, poisoning the water, false flag attacks) while also acting outraged and surprised that they'd do something as mundane as ignore a procedure.

It's a grifting method. Provoke outrage among the less informed and watch the money roll in

Alex Jones using Twitter/X is on-brand.

Of course, Tim Onion is primarily on Bluesky, other than to occasionally rile up Musk

I hadn't realized how hilarious this is until now

I don't understand your point

> Twitter/X

Why not call it one or the other?

I guess this is about the domain name infowars.com which belongs to a bankrupt company.

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.

Perhaps The Onion should ask - who gets most promotion of this?

The auction included all of the InfoWars and several associated corporations' assets, including the studio and the supplements business. At one point the settlement administrator was trying to get Alex's Twitter handle.

I believe he's been doing some half-ass scheming to create essentially the same company but in his parents' name, and I doubt he has a problem getting listeners back.

Perhaps The Onion should ask - who gets most promotion of this?

Well, we’re all talking about the onion. And I, personally, haven’t read onion content in a long, long while. So this kind of put them back on the radar for me.

But I could be one of only a few people who fell out of onion readership?

More likely is that they believe the next four years will provide them a lot of comedy fodder and they’re setting their pieces early. For them the election is likely to be pretty good for business.

I think it's all the assets of the website.

I believe that the current state of play is that Jones has to pay $1.1bn damages even post bankruptcy so maybe any future successes will lead to money for the Sandyhook families. I certainly hope so.

Ironically he may live longer to earn more for them - he'll never be able to afford a cigar again.

> Perhaps The Onion should ask - who gets most promotion of this?

I think the idea is the US’ terrible gun situation

Hmm NBC seems to imply that they purchased "Free Speech Systems", which is the parent company for the entire operation. Of course, who knows what they'll actually get other than the domain and copyrights -- Jones will just move all the physical assets into a storage unit/another office and dare them to complain, Guliani-style. Also, who knows if any of these stands for long, anyway; the cases are in state court (Connecticut and Texas) but what's stopping the president from issuing an executive order clearing them? Laws?

Re: "who gets the most promotion", IDK I think it's definitely the new owner of the Onion. Personally speaking, I think we're past the "don't give them attention" stage of fascism, and "they were bought by a satire company" isn't exactly a better rallying cry than Jones has already been spouting during the entire litigation. Plus, I trust them;

  The anti-violence organization Everytown for Gun Safety said it will be the exclusive advertiser in The Onion’s new venture as part of a multiyear agreement. John Feinblatt, the group’s president, said in a statement that he hopes to “reach new audiences ready to hold the gun industry accountable for contributing to our nation’s gun violence epidemic.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/onion-wins-alex-jones-i...

> 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?

Wow, crazy to watch all the bootlickers and nutters in his feed who are angry about this.

They're all "verified" (paid) accounts too, which is why Twitter is such a cesspool. They sort paid accounts to the top.

right, I was reading their comments, I cannot believe it. But hey, if you view the world like that, guys like Alex will always prosper and have a crowd.

I like how he still tries to sell his merchandise until the very last moment.

He has for some time been telling his listeners to buy supplements from a new company set up in his father's name that is a thin cutout for the one ostensibly run by himself. It seems likely a good lawyer could pierce that corporate veil and go after the new company, but I don't know if that has happened.

That and the defiance, conspiracies, deep state, freedom-fighter verbal diarrhea until the bitter end. You almost get the feeling that he actually believes it all.

I'm hoping that Department Head Rawlings and Jim Anchower will return as contributors. When did T. Herman Zweibel pass the reins to Bryce P. Tetraeder?

This has been halted due a judge deciding it was a private sale masquerading as an auction: https://x.com/RealAlexJones/status/1857290045536780334

Is there a credible source on this?

That is the funniest thing I have read in a very long time.

Truly a great piece of satirical writing on The Onion. Just one example:

> With a shrewd mix of delusional paranoia and dubious anti-aging nutrition hacks, they strive to make life both scarier and longer for everyone, a commendable goal.

I like the twitter comments. They're already baking how it's part of the secret globalist plot.

See also https://reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/ if you haven't yet.

I hope Mr. Tetraheder remembers to make any accounts permanent regardless of the wishes of the members - nothing like a permanent asset.

I saw the onion post and didnt really believe it.

How can Jones respond this way when families are backing that. Does this qualify as insanity or more like bottomless greed ?

"They are a true unicorn, capable of simultaneously inspiring public support for billionaires and stoking outrage at an inept federal state that can assassinate JFK but can’t even put a man on the Moon."

There was an emergency hearing to challenge the sale to the onion.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/not-funny-onion-buys-inf...

