Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/10/business/media/the-onion-infowars-alex-jones.html

by jbegley • 2 years ago

584 628 2 years ago

nytimes.com

loeg2• 2 years ago

https://archive.is/hPq1e

orionblastar• 2 years ago

It only archived part of the article. They want a logged-in user to avoid the paywall.

consumer451• 2 years ago

From Bluesky's Gift Link feed: [0]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/10/business/media/the-onion-...

[0] https://bsky.app/profile/davidsacerdote.bsky.social/feed/aaa...

alwa5• 2 years ago

In case that one still cuts off halfway through, another snapshot is at https://archive.is/8q8m8

seltzered_• 2 years ago

Statement from The Onion (via CEO Ben Collins): https://bsky.app/profile/bencollins.bsky.social/post/3lcyypa...

bsimpson• 2 years ago

I appreciate that the tweet actually had context about what happens next:

"…continue to seek a path towards purchasing…"

"…back to the drawing board…"

The article could have used those details.

-----

[edit] They've updated the article.

refulgentis3• 2 years ago

It said that exact thing, but didn't need a number of tweets to say it. Advantage: article.

weberer2• 2 years ago

And here's the statement from Jones: https://x.com/realalexjones/status/1866752494317003142

crossroadsguy2• 2 years ago

I must ask - does Mr Jones really sound like that - as if loud throat is getting hammered while functioning perfectly fine and loud and fast and at the same time pressing hard voice breaks, or is it some kind of voice modulation?

Also, @RealAlexJones says "EXCLUSIVE: Alex Jones Responds Live On Air" → is this about two separate Alex Jones, or the same Mr Jones is talking about himself in the 3rd person?

andruby• 2 years ago

To save you a click. Ben Collins (CEO The Onion):

We are deeply disappointed in today's decision, but The Onion will continue to seek a resolution that helps the Sandy Hook families receive a positive outcome for the horror they endured.

We will also continue to seek a path towards purchasing InfoWars in the coming weeks. It is part of our larger mission to make a better, funnier internet, regardless of the outcome of this case.

We appreciate that the court repeatedly recognized The Onion acted in good faith, but are disappointed that everyone was sent back to the drawing board with no winner, and no clear path forward for any bidder.

And for all of those as upset about this as we are, please know we will continue to seek moments of hope. We are undeterred in our mission to make a funnier world.

polygot• 2 years ago

https://archive.is/8q8m8

pclmulqdq19• 2 years ago

This is probably the correct decision. Alex Jones's vitamin company offered 2x more cash, and in the case of a bankruptcy, cash completely trumps any notion of "giving up debt." Especially when the debt being settled is astronomically large and you are giving up a very small portion of it ($7 million out of $1.5 billion). The other creditors are far better off getting more cash, and those $7 million of claims are worth way less than one cent per dollar.

Additionally, the auction here was run farcically, and basically seemed designed to create an outcome where the onion gets to buy this website for no money.

alwa5• 2 years ago

Isn't it a little strange, though, that the system notionally decided that the families are owed an enormous amount of economic power as compensation for the nasty behavior of Alex Jones' media company, but at the same time it's obliging them not to use that economic power to prevent the sale of the media company to a "new owner" still affiliated with an unrepentant Alex Jones, who will undoubtedly continue the nasty behavior? Just in order to get cash to compensate them at pennies on the dollar for his previous round of nasty behavior?

I have to say, just as a matter of gut instinct, it sure feels like when the court finds that Alex Jones damaged people—at a value orders of magnitude beyond that of his company—those people should be allowed to decide that, to them, there's value in snuffing out his ill-behaving company altogether.

Is the issue that there are other creditors who are unhappy with this, who would get paid before the aggrieved families' damages would? The lawyers seem to be fine with it, as they're the ones advocating for this plan...

acomjean• 2 years ago

Selling to a business involved with the individual that lost in court.. It seems like a Fraudulent Conveyance to my non lawyer self (but I could be wrong)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraudulent_conveyance

ipaddr3• 2 years ago

They have a debt judgement not economic power. They can sell that debit judgement to a company who collects. They can take the money from the result of the court process and try to buy infowars after this is all over.

They don't have a judgement of ownership in infowars they have a debt and the court is forcing Alex to sell all assets to cover the debt. Then the rest is written off and he gets a black mark on his credit report.

There are rules around this process for a reason. If you allowed someone who has a debt judgement to just take over a company what is it's true value. Alex could try to value infowars at a trillion. So they put it up for an auction to get the real value. That's the fairest way for all cases.

Besides others are in line as well.

And killing the infowars brand means little in the short/long run. The real brand is Alex's name. It's not like his audience will suddenly not follow him to a new show with a new name.

wakawaka2810• 2 years ago

There was no public auction of InfoWars. That alone is a stain on the whole process. The objective of a bankruptcy court is not to institute some arbitrary meta-ethical standard. It is to deliver maximum cash to the creditors in a fair manner.

Is the issue that there are other creditors who are unhappy with this, who would get paid before the aggrieved families' damages would? The lawyers seem to be fine with it, as they're the ones advocating for this plan...

Based on discussions I've heard on this subject, a subset of the families was pledging money they didn't have in the non-competitive bidding. This is highly questionable. They may never receive the money they claim for the purchase. So by buying a real asset on the promise of money they aren't going to get, it is taking money away from other people who are rightfully owed money. If they wanted to do it the right way they could try to borrow the money from someone, but nobody in their right mind thinks Alex Jones has this money or ever did. The size of the judgement was calculated to lead to exactly this conclusion. As you said, the judgement was orders of magnitude more than the value of his company. So you should be satisfied with that. It is not necessary for the funniest possible outcome to manifest in order for justice to be served. Alex Jones will not go away because he has rights just like anyone else, and the legal process must conclude eventually.

avianlyric2• 2 years ago

Is the issue that there are other creditors who are unhappy with this, who would get paid before the aggrieved families' damages would? The lawyers seem to be fine with it, as they're the ones advocating for this plan...

