"Through it all, InfoWars has shown an unswerving commitment to manufacturing anger and radicalizing the most vulnerable members of society—values that resonate deeply with all of us at Global Tetrahedron.
No price would be too high for such a cornucopia of malleable assets and minds. And yet, in a stroke of good fortune, a formidable special interest group has outwitted the hapless owner of InfoWars (a forgettable man with an already-forgotten name) and forced him to sell it at a steep bargain: less than one trillion dollars..."
Full statement here https://theonion.com/heres-why-i-decided-to-buy-infowars/
> Such is the InfoWars I envision: An infinite virtual surface teeming with ads. Not just ads, but scams! Not just scams, but lies with no object, free radical misinformation, sentences and images so poorly thought out that they are unhealthy even to view for just a few seconds. The InfoWars of old was only the prototype for the hell I know we can build together: A digital platform where, every day, visitors sacrifice themselves at altars of delusion and misery, their minds fully disintegrating on contact.
Which makes me think of a thread years ago I saw on the modern equivalent: a meme so offensive (to literally everyone at once) nobody can see it without having an anger induced aneurism.
The skit would be a comical updated take on the Python skit. A hardened memelord shitposter troll is found dead in his basement, surrounded by rotted pizza boxes, empty energy drink cans, and penis enlargement pills. Something is on his screen. The person who finds it immediately flies into a rage so extreme they have an immediate brain aneurism and die. "We showed the meme to the most hardened Nazi edgelord trolls we could find on the worst Discords, Chans, and Telegram channels. Most did not survive. Some were saved by medical intervention but sustained severe brain damage..."
Zuckerberg already did it.
Trump retaliated by calling all of them "low IQ".
Given that Carlson's media company has an investment from the ubiquitous 1789 Capital (Thiel and Trump Jr.), we don't know if this is theater to keep the isolationist MAGA in the fold.
It could also be that they sacrifice Trump in order to accelerate Thiel's and Vance's technocracy.
Anyway, these influencers are still useful for their masters.
There’s no principle, no strategy, no goal. We’re living in the political version of Cube, and just like the movie: it’s a headless blunder operating under the illusion of a master plan.
Tucker will take any position for money see his entire career!
Plus the guy was advocating the administration should attack Iran for attempting to assassinate trump.
Having to take unscheduled vacations from Fox News over some of his more racist comments.
What exactly does that do? Which web browser?
I’m on mobile right now, so can’t test.
Alternatively, you can disable JavaScript on the website. That lets me view it.
[0]: https://youtu.be/x-QcbOphxYs
This is when from when Jones' lawyer sent a copy of his phone to the opposition...
Alongside the class action, Jones was iirc also facing several separate lawsuits, so what you're seeing here is multiple lost lawsuits (I think he lost 4?) adding up.
The bankruptcy also doesn't wipe the slate clean for Jones afaiu, because he specifically was found to be malicious in his behavior. Court debts aren't wiped in that situation. He's still on the hook for that.
If Alex Jones wanted a smaller settlement, he could've chosen to destroy fewer lies, comply with legal orders, or simply not commit any number of his many other legal infractions.
He's desperately trying to weasel his way out of paying any of it back by doing things like moving assets around, leaving companies empty, and then declaring bankruptcy on them. His victims will probably spend the rest of their lives chasing after the compensation they're owed, but perhaps at least taking Jones' branding from him might be punishment for a man like him.
Instead, Jones repeatedly failed to comply with court orders and attempted to delay the trial. He lied under oath, broadcast lies about the plaintiffs, and mocked the plaintiffs on his show after losing a case. He additionally broadcast his intent to continue spreading disinformation about the Sandy Hook shooting.
The long-term pattern of treating the court with contempt and clear intent to continue his illegal behavior are an extreme level of noncompliance for a defendant in a lawsuit, and they added up to an extreme penalty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones#Sandy_Hook_Elementa...
The man made a fortune destroying the reputations of some people, and he did so by (provably) intentionally lying about them, without their consent and with nothing paid to them. They deserve every peny of that - he stole their reputations and as with all theft, reparations are logical.
In addition he grew his following with those lies, and that following will continue to give him money. This is the interest and dividends of those lies.... it's the result of him investing the reputatoins he destroyed. Since you can't sell a following, but it's still a profit generating asset, it's fair to make Jones turn over those dividends. This ensures that he'll be turning over those dividends for a long time.
Finally there's a punative component - making sure he doesn't continue to maliciously destroy reputations for profit. It's a good idea to make sure such a pile of shit thinks twice about he tells more lies to the morons and trash that follow him.
It doesn’t get more establishment than that. So the “down and out anti-establishment underdog” narrative doesn’t apply in my opinion.
> Infowars delenda est.