I’m cracking up

Founded in 1999 on the heels of the Satanic “panic” and growing steadily ever since, InfoWars has distinguished itself as an invaluable tool for brainwashing and controlling the masses. With a shrewd mix of delusional paranoia and dubious anti-aging nutrition hacks, they strive to make life both scarier and longer for everyone, a commendable goal. They are a true unicorn, capable of simultaneously inspiring public support for billionaires and stoking outrage at an inept federal state that can assassinate JFK but can’t even put a man on the Moon.

Perfect

This is great!

Seems like the article is really gleeful. Somewhat ironic since The Onion could be brought down in the same way by defamation lawsuits.

> Somewhat ironic since The Onion could be brought down in the same way by defamation lawsuits.

Unlikely.

It's worth remembering that Jones was never actually tried for defamation. He instead received a default judgment. In the US, both sides of a civil case have the right to a fair and speedy trial. If there's delays, you had better have a good reason for them and they need to fit the rules of procedure.

Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, more-or-less refused to participate in the trial. The Knowledge Fight podcast has some episodes dealing with the discovery and deposition process for the suits, with actual deposition audio. I'm not a lawyer but it was absolutely brutal to listen to how ill-prepared Jones, his employees, and his representatives were. They were submitting Wikipedia articles about false flags as evidence, had a comprehensive background check on one of the parents that was in FSS records that no one could seem to explain the presence of, and generally didn't comply with other discovery requests.

The end result of this is that his life's work has been reduced to a satire and he is likely financially hobbled for the rest of his life.

For The Onion to have the same fate, they would have to basically disregard every single common-sense rule regarding what you should do when you're sued.

> Seems like the article is really gleeful.

Good! It should be. Alex Jones is a ghoul making money from dead school shooting victims. Anything that embarrasses him is entitled to as much glee as it wants.

Great point! When The Onion starts making threats against survivors and relatives of school shootings, they should also face defamation lawsuits.

The Onion was not telling the parents of dead children they were crisis actors and were lying

Don't want to be sued by defamation don't make BS about people in a fragile position. It's that simple

Er... the Onion is satire. Satire is not defamation because no one with any sense thinks it's true. InfoWars was not satire. Rather, it constantly lied.

I’m glad that you didn’t waste effort saying “I am not a lawyer” here, because it’s very very apparent that you aren’t.

You have to step extremely far over the line to be brought down by such a lawsuit, particularly if you have money to spend on legal defense (as Jones did previously, or the Onion does today). Jones went over that line one time too many, in a country where a lot of people strongly dislike him. It's like being Martin Shkreli, the system* is going to keep targeting you and eventually get you (entirely warranted) on one of your legal infractions. The more you're a jerk and stick your head up prominently, the more you're going to draw counter attacks to your behavior by the varied masses.

* the system referring to the vast combination of peoples: politicians, legal, monied interests, lobbyists, news media, corporations, journalists, agitators, whatever, et al

it absolutely can not, satire is protected under the first amendment and there are piles of precedence

Can't tell if this is satire or not, that's the real irony here.

Not likely. Satire is protected under the First Amendment.

Tim Onion's (Ben Collins) statement on Bluesky: [0]

> Hi everyone.

> The Onion, with the help of the Sandy Hook families, has purchased InfoWars.

> We are planning on making it a very funny, very stupid website.

> We have retained the services of some Onion and Clickhole Hall of Famers to pull this off.

> I can't wait to show you what we have cooked up.

Next post: [1]

> Does anybody need millions of dollars worth of supplements?

[0] https://bsky.app/profile/bencollins.bsky.social/post/3law22g...

[1] https://bsky.app/profile/bencollins.bsky.social/post/3law23r...

The funniest thing would be to keep running the site as-is but swap out the insanity for stuff that reads like insanity but is legit or morally sound. The audience might not notice, and could (IMHO) easily be duped into supporting good causes!

Those links don’t work for me. But these do:

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:x4qyokjtdzgl7gmqhsw4ajqj/po...

The Onion is truly a national treasure.

Please note that Bsky servers appear to be suffering under the load of 15 new users per second, with bursts as high 133 new users per second!

They don't have to do much, it's already very funny and very stupid.

Is that enough to tank the market with a fire sale? Probably not.

I'd chip in just to have that shit destroyed and see them selling onions instead.

judge blocked

Absolutely poetic.

Dude tried a career in journalism.

Had a crazy theory that a school shooting was fake.

School shooting wasn't fake.

Dude doesn't say "I'm sorry, my bad, I'm retiring from journalism", but goes down fighting.

Looks good to me.

> We are planning on making it a very funny, very stupid website.

Isn't it that already?

And how would The Onion know what funny actually is? Their content hasn't been that for well over a decade now.

I doubt that the SH families will receive the kind of money they could have had if they accepted Jones' original offer. Their lawyers made it clear they were in it not for their clients' interest but for their own political agenda.

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-s1-5189399/alex-jones-auct...