Nope. Under the rejected deal, other creditors would have seen a larger payout, because aggrieved families are actual two separate groups. One with a claim near a billion dollars, and other with a claim of only a few million (I think, it may be less).

As a result the aggrieved families with the larger claim were set to basically hoover up all the cash from the bankruptcy, and the deal with the Onion was to create a better deal for the other families by having the larger claim reduced to allow a fair split of the total cash raised.

fennecfoxy• 2 years ago

Nah it's just typical rich people getting away with everything stuff & we'll continue to let it happen because we are hapless.

AnthonyMouse7• 2 years ago

I have to say, just as a matter of gut instinct, it sure feels like when the court finds that Alex Jones damaged people—at a value orders of magnitude beyond that of his company—those people should be allowed to decide that, to them, there's value in snuffing out his ill-behaving company altogether.

It seems like there's an easy way for them to do that though: Just bid on it themselves and dispose of it however they want. They can bid arbitrarily high because they're the ones who get the money, if they want to dismantle the company or sell it to The Onion more than they want the money from what would otherwise be the highest bidder.

NoMoreNicksLeft• 2 years ago

Isn't it a little strange, though, that the system notionally decided that the families are owed an enormous amount of economic power as compensation for the nasty behavior of Alex Jones' media company, but at the same time it's obliging them not to use that economic power to prevent the sale of the media company to a "new owner" still affiliated with an unrepentant Alex Jones, who will undoubtedly continue the nasty behavior? Just in order to get cash to compensate them at pennies on the dollar for his previous round of nasty behavior?

This is regrettable, but I don't think the court system offers a remedy sufficient for the grief Jones caused. This is why the court awarded what is frankly an absurd sum... truly, what is the point of awarding numbers that large? They're never paid out.

There this a strict defamation case, where the plaintiff's reputations were actually damaged in a way that harmed their income/worth, then we'd likely have seen a more rational award. Whatever it was that Jones did to these people, it's not the same tort as defamation. In that, he calls them embezzlers or pedos or something, they lose their jobs... and we can put a number to the damage he inflicted. Instead, he claimed they were actors, they never had any children, and this was some sort of hoax. Had crazy people coming out of the woodwork to harass them and stalk them. But the only sort of court order that could remediate that would be one that muzzles Jones from saying this shit... prior restraint. Something the Constitution wouldn't allow for.

I actually wonder if what he did shouldn't be characterized as a crime instead of a tort. Were he prosecuted and imprisoned (or even just put on probation), then the government would have the authority/leverage to (temporarily) prohibit this speech. Even then, he'd be made a martyr by his fans and it would continue as soon as the sentence was served.

ljsprague2• 2 years ago

$1.5 billion is more than Exxon paid for the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Alex Jones must have been really nasty.

UncleOxidant• 2 years ago

Alex Jones's vitamin company offered 2x more cash

Wait, isn't Alex Jone's essentially bankrupted by the ruling for the Sandy Hook parents? If he has that much cash to offer wouldn't that have been given to the parents who won the suit?

unsnap_biceps• 2 years ago

I believe officially the vitamin company is owned by his parents and isn't included in the judgement against Alex Jones.

Mountain_Skies• 2 years ago

Likely different legal entities. Johnson & Johnson tried to get out of the talc powder settlement by creating a different legal entity to contain responsibility and damages. A court ruled that invalid but this type of corporate entity manipulation happens all the time. With the vitamin company, it might be that Jones is not majority owner of it but the other owners are sympathetic to him. Giving Jones' ownership stake to the Infowars creditors wouldn't change anything if Jones is not the controlling owner. This is all supposition on my part and perhaps he is the controlling owner but the court for some reason decided not to include it in his bankruptcy assets. It's a weird world when we allow artificial people to exist in the form of corporations.

UltraSane2• 2 years ago

How can any entity related to Alex Jones be allowed to buy the InfoWars assets?

anon291• 2 years ago

In the same way non-corporate 'entities' related to Alex Jones don't owe his debts.

If there's a company of which he's a minority owner, they could decide to buy it, and it would be like his brother buying it.

geor9e• 2 years ago

Are there practically any other creditors? I would think the creditor owed $1.5B would cause all other creditors to become irrelevant rounding errors as a fraction of a percent. So if the families were to bid $X, then they'd be paying it right back into their other pocket. Seems like just a technicality or theatrics to require them to temporarily come up with cash just to give it right back to themselves. But lawyers love arguing technicalities.

habinero3• 2 years ago

Yes, the set of Sandy Hook parents who won $1.5B would normally get essentially everything, but the Onion agreement had the minority creditors get a lot more money.

pclmulqdq19• 2 years ago

All debt is not equal in seniority (seniority != amount), and yes, there are other creditors. Many people have credit cards, get bank loans, and have a mortgage, and I assume he has also borrowed money from several other sources. Those are creditors.

The next thing to do is think about the order these people get to take money in. Debt isn't one pool, it's a set of multiple priority queues. Asset-backed lines of credit typically have a senior claim to that asset but a junior claim to the general pool of money - Alex Jones, if forced to sell a hypothetical car with a hypothetical $1000 loan, will be paying back that loan in its entirety (if covered by the sale of the car) before the proceeds of that sale go to the $1.5 billion debt. Your general accounts are similarly ordered.

ThrustVectoring5• 2 years ago

The other creditors are far better off getting more cash

The other creditors get more cash from The Onion's offer. It was specifically structured to give better-than-next-offer remuneration to minority creditors.

wakawaka2810• 2 years ago

The Onion didn't have the cash. It was basically an IOU from one of the families, which is like saying "the very same guy going bankrupt is going to pay us money to buy this business from him" and that makes zero sense. There was also no transparency in the bidding. It should have been a simple auction, to get the maximum amount of money.

norlygfyd3• 2 years ago

It was specifically structured to give better-than-next-offer

That is the most farcical bit. When you strip away all the legalese, the offer was literally formulated as "next best offer + $". That is not a valid sealed-bid offer.

habinero3• 2 years ago

No, Legal Eagle covered the sale, and the agreement giving it to the Onion maximized the proceeds to both of the Sandy Hook groups that have won judgement against Alex Jones. With the sale to Alex Jones's set of straw buyers, that wasn't true.

jeltz3• 2 years ago

The sale to Alex Jones would have given the creditors basically nothing since the assets used to buy should already be theirs.

fzeroracer2• 2 years ago

There's a deep irony in your post that you say it's the correct decision when it's Alex Jones attempting to strongarm his Infowars rights back after losing them in court because he failed to pay his outstanding debts.