Yes.
Either he truly believed that the kids at Sandy Hook were actors, or he was using it as part of his grift and making money of it.
As far as I can tell he has not reversed his stance on it
With better legal defence he may have to pay much and much less.
The tone is off and it appears to carry the implication that you might believe that none of the above (Jones, Piker, Owens) should be landed with fines despite on the face of it saying the opposite.
A cleaner comment would be better; just explain what it is that Piker has done that is equivilant to Jones' multi decade harrassment of the Sandi Hook parents, ditto Owens.
( for record, I'm non-USAian and unfamiliar with either Piker or Owens )
Neither Hassan Piker nor Candace Owens, nor any other of the many inflammatory voices on the left or right of the new media ecosystem, have done anything remotely close to the type of harassment that Alex Jones exposed the Sandy Hook victims to. Directly accusing grieving parents and children of being completely fake paid "crisis actors", again and again, with images and "analysis" and so on, is beyond anything another media personality has had the poor taste and temerity to try - perhaps in history, certainly in America.
Even then, the only reason the judgement ended up at such a gigantic number is that Alex Jones and his lawyers refused to argue their case to any extent, and in fact directly attacked and antagonized the court and the judge. They lost the case through summary judgement after repeated refusals to follow the normal procedural rules or even to show up in court. Then, they repeated the same refusal to participate or argue their case during the damages settlement, again forcing the court to simply award the amount requested by the plaintiffs, which is always set to a huge number as a negotiating tactic.
So no, the fact that someone argues that Alex Jones deserved this punishment fully is not in any way in conflict with believing that Hassan or Candace Owens or any other new media personality deserves anything similar.
If you ask me, it's getting harder and harder to draw a line between those two categories...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/20/the-onion-al...
See previous discussion linked in sibling as well.
Also, Jones has already set up a new media company he totally doesn’t own, no sir. He’ll move his operation when he finally loses InfoWars.
Judgements demanding he pay billions keep coming out and he just says he's not paying, and nobody has forced him to either. Even if infowars' brand changes hands, that's the extent of it.
Of course it's personal. Alex Jones is an arsehole manufacturing outrage for profit. Being made fun of is the least of his problems
"I just thought it would be just a beautiful joke if we could take this pretty toxic, negative, destructive force of Infowars and rebrand it as this beautiful place for our creativity”.
This keeps it out of that ecosystem, which I think is a really good thing.
Yeah, it seems hard to believe that anyone would take Alex Jones' behaviour so personally. He only suggested that the murder of 20 young children and 6 adults in a school shooting was faked for political reasons.
(Are you serious?!)
It is openly and proudly personal. It is also political, also openly.
I’d rather it be collective action that produces real change, but humor is cathartic so I’ll take it.
And someone repurpose one of the instigator’s web sites as a humour outlet is the issue that leaves a bad taste in your mouth?
Fucking hell that's a funny line.
Because I'm fairly sure no-one is claiming that Jones is a murderer or that the Sandy Hook killer was defaming people
Many people on Blue Sky are spreading outright lies about their political opponents and have definitely contributed to the violence toward them.
We don't see articles like this (or discussions in the HN community) because many just agree with the lies being spewed and hate their political opponents anyway.
It proves that it has nothing to do with the family and everything to do with punishing Alex Jones for helping Trump win. When you hear the interviews with the CEO of the onion, it's even more evident.
Again, Justice shouldn't work this way.
can someone explain the difference between what alex jones said about sandy hook and what other people say about 9/11 being an inside job, hologram planes, fake this fake that etc
This was not that.
This was a civil defamation case; the parents bought a case of actual material harm and harrassment of epic proportions before two seperate judges in two seperate states and both courts made the finding that Jones had indeed caused harm and harrassment .. and continued to do so over years.
If you mean higher bar for litigation, then maybe this lawsuit and its outcome shows that the bar isn't as high as you think when it comes to defamation?
This is the biggest difference - no one is claiming that all of the people who lost their loved ones in the 9/11 attacks were actually actors paid to pretend that they were grieving for their parents and children and friends. No one was encouraged to personally attack said victims and survivors to "expose their lies" because of 9/11 conspiracy theories.
Furthermore, defamation law works very differently for claims against public personalities ("Bush did 9/11!") compared to claims against private persons ("this random child shown crying in news reports after her classmates were supposedly killed is actually pretending!"). Also, vague accusations of orchestrating a criminal conspiracy / cover up are far harder to litigate than very clear claims of massive fraud. Finally, the Sandy Hook victims were generally able to show specific damages they suffered, attacks against them by people in their community, because of Jones' actions; Dick Cheney may have been more generally hated because of claims about 9/11 conspiracies, but was not directly harasses in the same way.