The "Global Tetrahedron" site already has an Infowars Web 1.0 slant, the Everytown for Gun Safety ads are great.

https://global-tetrahedron.com/

Yeah, this seems like a clear-cut "We want justice, not money" decision. We don't know how much the families gave up (could be a little, could be significant), but whatever it was was the difference between Infowars remaining what it is or utterly destroying Infowars' credibility.

Because now the Wikipedia entry is going to say "parody site" at the top.

>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?

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.

There's tonnes of worthless merchandise and supplements of a dubious nature which The Onion, the least expected of all possible buyers, now has to find a use for. My first suggestion would be melting down all of the 500% marked up gold bars[0] and make a one-time-run charity auction collectible for the Sandy Hook families. Or upcycling all the paper in Alex Jones' books [1] into paper mache, and use it to make globes, to really stick it to the globalists!

[0] https://www.infowarsstore.com/24-karat-999-pure-gold-collect...

[1] https://www.infowarsstore.com/infowars-media/books/the-great...

> As for the vitamins and supplements, we are halting their sale immediately. Utilitarian logic dictates that if we can extend even one CEO’s life by 10 minutes, diluting these miracle elixirs for public consumption is an unethical waste. Instead, 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.*

> melting down all of the 500% marked up gold bars[0] and make a one-time-run charity auction collectible for the Sandy Hook families

Or a monument / memorial to the deceased, in the hopes that the truth would outlive Jones's lies.

InfoWars only shilled for gold sellers. Their business was entirely Vitamins/Supplement, Merch, and crazy AFAIK they never sold gold directly.

And the flat earthers.

Phenomenal point!

I don't know man, it's not like the dude caused the Sandy Hook massacre, just take this win and let the victims rest in peace. Let the Onion do it's things and cut ties.

> supplements of a dubious nature

They are re-labled existing products that are sold in other places, and unironically already-recognized, before being re-labled by InfoWars, as very high quality.

If you're gonna criticize InfoWars you have my 100% support in your right to do so, but try not to post out of your ass. This is HackerNews, not Reddit.

>> make a one-time-run charity auction collectible for the Sandy Hook families

They've got $1.5billion. Probably don't need the gold as well. There might be equally valid causes with less funds.

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.

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 sale that isn’t final.

Source: https://x.com/behizytweets/status/1857195724242329997

It's not fake news. The onion did indeed win the auction.

What remains to be seen is if the sandyhook parents are allowed to forego some of their claim against Jones to secure the purchase, which frankly I can't see why they couldn't.

The auction is there to settle Jones' debts and some of his largest debtors are willing to release some of his nondischargeable debt for Infowars.

He owes some of the family's 100 million dollars. The next highest bid was 3.5 million. The sandyhook families have the leverage particularly in this case.

Oh, and not for nothing, the second place bidder was the guy running Jones' new supplement company which mysteriously has 3.5 million to burn after being open for about a month.

do you have a source other than a tweet from the Twitter account of a political hack?

I read your comment with skepticism but it looks like you are correct. Very odd that they would publish this story so prematurely.

Their bubble revels in sadistic glee at the pain and humiliation of a man that they hate for reasons that they do not understand themselves. Their bubble deserves to be burst.

I doubt you'd call it "fake news" if a corporate acquisition was announced, just because the deal hadn't yet passed regulatory approval.

But then again, you clearly seem to have a dog in this fight.

Where's the defamation?

The plot thickens...

The onion should just keep Alex Jones without any filters but put the onion logo on every page. The joke is already good enough, just keep it going.

The Onion already did that joke: https://theonion.com/sale-of-bet-to-white-supremacist-group-...

Sources: Hackers Vandalized Drudge Report For Last 15 Years

https://theonion.com/sources-hackers-vandalized-drudge-repor...

Not a good idea, Alex Jones is a big reason for the hate against people like Anthony Fauci.

I really can’t imagine a better steward. Truly amazing. I doubt there’s any way to undo all the damage that has been done, but at least we’ll get some cathartic laughs out of it all.

I actually almost fainted laughing when I read this and then some of the coping responses on X. I needed this today. What a good move.

> I really can’t imagine a better steward.

You're probably right. But here's my alternates list:

- The Simpsons writing team

- Jimmy Kimmel (maybe)

- Conan O'Brien

- Stephen Colbert

- a deep fake of Alex Jones, scripted by a bunch of giggling 6th grade boys

Jeff Lawson the founder of Twilio owns The Onion, glad he's growing his quality retirement project.

He seems to be doing a better job running a newspaper than Bezos.

how did it feel when Saudi Arabia stole your handle? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neom

Infowars Sale to Onion Questioned by Bankruptcy Judge: https://archive.is/i3KQZ

EDIT: the sale been blocked, Alex Jones is still live as of this edit (NOV 15th 12:28 EST)

Is Alex Jones the new Press Secretary yet?