Like you do see the obvious corruption here, right?

archagon2• 2 years ago

Additionally, the auction here was run farcically, and basically seemed designed to create an outcome where the onion gets to buy this website for no money.

You have been lied to.

As I see it, the situation couldn't be any simpler: the oligarchs will take what they want, justice be damned. It was a done deal as soon as Musk entered the scene.

avianlyric2• 2 years ago

Especially when the debt being settled is astronomically large and you are giving up a very small portion of it ($7 million out of $1.5 billion). The other creditors are far better off getting more cash, and those $7 million of claims are worth way less than one cent per dollar.

The whole purpose of the deal was to give everyone, except the largest creditor, more cash. Sure the other deal offered 2x more cash, but the largest creditor is so disproportionately large compared to all the other creditors, they would have basically taken all the cash and left little to nothing for the other creditors. The rejected deal involved the largest creditor voluntarily giving up part of their claim, resulting in a much larger (I.e. something like 10x larger) payout for other creditors, despite the lower dollar value on the entire deal.

So yeah, the other creditors are far better off getting more cash. But to do that InfoWars would need to sell for many multiples more than highest bid seen so far.

benj111• 2 years ago

Alex Jones's vitamin company offered 2x more cash

Yes, but shouldn't that already be due to the victims?

This is worse for the victims, because rather than getting that money, and future revenue, they just get that money.

And this all ignores the harm to the victims, of giving Jones control of Infowars again.

They aren't ever going to see all of this $1.5B. I doubt most even want all that money, what they probably want is for Jones not to be able to keep his mouth piece.

reedf1• 2 years ago

I read the details of the auction out of interest. I think it is valid, and in the best interests of the creditors as it currently stands. Interested to see how others have read into it that they offered "more". It was a blind auction and the result is clearly in the best interests of the creditors to take the onion deal.

sarchertech• 2 years ago

2x more cash

But because the largest creditor has a claim that is so much larger, the minority creditors will actually get less cash with the vitamin company offer.

The deal was structured so that the minority creditors would get more cash than from any other offer.

The only creditor that would get less cash from this offer is the sandy hook families and they are fine with that.

Breza3• 2 years ago

A very important point. The Onion was going to give $100,000 more to the other creditors than any other bid. That sounds like the better deal. I can't imagine being owed money and having the judge tell me that I'm being forced to get less money in the interest of fairness.

micromacrofoot2• 2 years ago

it's fraud, Jones' parents own the vitamin company

snowwrestler• 2 years ago

How is it the correct decision that Alex Jones has a judgment against him for more money than he claims to have, but also Alex Jones has enough money to enter a bid to satisfy the judgement? It’s a farce.

avs7338• 2 years ago

but if we launder it through law talking then it cannot be questioned.

pclmulqdq19• 2 years ago

My comment has nothing to do with moral righteousness, merely legal correctness.

However, the idea that the InfoWars brand is worth less than $10 million is a bit silly to me given its reach among crazy (and highly manipulable) people, and the low size of both bids (and the fact that only people intimately involved in bankruptcy procedures knew when and how to put in bids) suggests that the auction process was probably not run correctly.

JumpCrisscross19• 2 years ago

Will hold judgement until I read the judge’s opinion, but this bit:

“‘It seemed doomed almost from the moment they decided to go to a sealed bid,’ Judge Lopez said.”

is nonsense from an auction theoretical perspective.

First-price sealed-bid auctions are a vetted auction system [1]—almost all real estate and corporate mergers, for example, are sold like this, as are government tenders [2]. (They’re not as efficient as Vickrey auctions [3], but nobody actually does that.)

The bankruptcy estate is selling the asset. Not Alex Jones. The creditors should be deciding who buys their stuff. Not a judge. (The judge is there to coördinate the creditors, not substitute his judgement for theirs.)

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-price_sealed-bid_aucti...

[2] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sealed-bid-auction.asp

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_auction

pclmulqdq19• 2 years ago

Like other commenters, you have posited a theoretical framework for how a bankruptcy court theoretically should work. None of this is how bankruptcy court actually works.

crazygringo6• 2 years ago

They’re not as efficient as Vickrey auctions [3], but nobody actually does that.

I've always been curious -- do you know why?

It's certainly not for lack of familiarity, considering that paying the second-highest bid is basically how eBay works.

And eBay doesn't reveal people's maximum bids either. And so between that and the prevalence of last-second sniping, it essentially operates as sealed for all practical purposes.

norlygfyd3• 2 years ago

The "winning" offer was formulated such that its cash value depended upon the next best offer. I.e., when you strip away the complexity it was of the form "next best offer + $". That this bid "won" indicates the "auction" was not a sealed-bid auction of the kind you are thinking of.

rtkwe15• 2 years ago

Nothing in the order says the accounting of the bid value was wrong it was mostly the form of the auction taking place as a single sealed bid round that the judge seems to quibble with. Counting debt as part of the bid is also not that unusual or weird, banks will bid their outstanding debt on foreclosure auctions all the time to get control of the house and sell it normally.

jasonlotito• 2 years ago

This is probably the correct decision.

It is 100% not. It makes fewer creditors whole. Simple as that. It's worse for all creditors involved, as per the creditors. Any suggestion that this is "correct" or better is out of ignorance or deceit.

The other creditors are far better off getting more cash

The nature of the original deal guaranteed the other creditors got more money than they would from the other offer by $100,000 more. Suggesting that they were getting less is ignorant.

the onion gets to buy this website for no money.