The next 4 years are going to be an absolute farce in the US.

You don’t think a fox news host is a great SecDef? Or a non-practicing briefly disbarred AG?

Wondering if that's what Mike Judge is waiting for: free inspiration enough for a 12 season long "Idiocracy: the series".

Looking from abroad some folk have the impression that the previous four years were. They were a triumph?

Maybe?

At the time the news of the Sandy Hook shooting broke, I was a highschooler in a vo-tech school in Connecticut.

Friday in late December are usually unserious days in K-12! People had their sights set on winter break and work was thin. But I remember that day had a lot of commotion, a lot of seriousness, and then a lot of silence.

Being a vo-tech school, we had students from all over the state. Some kids left or were taken out early, some of them having had ties to the families in Newtown. Throughout the day, our school got emptier and emptier.

A lot of students didn't return to the building for the whole week or so until winter break started. Even though the seriousness weaned over the days, there was an unbreakable eeriness that just comes with the building being so sparsely populated. Our highschool was a small one (about 400 students total) which exacerbated it.

I lived with my parents at the time and I saw my mom gradually become a Sandy Hook "truther" as she fell deep down Facebook rabbitholes. It was bad. Although she eventually came around, that created distance between us that never recovered.

There's a lot of bad and mind-boggling news abound, but this is a very personally satisfying headline.

Thanks for sharing. Watching your mom deteriorate like that must have been hard, to say the least.

I'm sorry about all that.

Hearing about Sandy Hook truthers, and seeing the outcome of the recent US elections, has really shaken my assumptions about how typical people think and process information.

I don't assume that I'm immune from this, or that I'm my not in some media bubble. But it's saddening regardless.

> I saw my mom gradually become a Sandy Hook "truther" as she fell deep down Facebook rabbitholes. It was bad. Although she eventually came around (...)

Mind sharing how she came around? My dad fell a similar hole but I haven't been able to rescue him yet.

What really should have happened in this case, like the the Parkland killer, was for the people who sued to also take his Name and Likeness.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/families-settle-court-b...

This would hopefully avoid letting him just rebuild another slime empire.

Then we just end up with "the artist formerly known as Prince" situation where everyone knows the nom de plume is actually him.

You are quite the tyrant. Think about what you are proposing. You should be ashamed

In one sense this is funny, in another it's justice, but I think from a broader perspective this is just more of the same tit-for-tat nonsense that moves the needle in the wrong direction.

My hypothesis is that the U.S. didn't become more divided because of moron sites like I.W. but rather because of our collective reaction to them. These groups are far easier to ignore when we stop trying to silence them.

I get the broader point of eye-for-an-eye.. but in this case how are people supposed to ignore when the harm done is very real and very cruel? These groups don’t want to operate in their own little corner of the world. They will up the ante until they gain notoriety and the attention they want, which enables them to make the money they want. The collective reaction is all but guaranteed, I would argue and it’s not because people want to silence morons, but to limit harm.

It's like fighting mold in my opinion. Happy to turn the disinfectant on a particular area if we get that chance. It's poetically done here - the parents who were hurt the most were able to capture the source of that pain and turn it towards better purposes.

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 same time as real government conspiracies (Watergate, COINTELPRO, MKUltra) came to light.

I'd actually trace it back further than that, through McCarthyism, the Civil War, and back before the Revolution. But there's a fairly direct course between the divisiveness of the 1960s and where we end up today.

I really don't think it would have helped anything to ignore Alex Jones.

If, god forbid, your child gets killed in a shooting, imagine getting harassed about it for years by misinformed assholes who say your child never existed. That is a level of cruelty that is unfathomable. Helping buy out the misinformation engine that was responsible is not even close to 'tit-for-tat' and I literally can't understand how anyone would think that. You aren't being 'wise' here by standing in the middle. You're defending some of the worst people in society.

I had a friend who often said "sunlight is the best disinfectant". Of course, he was saying that in about 2010 and I'm pretty sure it's aged extremely poorly, because the increasing publicity around conspiracy theories has only made them more popular. It feels like a stretch to say "but people were trying to silence the conspiracy theories, that's why they caught on!"

Nice summary and agree in the way you put it, which I am stating to all sides - so nobody likes to hear it :-) since majority is literally polarized (i.e. their objectiveness, capacity to think deep, sort/prioritize is disrupted by impact to emotions/biases)

I worry that this might make The Onion a less credible news source.

https://archive.ph/pxmqX

Really curious what the bidding was like or who else made an offer, since it seems that the Sandy Hook Victims (who own all of the debt?) wanted the sale to The Onion specifically

Part of the sale is that Onion InfoWars will run pro-gun safety ads from Everytown USA. That and the obvious goal of humiliating Jones is probably why the Sandy Hook parents sold it to the Onion.