Again, the Onion was spending real cash.

At best your are completely ignorant of the deal.

shkkmo3• 2 years ago

It's correct if there's a new, open auction that does even better than the current Onion offer.

cogman108• 2 years ago

cash completely trumps any notion of "giving up debt."

Not true. The entire point of bankruptcy proceedings is to resolve debt to the creditors.

And in fact, that wasn't the issue that the Judge took here. The judge didn't like the amount, not the creditors bid.

The other creditors are far better off getting more cash, and those $7 million of claims are worth way less than one cent per dollar.

The other creditors signed off on the deal which is why the Trustee took the bid. Alex Jones would have $3.5 million dollars less debt than if he took the FAUC bid. Which is exactly what the Trustee should prioritize, cutting back on Jone's debt.

iancmceachern• 2 years ago

Side question, because this is the first I'm hearing of him selling vitamins.

Can his vitamins possibly be good? Who would buy these over day, centrum or Costco gummy vitamins.

This is weird to me.

cyanydeez2• 2 years ago

If the victims wanted to be victimized again just because people offer more money to continue the victimization operation, sure.

Unfortunately, giving the victims no choice in who owns this stuff means allowing it to be reused for the same harm.

Money is not the only variable in the equation. This is not a legal interpretation of the judges decision.

immibis3• 2 years ago

So Alex Jones gets to cheat his way out of consequences yet again by transferring his assets to a new company and shopping for a sympathetic judge, just like the last several times?

bastawhiz• 2 years ago

First United American Companies

The second-highest bidder was....an insurance company? Am I misunderstanding?

ThrustVectoring5• 2 years ago

It's a shell company made to have an acronym that sounds like "eff you AC".

refulgentis3• 2 years ago

AC?

habinero3• 2 years ago

No, it's a set of straw buyers for Alex Jones.

avs7338• 2 years ago

The second highest bidder was Alex Jones

gklitz• 2 years ago

Who importantly, supposedly doesn’t have any money, because he doesn’t want to pay the families of the victims what he owns them.

dukeofdoom5• 2 years ago

Wait, so you can be fined 1.5 Billion for reporting on a conspiracy theory?

BTW, this is a lot more than pharmaceutical companies pay out for actually killing people.

I remember watching the trial and it was the most ridiculous thing every. The defendant (Alex) wasn't allowed to say he's innocent because the judge defaulted him. Yet the prosecution was allowed to bring in all kinds of evidence of his guilt (other than him being defaulted) and present that to the jury.

So in essence, you're guilty because the judge said so, and the prosecution gets to pile on about your guilt, but you can't testify to the jury counter your guilt. Yet somehow this a jury trial.

The other ridiculous thing was he was defaulted for namely not showing Youtube ad revenue for his shows, after youtube deleted his channel.

They also awarded an FBI agent, I guess for hurt feelings, not even related to the families.

1.5 Billion .... apparently not a political prosecution of a critic, designed to silence him by taking InfoWars off air.

You know when Alex offered $55 million to settle. The lawyers somehow decided to get less by pushing for the bankruptcy.

refulgentis3• 2 years ago

Well, no...backs away slowly

pie_flavor• 2 years ago

Jones repeatedly violated court orders, withheld subpoenaed documents, ignored depositions, and disrupted the trial every chance he got, and so received a default judgement. I don't know where you heard the line about YouTube ad revenue but that's got nothing to do with nothing. Everything that happened was his own fault. He was extended plenty of leeway and he blew every last bit of it. If he thought the amount of money was unreasonable, he should have showed up to the trial and said so without doing fifty things worth being held in contempt of court for.

declan_roberts2• 2 years ago

I don't watch the trial and don't know anything about Alex Jones but didn't he show up? His own lawyer "accidentally" sent his private text messages to the plaintiff attorneys.

Of course the judge allowed that mistake to be used in trial.

So I think he did show up as least from that memory of the trial.

avs7338• 2 years ago

Ignoring the fact that he lost for not participating and for lying throughout the process...which is why we are were we are...its worth reviewing what he actually did.

A really entertaining podcast has actually done a series of episodes on the depositions in the case. If you are curious about the facts heres a list of those episodes:

https://knowledgefight.libsyn.com/size/25/?search=Formulaic+...

Be warned they are...long and detailed.

palmfacehn• 2 years ago

I haven't invested time watching all of the trials or following this as closely as some. It is strange that for all of the demonization of AJ, there aren't any compelling clips of him inciting his viewers or specifically mentioning the names of the family members.

Given how aggressive the partisan media is, you'd think they would have an established set of incriminating soundbites. When I did look into it deeper, I found that the case was decided by a default decision. Maybe there are reasons for these legal technicalities. I can appreciate that.

If the standard for the discussion is, "AJ was found guilty in court", then we should be clear that this doesn't mean he was found guilty in the substance of the case. Posters here should consider that before going off the deep end in demonizing AJ. HN is a site where discussions routinely involve citing sources. Yet, this part is assumed.

An unprecedented 1.5B in judgement, some of which goes to an FBI agent who worked on the case? Specifically on that point, there are compelling reasons why libel laws apply differently or not at all to government officials. Mainly this revolves around the threat of censoring regime critics. See also: lese-majesty.

Then we find that the plaintiffs' lawyers are explicitly a political group, "The Everytown Group For Gun Control", funded by Michael Bloomberg. Lawyers have claimed that they don't actually want to collect the damages for their client, rather that they have an ulterior motive in shutting down InfoWars. It isn't unreasonable to view this as a war of political factions.

The drama is on-going, but now it is viewed within the context of partisan lawfare against a former and now elected president.