Can't say I'm not happy. Jones is an evil man who has richly earned this indignity and worse. His campaign of harassment against people whose children were murdered was so bad, some parents brought private security guards to testify at his trial [0]. They described death threats, strangers confronting them in their homes and shooting at their cars.

[0]: https://apnews.com/article/shootings-texas-school-connecticu...

A buyer is not always required to select the bid of the highest monetary value; sounds like the Onion had a proposal that was "a reasonable sum of money, and also we help lead a healthy way to find a path to redemption for this website and make it a kinder place than before"

I wondered how the structure worked too. Technically the Sandy Hook Victims can buy Infowars. All the money they bid would just all come right back to themselves anyway. This article calls it a "joint bid".

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-11-14/the-onion...

Meanwhile, Alex Jones is calling a hearing next week to accuse the bid process of being rigged https://x.com/RealAlexJones/status/1857223561754059168

I'd be surprised if there weren't any safeguards to prevent Infowars from posting hate ever again.

I'm watching his stream just to see how the drama goes down and a silly tech-adjacent bit popped up when he started ranting about Linux and how if "they" were trying to take Linus Torvalds down, they still couldn't ever own Linux!

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

And I believe he is wrong in this case. Linus is absolutely a lynchpin for Linux control. He can be replaced, but whoever replaces him then becomes that lynchpin. He's the benevolent dictator for life after all.

Is there a recording of this?

Perfectly balanced, as all things should be. Thanks, Tim Onion.

https://bsky.app/profile/bencollins.bsky.social/post/3law23r...

Inside a lot of humor is some deep seated truth.

It's encouraging that an org based on humor / even a little truth here ultimately buys and will discard an empire of hateful lies.

Financial Ruin and Mockery seem appropriate for the peddlers of vitriolic clickbait.

Interesting piece on The New Republic: https://newrepublic.com/post/188430/alex-jones-meltdown-reac...

> “By divesting Jones of Infowars’ assets, the families and the team at The Onion have done a public service and will meaningfully hinder Jones’s ability to do more harm,”

How hard is it really to start a new podcast?

He likely still owes them significant money, so they can keep pursuing him for that for a while. But even without his financial troubles, trying to rebuild his brand is just going to lead to endless self-debasement. James O'Keefe is still at it since Project Veritas shut down, but has little reach any more.

IANAL but isn't it going to be very hard for Jones to meaningfully profit from a podcast, or anything really?

I wonder if Cards Against Humanity bid against them.

I posted the full audio of the 14 Nov 2024 hearing with the bankruptcy judge so you can hear all sides of the story, and the judge's reaction. Apologies it's on the Tweeter/Xitter.

https://x.com/magazedia/status/1857962924762898502

They can just run the original content with a The Onion logo and every will find it hilarious.

Looks like a judge has blocked the finalization of the sale pending a hearing: https://nypost.com/2024/11/15/media/infowars-sale-to-the-oni...

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-...

Well it seems like it was halted by a judge. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14085727/Judge-halt...

I can see it looks a bit iffy saying there's an auction and then taking a private bid without letting others bid.

As much as I’m amused by the purchase of InfoWars by The Onion, many are, in fact, interested in the truth and appreciate other perspectives.

To wit, I did some googling because of your message, not the X post. Best I can find right now is this NY Post [0] article, so I’ll continue watching to see how this unfolds.

[0] https://nypost.com/2024/11/15/media/infowars-sale-to-the-oni...

Truth from the guy who says the parents of murdered kids are “crisis actors.”

This is the essence of populism: revolting against a disliked and distrusted establishment by backing a significantly and very obviously worse alternative. Instead of the mainstream media which has proven itself untrustworthy let’s go for a full on con artist. Instead of bad journalism let’s have pure fantasy made up by dudes taking bong hits.

It’s the intellectual equivalent of protesting police misconduct by setting your own neighborhood on fire and destroying your own things. That’ll show em.

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...

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

The domain obviously has changed owners.

Who links to twitter anymore? That place is untrustworthy and irrelevant.

It's quite funny reading all the comments on here of people nearly foaming at the mouth in excitement that someone got fined the GDP of a small nation for speech, went bankrupt, was supposedly bought by a left-wing satire news outlet to rub salt in the wound of him losing his life's work, and it turns out the sale wasn't even real.

I'm ashamed to be among this crowd sometimes.

On that note, anyone know of websites similar to HN that aren't filled to the brim with LA/NY brats? Other than /g/?

I thought this was a prank, but "The satirical news company plans to shutter Jones’ Infowars and rebuild the website featuring well-known internet humor writers and content creators."

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/onion-wins-alex-jones-i...