None of these observations are inexplicable, but taken all-together, they fail the smell test for this poster.

jmward01• 2 years ago

It is clear that Jones and his relatives have moved money and assets around in order to shield them from the verdict. Now, money that should have been already given to the victims is being used to steal back the megaphone that caused harmed in the first place. The end effect will probably be even more subscribers and money for Jones which he will use with even less restraint since he knows there are no consequences. There are no words for the evil going on here. What recourse is left when the legal system is this broken?

logicchains• 2 years ago

money for Jones which he will use with even less restraint since he knows there are no consequences

He was fined over a billion dollars, in what world is losing a billion dollars no consequences?

sophacles5• 2 years ago

He wasn't fined. He had a judgement for damages against him. They are different things with a similar outcome (he's out a billion dollars) - accuracy is important.

Also - until he actually pays any of that billion dollars, there have been no consequences.

SkeuomorphicBee• 2 years ago

He was fined a billion dollars, but it will never be collected, he never lost a billion dollars. With this decision all his debts are pardoned and he gets to keep his megaphone, that is very "no consequences".

LeafItAlone• 2 years ago

He was fined over a billion dollars, in what world is losing a billion dollars no consequences?

Parent’s point is that the amount of the fine doesn’t matter if he is able to avoid paying it. It could have been a quadrillion. A fine only matters if you actually have to pay it.

On an average-person-level, some municipalities nearby me have decided to not basically not do anything about parking fines. As a result, there are vehicles that over ten thousand dollars of fine. But they are still allowed to renew their registration and drive their vehicle. So it’s just a made up demerit.

ajb2• 2 years ago

That's not what this judgement says. It actually says the sale did not generate enough money for the creditors and the process should be run again. I think the Judge maybe naive in thinking that re-running an auction will generate more money (normally it will generate less, as the losing bidders will drop out) but he did not agree with Jones' claims.

toomuchtodo2• 2 years ago

Will he keep running do overs until he gets the outcome he wants?

a12k4• 2 years ago

The creditors agreed to and supported the Global Tetrahedron plan to purchase Infowars and settle the bankruptcy. Seems like the judge is overstepping given Delaware law on this matter.

bluGill3• 2 years ago

Will the losing bidders drop out, or not? In a sealed bid you have to guess what others will bid - you want to bid $1 more than your competitors (or if you will lose the bid make your competitor pay as much as possible). The judge is saying because the bids were seals losing bidders had no clue what their correct bid is and some are likely to have bid less than they would have in open bidding.

Who is right I don't know.

avs7338• 2 years ago

Taking the judges decision at face value here is fundamentally the problem - because it relies largely on Alex Jones as an arbiter of reality.

The judge seems to take Jones, the guy who lost the auction, as the arbiter of what happened. That is a problem and not just because of the strong potential for bias, and not just because the trustee would be a more obvious source of truth - because he ran the auction. Its a problem at a deeper level because the judge seems set on taking Alex Jones as a good faith actor. Every step in the court process has shown that not to be true. We aren't here randomly and this bankruptcy doesn't exist in a vacuum.

Even setting aside that nonsense. THe judge seems confused on the difference between money and value. Thats the type of thing an undergrad gets wrong.

mountainriver• 2 years ago

Yep so that Elon can step in and buy it

BadHumans• 2 years ago

Elon is going to be the highest bidder if they run the process again.

chollida1• 2 years ago

I think the Judge maybe naive in thinking that re-running an auction will generate more money (normally it will generate less, as the losing bidders will drop out) but he did not agree with Jones' claims.

What evidence are you basing this on?

randomfool• 2 years ago

The actual issue is that the winning bid was $7m- $1.75m cash + $5.25m in debt forgiveness. The question is whether that bid is higher than the competing $3.5m all-cash bid.

That $5.25m debt forgiveness would have to be valued at $1.75m or more for the winning bid to actually be higher, but if other creditors are assuming that they will have losses of higher than 66% then the $3.5m all-cash bid would actually be better for other creditors.

adolph4• 2 years ago

The end effect will probably be even more subscribers and money for Jones

That seems a very foreseeable outcome.

alsetmusic• 2 years ago

What recourse is left when the legal system is this broken?

I mean, I’m not advocating it, but we saw the decision of a guy who made the news over the past week with a healthcare exec.

davidw3• 2 years ago

"no consequences."

This is basically going to be the United States for the immediate future, if you're connected to the right people.

Downvote all you want, but we see it with our own eyes.

ARandomerDude• 2 years ago

When has it been otherwise? See also: Hunter Biden.

jason-phillips• 2 years ago

What recourse is left when the legal system is this broken?

Exactly. The lawfare must stop.

rbanffy3• 2 years ago

They won a defamation lawsuit when what he did was way more than just defamation. He deliberately made the families' lives hell, and did that for profit.

blacksqr• 2 years ago

This seems to me like a victim of attempted murder suing the assailant into bankruptcy, where one of the assailant's main assets is a really expensive gun, and the assailant is still saying how much they'd like to kill the victim with that gun.

Surely there must be a legally viable way to resolve such a bankruptcy that doesn't involve the assailant buying back the gun with funds raised from friends.

unyttigfjelltol• 2 years ago

You speak practically. Unfortunately the courts do not, and as a result, the courts are suffering a deficit of trust and confidence, nationally.[1] The problems transcend one case and unfortunately they do not point clearly to one answer or a single set of answers. Is it the system? Is it the laws? Is it the people? Why do we get bizarre elevation of form, and results wholly devoid of justice?

[1] https://www.mass.gov/news/supreme-judicial-court-chief-justi...

Vaslo• 2 years ago

Can’t blame him, that monetary judgement is ridiculous and should be capped.

ndsipa_pomu• 2 years ago

Why should it be capped? Was the harm dealt to the victims capped at all?

DiggyJohnson• 2 years ago

How could you possibly claim that Jone's has faced no consequences when the best case scenario is him spending $10-100MM to buy back his business from his creditors?

gigatexal• 2 years ago

What a shame

zabzonk• 2 years ago

Probably needs to be settled before Trump gets in?

4gotunameagain• 2 years ago

Why, so the outgoing government which lost the public vote can make the decision instead of the president elect ?

Disclaimer, I think Trump is a buffoon, but I also think this kind of thinking is backwards.

kubb2• 2 years ago

President elect shouldn’t control the courts but whatever.

Hikikomori• 2 years ago

You think the current president is influencing this court case?

khuey• 2 years ago

The elected government isn't making this decision anyways, this is in a court in front of a judge (one previously appointed by the president-elect, no less).

kubb2• 2 years ago

Can Trump pardon Jones? I thought pardons apply in criminal cases, not in civil cases like bankruptcy.

n144q2• 2 years ago

It's not about pardoning, it's about what US bankruptcy trustee thinks is ok or not ok. Had this happen under Trump administration, I would assume that the trustee would not even allow such a deal to go ahead in the first place.

fidotron• 2 years ago

And as a follow on, if the president pardons someone for a crime can those harmed by it still sue the perpetrator for damages in a civil case?

n144q2• 2 years ago

United States Bankruptcy Judge Christopher M. López was appointed to the United States Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of Texas, effective August 14, 2019. Judge López was sworn in by United States Circuit Judge Gregg Costa on Wednesday, August 14, 2019.

Hmm.

bdcravens• 2 years ago

Trump, nor any other president, can eliminate the court's decision. A president's power would be limited to appointing judges in open positions, so potentially the responsible appeals court (up to the SCOTUS) could be influenced, but not controlled.

relaxing• 2 years ago

influenced, but not controlled

A useless distinction in practice.

bena• 2 years ago

This is kind of bullshit. The Sandy Hook families were a part of The Onion’s bid. They were clearly ok with it.

The court knows it can’t sell it back to Jones or a proxy of, but this decision also allows Jones to continue as if he hadn’t sold. And I think that’s what they’re aiming for

keepamovin• 2 years ago

Because the auction was a scam, I guess.

bhouston2• 2 years ago

Remember that this was made possible by the intervention of Elon Musk.

I suspect he may end up buying the assets himself or someone in this circle.

spiderfarmer• 2 years ago

That idea is disgusting enough for him to try.

onemoresoop2• 2 years ago

Is that asset of any use at this point? Even onion’s bid seems like a waste of money to me

bhouston2• 2 years ago

Could Elon or a billionaire friend of his buy it, at a slightly higher price than the Onion offered, and then employ Alex Jones as a host?

InfoWars is worth nothing if not for Alex Jones right. So if you want to maximize value, you need to somehow keep him around to serve his audience.

norlygfyd3• 2 years ago

This was not made possible by the intervention of Musk. If you're referring to the X Corp objection, this has absolutely nothing to do with that.

wds• 2 years ago

If you say so.

amalcon• 2 years ago

I am just some guy who doesn't actually know much about this. This being the internet, though:

If I understand, it's pretty routine in real estate foreclosures for a creditor to win the auction simply by bidding the outstanding value of the debt. Thus not needing to actually come up with much or any cash. This gains the ability to use or resell the property however you want.

How is one situation different from the other?

trollbridge2• 2 years ago

Bankruptcy runs by different rules than foreclosures (which is why people about to be foreclosed on often file bankruptcy). Specifically, junior creditors are protected, and everyone gets a proportionate share of the proceeds.

In a foreclosure, the senior lienholder usually gets the property and the junior lienholders either get nothing or get what’s left over after the senior creditor gets whatever they were owed.

I’m really not sure why the creditors in this case did a shady no bid deal… it seems they would have had an easy time buying out the junior creditors and then getting whatever they want, although I’m also not sure why anyone would want the “infowars.com” domain and a warehouse full of vitamin pills.

JackFr2• 2 years ago

Bankruptcy is something that happens to the borrower. Foreclosure is something that happens to the property.

pclmulqdq19• 2 years ago

I’m really not sure why the creditors in this case did a shady no bid deal… it seems they would have had an easy time buying out the junior creditors and then getting whatever they want, although I’m also not sure why anyone would want the “infowars.com” domain and a warehouse full of vitamin pills.

The creditors with smaller claims hate the guts of the creditors with bigger claims, and likely wouldn't sell for any amount of money. Also, I am not sure whose claims have been decided to be senior to other claims (seniority of claims has little to do with monetary amount). Not all types of debt are equal.

austin-cheney• 2 years ago

I’m really not sure why the creditors in this case did a shady no bid deal…

The reason is because there were two civil judgements against Alex Jones to satisfy with the second judgement being about 27x larger than the first. As a result, it is mathematically impossible to run an auction that triggers an outcome large enough to satisfy both judgements proportionally and positively. Many members of the second judgement decided to forego any winnings from this auction so as to satisfy the first judgement positively on the condition they would earn a share of ad revenue from the intellectual property in the future. Their primary motivation was not ad revenue or any other form of income, but instead ensuring the concerned intellectual property rests with an owner not friendly to Alex Jones.

That is the reason the Onion won the auction despite offering the lower of two bids, because the larger bid did not positively satisfy the parties to the first judgement.

micromacrofoot2• 2 years ago

appointed in 2019, gee what a shocker

hbn2• 2 years ago

Jones seems like a nut, but the way he's being taken to the cleaners and sued for comical amounts of money are just absurd. I'm not being hyperbolic saying people would be less mad at him if he had done the shooting himself.

And it's especially rich in a time where the most popular podcast genre is women commenting on brutal murder cases as they're fresh and being investigated, and throwing out their pet theories about real living people being responsible. What's the difference?

Andrex• 2 years ago

As a CT native, you'll never coax an ounce of sympathy for Jones from me. He made his bed, doubled down, and faced justice. The system worked at least one time.

acdha8• 2 years ago

Jones continued to inflict harm on families who’d lost children, and profited significantly from it both financially and politically. He defied multiple courts, too, so there was no question of premeditation or incapacity, just repeated decisions to cause harm year after year.

That’s the difference: true crime podcasts don’t cause harm on that scale, and few people are going to defy the authority of the legal system the way he did.

roenxi2• 2 years ago

While that is terrible, I don't know if you can argue it is terrible to the tune of what they've done to Jones. Every major media outlet has some instances of, effectively, targeted harassment in their history. Whether the public endorses that harassment is more a question of how effective the reporters are than anything else.