See also: "Why I Decided To Buy 'InfoWars'"

"Make no mistake: This is a coup for our company and a well-deserved victory for multinational elites the world over... 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."

https://theonion.com/heres-why-i-decided-to-buy-infowars/

Apparently the sale has been reversed and is being contested. https://x.com/ericldaugh/status/1857261507010052306?s=46

The Onion did a fundraising campaign a few months ago. Glad to see this is where my donation went!

I wish I lived in the reality where the Waking Life (2001) version of Alex Jones was the one we got: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5HLn3eYLSo

Justice, both poetic and civil. Bravo to The Onion.

Well not so fast the judge says: https://x.com/RealAlexJones/status/1857223561754059168

Should we all just "get off the internet" and join X? What is the use of this post?

Anybody else have to triple check it wasn't just The Onion trolling?

> 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!

What does this mean?

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.

Inside a lot of humor is some deep seated truth.

It's encouraging that an org based on humor / even a little truth here ultimately buys and will discard an empire of hateful lies.

What's wild is that if I go to the Infowars website I can't actually tell if The Onion is controlling it yet or not. It all looks like satire already, full of absolutely ridiculous headlines.

Imagine there are humans who read those headlines and think to themselves that it is real.

I hope they preserve all the URLs - I'm laughing already just thinking about the wealth of inbound links soon pointing to parodic content.

That's the best practical joke I have ever heard!

Prediction:

Over the next decades the onion will slowly become not a, but the only, source of real news as all the other sources become more like info wars.

"And now with the State of the Onion address, President Swift!"

Prediction: The Onion will be out of business within 5 years

Holy cod, Infowars' afterlife as a (presumed) parody of itself is going to be bigger than its regular existence ever was.

This sounds like an Onion headline.

And to add extra spice, they're actually doing it for a good cause, educating about gun safety in cooperation with nonprofits and the families of children killed in the Sandy Hook massacre.

Obligatory fuck Alex Jones with a bat with rusty barbed wire. He profited off the misery of murdered kids, this is beyond low.

The first time I heard about it was from an Onion headline about it: https://theonion.com/heres-why-i-decided-to-buy-infowars/

Everytown isn't an educational organization and they have no gun safety programs. It's Michael Bloomberg's gun control advocacy group.

I heard bidding got pretty heated between the Onion people, cards against humanity, and the pinboard guy

This is actually really good news.

The money they paid is going directly to Sandy Hook families

Nobody can use Infowars for evil.

Alex Jones looks like a fool.

Wait. When I first saw this news on Twitter I thought it was a joke, since it was a tweet by The Onion.

Wir haben Kunst, damit wir nicht an der Wahrheit zugrunde gehen.

It looks like Everytown for Gun Safety is now getting ads on The Onion, too - of course The Onion is still out of money, but what the hell at least there’s a serious part to this.

The hilarious thing is that they just basically need to add the label "Satire:" to every "news" title on the site to realize value from it.

Strange. I like The Onion as much as the next guy, but you can't make Infowars more of a "parody of itself" than it already is. Just shut it down?

This is going to be the greatest satire website ever

I hope that they can keep the spirit of the infowars conspiracy genre alive.

> “US seeks to destabilize Canada into a war with Mexico to solve the border crisis “

I'll take the bait: Is that from Infowars or from The Onion?

Can Global Tetrahedron buy Twitter please?

Does Alex Jones get any of this money? Because if he does this is effectively a partial refund for him.

Infowars is being sold, along with his other assets because he's going bankrupt. He's not getting anything from the proceeds.

Beautiful.

The poet they sent couldn't have done better.

Making satire today is really hard. This could even be some article title on The Onion.

Reality is their biggest competitor.

Among the things this year that I wish had never happened, this event is in the complement set.

Buying trash in order to put it in the dumpster forever is honorable.

But trash belongs in the dumpster, and nowhere else.

This is so good. I love that country.

The Onion is irrelevant. In 3 years they will be gone and Alex Jones will pick this up for $5m

Alex Jones still owes $1.5 billions to the people he wronged, he's never buying anything ever again.

today an onion made me cry a bit

I understand the vitriol against mr jones perfectly. Before his sandy hook saga I was actually somewhat of a fan of his work. I remember hearing an idiotic rant of his complaining that the US government was putting chemicals in the water that turned the frogs gay. But sometimes reality is stranger than fiction. "Researchers have found evidence that even extremely diluted concentrations of drug residues harm fish, frogs and other aquatic species" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/birth-control-in-...

That, and the purposeful addition of fluoride and other additives do put our freshwater at risk of a scandal if we ever undercount or overcount any risk. I wouldn't even put it past 1960's era scientists to have come up with insane grant proposals for asymmetric warfare of freshwater. Hell, who knows what project flies under the radar until its not. These are all things I would expect to read in an onion news article. Alex jones had the same vibe the onion had with their 9/11 coverage and why I think the purchase is both satirical and not at the same time. Satire is heterological in that way.