It makes sense that Jones would lose the case, but the scale of the judgements was eye watering and is difficult to justify. The scale of the compensation is in a different world to the amount of damage done (intentionally, the bulk is punative). That changes the nature of what is going on.

hbn2• 2 years ago

When was the last time he was profiting from Sandy Hook conspiracies? I heard him apologize for it years ago and say he doesn't believe it.

And true crime podcasts definitely do cause harm, the fans of those shows love playing vigilante detective, stalking and harassing people close to the case to get information. I remember a few years ago there was an incident where they were protesting outside of some guy's house because he was a suspect in his girlfriend's disappearance, so he couldn't even go outside. True crime is an entire industry monetizing tragedies in realtime on a scale the Sandy Hook conspiracies never came anywhere close to.

jeltz3• 2 years ago

And it's especially rich in a time where the most popular podcast genre is women commenting on brutal murder cases as they're fresh and being investigated, and throwing out their pet theories about real living people being responsible. What's the difference?

I am totally fine with convicting those for slander too. It is a pretty disgusting market.

happytoexplain• 2 years ago

The sentence you're claiming isn't hyperbolic is hyperbolic. While you can absolutely reasonably disagree with the judgement, I don't believe you can reasonably use a phrase like "seems like a nut" to summarize his part in this, if you're at all familiar with it and are being honest. "Immoral" would be the absolute minimum descriptor one could employ, even in the context of cold objectivity.

And why should we compare this to the podcast you're describing? They're two completely different kinds of immorality, and are not teams I must pick from.

bowsamic• 2 years ago

I feel like your first paragraph has some slight sense, but then you demolish it with the second paragraph which just shows that you actually have no idea who Alex Jones is or what he has done

giancarlostoro4• 2 years ago

Nancy Grace comes to mind, who has far more reach being on national television. She made claims about people who were later found to be guilty. Her speculation pushed harassment.

jjeaff2• 2 years ago

Alex Jones has far more listeners than Nancy Grace has ever had. He was pulling down 8 figures selling fake boner pills and tin foil hats on his merch website.

giancarlostoro4• 2 years ago

later found to be NOT Guilty* I typod.

newZWhoDis• 2 years ago

Let’s talk about scale: Jones has to pay ~5x what Boeing did.

Boeing killed 346 people

https://apnews.com/article/boeing-guilty-plea-crashes-245a38...

gretch3• 2 years ago

Boeing killed people while making a not-good-enough design for a highly complex airplane system. And even though it killed 346 ppl, it continues to get millions people safely from point to point safely.

It's negligent and they need to change, but it's pretty forgivable.

Jones went on a mic and ripped false info, enriching no one but himself and grieving these families repeatedly.

Pxtl4• 2 years ago

Who deserves stronger punishment: a man who makes an error while driving and kills a family by accident?

Or a man who deliberately runs a person down (but his target survived), and intends to continue doing so?

pessimizer2• 2 years ago

Jones seems like a nut, but the way he's being taken to the cleaners and sued for comical amounts of money are just absurd.

I'm normally extremely sympathetic to this argument, but not only was this a conspiracy theory about dead children, but it implicated the bereaved, devastated parents and all of the relatives of those children. It's so many people that you can't really make up for it, ever. There's no number of dollars or good deeds that will get him into paradise.

The fact that he still operates in much the same way as before makes me think he's blessed by intelligence agencies to use as pretense for what they want to do or as distraction from what they are doing.

jancsika• 2 years ago

Jones seems like a nut, but the way he's being taken to the cleaners and sued for comical amounts of money are just absurd.

I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is the Jones/Sandy Hook case-- like the Fox/Dominion case-- was an outlier because there is nearly never that amount of evidence to be able to pass the high bar for defamation.

So I think it's the other way around-- Jones was comically brazen in the claims he made. Hence the huge amounts in the Jones cases. (And if the podcasters are as brazen, go tell the real living people about their open-and-shut defamation cases and collect a nice finders fee for yourself. :)

Edit: clarification

loeg2• 2 years ago

Jones was also completely hostile to the courts and legal process. That will get you a larger punishment than someone who did the same actions but respected the court.

Nathanba4• 2 years ago

I watched some of his videos at the time and to me it seemed mostly like the exact same content that he always does. Very much not brazen claims of facts, just musing and speculating that it's all fake and the parents are smiling so they might be actors. That's it. And the entire time he was emphasizing that he doesn't know for sure and it's all theory.

mintplant• 2 years ago

Popping open Podcast Addict, the top 10 podcasts right now are:

1. No Such Thing As A Fish; 2. My Brother, My Brother And Me; 3. Planet Money; 4. Revolutions; 5. 99% Invisible; 6. Stuff You Should Know; 7. The Adventure Zone; 8. This American Life; 9. Freakinomics Radio; 10. The Rest Is History

I had to scroll to #32 to find Casefile which sorta fits your criteria, except it's hosted by a dude and I think he generally discusses older cases.

j2kun• 2 years ago

Yeah OP is out of their mind on this point. Even spotify doesn't have many true crime podcasts in their top 50.

FergusArgyll2• 2 years ago

#3 after comedy and news, ahead of sports.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/786938/top-podcast-genre...

afavour2• 2 years ago

And it's especially rich in a time where the most popular podcast genre is women commenting on brutal murder cases as they're fresh and being investigated, and throwing out their pet theories about real living people being responsible. What's the difference?

Can you cite any data on that at all? I’m aware of the genre of podcast you’re referring to but I’ve never been aware of it even remotely being the most popular genre.

FergusArgyll2• 2 years ago

it's #3 after comedy and news

https://www.statista.com/statistics/786938/top-podcast-genre...

Pxtl4• 2 years ago

His wealth is primarily the proceeds of slander and fraud. He should not have any of it.

Unfortunately, slander and fraud are really hard to enforce. In a just system he'd have never earned that money in the first place.