What I would like to remind the reader of is that alex jones made a big mistake in vilifying the victims. But please do not take that as a pass to do the same to alex jones as he did to his victims. An eye for an eye will make the world blind.

After the coup we will finally have the most trusted source of our news back.

> alex jones made a big mistake in vilifying the victims. But please do not take that as a pass to do the same to alex jones as he did to his victims. An eye for an eye will make the world blind.

I'm sorry but this really undersells what Alex did. He didn't make a simple mistake and he wasn't taken to court quickly.

Those kids were brutally murdered in 2012. The first lawsuit against Jones over it was filed in 2018. Jones spent 6 years calling it a hoax, calling the parents liars, and paying "reporters" to harass parents, family, first responders, and government officials.

The parents ended up moving, changing their names, hiring private security, getting shot at, and one died by suicide. One parent said they knew when Jones mentioned them because new harassment started shortly afterwards.

Jones was contacted by the parents, asked to stop, and one parent would issue dmcas to stop him from continually sharing his deceased son's photo.

In Jones' text messages, he and his crew called the sandyhook experts crazy and used sandyhook as a shorthand to crazy conspiracy garbage.

So why did he do it? Because he would daily track his sales and noticed that days where he talked about sandyhook brought in more money.

This was all proved in court and depositions.

Alex Jones is far from persecuted. And I'd love living in a world where someone who dedicated 6 years of their media empire to harassing harassing greaving parents, that person loses their money and company.

I hope they reward the Knowledge Fight guys for helping to make this happen

I've been a bit out of the loop, may I ask what Knowledge Fight did on this front?

"Infinite Growth Forever," - that onion-y sign off made me laugh.

Actually started laughing seeing that

It's really just a simple internal resource transfer, I reckon.

This is actually one of the funniest things I've seen

They should name it X

XWars!

The dankest timeline

"Area Satirists Acknowledge Death Of Irony; Diversify Into Creatine Supplements"

Apology for bad English. Where were you when Irony die? I was at home, reading the Onion, when Tetrahedron call: Irony is kil. No.

Everything about this is pure win

All I can do now is hope and prey that this ends up being the literal dictionary definition of “Poe’s Law”. #goodspeed

A significant percentage of the population will always gravitate towards the type of content produced by Alex Jones and Infowars.

Russia solved this by making "controlled" media outlets (and in recent years Telegram channels) for people who gravitate toward conspiracies and contrarian viewpoints without making them critical of the current Russian administration.

Obviously that is not what The Onion is planning to do but that is what this story reminded me of.

The US already does this. The problem is that most Americans can't understand that their favourite Red/Blue scandal is just a side show at the circus of genocide.

What a time to be alive !

Not sure if this is true or just another Onion article.

NBC is reporting it too. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/onion-wins-alex-jones-i..., reported on HN by elsewhen at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42136327.

So... I guess it's real? Still feels surreal...

The onion has not yet bought the times.

Infowars itself confirms it: https://www.infowars.com/posts/watch-live-last-infowars-tran...

Is not even funny

...One nation indivisible – with liberty and justice for all.

Justice has prevailed.

Welcome Back, Alex.

I refuse to believe in any conspiracies except that The Onion took over The Matrix and is running a Truman Show program full of unreal absurdities to see if I'll go insane.

God I wish I could contribute to that.

Good news for you: https://membership.theonion.com

Fitting!

potentially hilarious. can't wait to see what they launch.

Narrative security.

I love this, it's like a pinnacle of performance art.

Maybe "performance satire"?

OJ Simpson payed 33.5M to the family of the woman he murdered.

It's insanity that you can flat-out kill someone and get paid less in civil court than denying a murder ever happened.

Breaking news: Trump names Alex Jones head of FCC

Oh now this is some good news in the post truth world of Trump 2.0

The current speculation by the right-o-sphere that Alex Jones is about to be appointed the Trump press secretary is apt for the moment where Trump seems to have made his nominations on the basis of how much they will disturb the left. It's hard to imagine anyone that could be more effective at achieving that than Jones.

[flagged]

I don’t think effective government is founded on the basis of lolz.

> It's hard to imagine anyone that could be more effective at achieving that than Jones.

Asking as a non-American: how disturbing would it be if he appointed Putin?

Can anyone explain how InfoWars was sued and found guilty of free speech? There must be much more I’m not getting but although Jones sounds like an asshole I don’t think that’s illegal.

Why can’t someone sell an opinion that a tragedy didn’t actually exist and was created to push an agenda? It could be a provably false claim but don’t they have the right to make it? Isn’t being despicable a basic right?

That’s not how defamation laws work.

There is a ton of information out there about this. It goes beyond free speech to defamation, inciting harassment etc. Repeatedly calling grieving parents "Crisis Actors", publicly calling them liars over and over again, it turns out is not OK.

And then Jones/Infowars spectacularly failed to engage properly with the legal system, and the case went to default judgement.

https://apnews.com/article/shootings-school-connecticut-cons...

> Isn’t being despicable a basic right?

Personally I'm glad something could be done about it. He was profiting from causing further pain to people already going through something pretty unimaginable.

Next step: The Onion buys X.

I'm very much not a fan of Q-anon and related subcultures, but the sandy-hook award of $1.5 billion is obviously ridiculous, and is clearly just a government/institutional exercise in dictatorial/systemic power.

There is no possible way that someone ranting on the internet can cause 1.5 billion of emotional damage or whatever the claim was.

In particular, the libel (and it should be libel, making claims that are not true, rather than 'defamation' which is merely slurring them), should be from a credible source. Alex Jones is obviously not a credible source in this, or any case, and is unlikely to have caused any material harm (loss of jobs etc) to the 'victims'.

I mean, good riddance to Alex Jones, but the tools and methods used were entirely inappropriate to a liberal democracy, where you prevail with better arguments.

It was a civil case, so no government/prosecutor, and the jury awarded much more than plaintiffs asked for.

EDIT: Also you can disagree with the amount, but the award is literally the jury saying that the plaintiffs “prevailed with better arguments”

The USA has an adversarial legal system. Jones and his lawyers didn't do anything that they could have done to prevent this.

My understanding is that the suit against Jones was pretty standard in what damages it asked for, and that defendants (Jones in this case) are giving every opportunity to negotiate and legally lessen the damages. Jones' lawyers did not do this, apparently at his direction. Jones also refused to produce evidence that is always traded between parties in suits like this. There was a "Perry Mason" moment when Jones was on the stand testifying that revealed (due to an incredible screw up by his lawyers) that Jones had apparently withheld info he should have disclosed during discovery.

Basically, he directed his lawyers to do nothing, and they did so. The size of the judgement is statutory. It's not that there was a governmental thumb on the scale, it's that Jones and his lawyers didn't do anything to scale it down, or even do much to contradict the plaintiff's claims.

>There is no possible way that someone ranting on the internet can cause 1.5 billion of emotional damage

I'd like to see someone quantify what a reasonable number would be and how they came to it.

I served on a jury where we had to award similar damages. "Anyone got any ideas how to account for this?" I asked .... nobody had any good ones.

The number seems to be based on the fact that he made money of it. And if that was in the 100s of million, the fine should obviously be higher to ward of other people doing so (and not just have it as a cost of doing business). Kind of like the german movie piracy thing where the convicts had to give up thousands of bitcoin, which the state sold for more than 2 billion.

(Beside the fact that in other liberal democracies, he would be in prison now)

> where you prevail with better arguments

What is your argument? It sounds like you aren't very familiar with the case ("whatever the claim was"), and I don't think just declaring that something is ridiculous is a very good argument.

>I mean, good riddance to Alex Jones, but the tools and methods used were entirely inappropriate to a liberal democracy, where you prevail with better arguments.

The tools and methods used were "a trial by a jury of his peers," in which better arguments did prevail. That seems entirely appropriate to a liberal democracy.

They did prevail with better arguments… in front of a judge and jury.

The ends justify the means, in some circumstances. If you play fair against monsters, monsters win.

> but the tools and methods used were entirely inappropriate to a liberal democracy, where you prevail with better arguments.

I strongly disagree this is our operating environment, based on the evidence.

He knowingly rallied his supporters to harass the victims and their families. That's a bit more than "someone ranting on the internet".

This isn't the 18th century anymore where the dissemination of arguments barely traveled outside of the immediate vicinity, this is the globally networked firehose of disinformation blasted right in your face 24-hours a day. Relying on better arguments to win hearts and minds in this environment is hopelessly naive.

a liberal democracy, where you prevail with better arguments

This is only true when everyone argues in good faith, and is committed to accepting the possibility of being proven wrong. Sociopaths and other kinds of assholes exist and can corrupt any system if allowed to do so.

Funny concept. Shame that The Onion's writing these days so mid.

I think the Onion is as good as it ever was. The issue now is that the real news is so wild and unhinged the Onion doesn't have that segment cornered anymore.

It's been on the upswing ever since it was purchased this year. It's time to come back.

I've been reading it for 20 years and it's as good as it's ever been

https://theonion.com/biden-trump-die-2-minutes-apart-holding...

I don't think it's changed that much. There's so much more comedy and parody content out there these days that our collective standards have changed. The onion's heyday was when the internet was a lot smaller.

I think the Babylon Bee has been a good replacement.

I think it’s more that the world is now the onion.

Kids these days will never know how funny the onion used to be They used to distribute hard copies in big cities because people actually read it

Did you read the link? Top notch comedy writing.

When The Onion itself goes bankrupt in the not too distant future, can Alex Jones buy the Onion and get the domain back?

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