Fortunately, his legal defense was comedically incompetent.

So I'll take "all his money goes to his most-harmed victims" as a compromise.

elzbardico2• 2 years ago

I don't agree with Jones' political positions, but as someone who was not born in America, I think I can see the issue in a less passionate and partisan way. For me it is clear that the this judgment had a gigantic political vector.

I fully agree on the guilty verdict, but the sentence, frankly, was meant as a political message for Jones and everyone else on his side of the political spectrum: Stop talking the things you talk, because we are coming for you, and we get you, you won't like it.

As someone who was born in a corrupt small town in a corrupt banana republic, and was somewhat familiar with this kind of thing, it was pretty easy to see it for what it was.

acdha8• 2 years ago

Does that sound as worrisome when you remember that his “talk” was repeatedly accusing parents of faking their own dead children, to the point that many of them were receiving violent threats from his listeners? Nobody went after him because he had weird views on tax policy or international relations, it was because he refused to leave suffering families alone.

This is also a good time to consider what you are saying by calling it a “political vector”. Lying about a mass shooting snd harassment aren’t traditionally a partisan position so by using that framing you’re implicitly saying they belong to his party.

impossiblefork9• 2 years ago

I really don't understand how a judgement this large can be reasonable in a case where nobody has had his house burned down.

A billion dollars is ten billion crowns, that's 10 000 million crowns, or around 5 000 apartments.

I don't understand how 5 000 apartments can be a judgement handed out to an individual over something he says. It doesn't really matter what he says, when it's this kind of huge amounts. One can't fine somebody the value of an entire town unless he's done destruction of that order, or at least a fraction of that order.

mdorazio• 2 years ago

Look up "nuclear verdicts". The unreasonably large dollar amount is intentional and not meant to reflect the real value of harm caused.

impossiblefork9• 2 years ago

Yes, but a billion dollars. It's 30x the sale price of Minalyzer, a very cool Swedish firm which was bought by Veracio.

It's a level where, when it is an international case, it makes sense for states to get involved with diplomatic pressure. Surely your legal system must be more reasonable than this, because if it's like this, how can it function?

IncreasePosts2• 2 years ago

But the ruling was for compensatory damages - that is, the compensate the victims. It wasn't a punitive damages - which would make more sense - basically "You don't get to have your infowars any more".

Compensatory damages is making the claim that the sandy hook families actually suffered $1B in damages.

preciousoo2• 2 years ago

How about in a case where libel was relentlessly thrown at families over the course of years, on one of the internets largest and most engaged audiences, leading to harassment, threats, and assault? What should the judgment be for that?

impossiblefork9• 2 years ago

Not a billion dollars anyway.

But 500k per person maybe, if it really heinous?

karaterobot• 2 years ago

You just repeated the thing he said was not worth $1 billion dollars, and then said "but isn't that worth a billion dollars?!"

busterarm5• 2 years ago

The same way that big media organizations get away with this in court.

"This content is entertainment and there's no way that any reasonable person could construe this information as facts." If MSNBC, CNN and Fox News can get away with this argument every time they are sued, I don't see how InfoWars doesn't.

But then again, court cases aren't about facts or truth.

selfmodruntime2• 2 years ago

This is a "millions of dollars" lawsuit. Not a 10 billion dollar lawsuit. Alex Jones owes what Reddit as a platform is worth. That is insane.

d357r0y3r• 2 years ago

Same reason Ross Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison for conspiracy charges and CCE. Unusually harsh for those convictions and a first time offender. The point is, as cliche as it sounds, to send a message.

probably_wrong2• 2 years ago

Stealing from an earlier comment of mine [1] in case you want to read the comments.

Alex Jones declared in court that his show reaches about a hundred million people. If that's true then he's paying $10 for every person who heard him defaming the families of dead children.

This would be the same principle as those fines in Nordic countries sometimes that depend on how rich someone is. If you can influence one hundred million people and use that power in a criminally irresponsible way, you get a proportionate fine.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33182728

impossiblefork9• 2 years ago

Yeah, we don't have that in Sweden except for criminal acts, and then the fines are a certain number of days of your income as a substitute for imprisonment.

In civil cases our judgements are usually not enormous.

I don't feel that your reasoning above makes the judgement more reasonable. Maybe he does reach that many people, but he obviously makes nowhere near that amount of money and it's out of line with other defamation judgements.

sophacles5• 2 years ago

Because damages are easy to calculate - how much money did Jones make from intentionally lying about the victim? That money is the result of him selling their repuation without their consent - the market decided what the value of that act was.

johnecheck• 2 years ago

Sooooooooo, if release a YouTube video defaming someone, and only made $0.35 off ad revenue, I only did $0.35 in damage?

Definitely how that works.

If I burn down somebody's house and sell tickets to watch, the damages are easy to calculate! It's just my ticket revenue! THE MARKET DECIDED!

Gotta give you some credit though, you beat out some real competition for dumbest take in the thread.

elzbardico2• 2 years ago

It was a Moscow Trials things. Not that Jones was not guilty of this specific crime, he was, but the goal was never punishing him just for that.

xbar• 2 years ago

"Auction closed. Reserve not met. Try again."

declan_roberts2• 2 years ago

The first auction was illegal and this article should be seen as the mea culpa. The families bid the theoretical future earnings of jones instead of actual money. The trustee secretly accepted, but had to walk it back when it was exposed.

It's like bidding on a foreclosed house with $0 but beating everybody because you say you're going to rent it and pay back the bank with that money.

teach• 2 years ago

The first auction was NOT illegal.

The trustee was explicitly granted wide latitude in how to handle the auction, including canceling it outright. [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmDNz7irGgw&t=880

patrickhogan1• 2 years ago

A bankruptcy trustee was involved during the whole process (3rd party neutral). While the goal of increasing money to creditors here may work due to the free publicity, it harms the creditors interests who already agreed to the settlement. So you have a third party neutral trustee and the creditors who were harmed agreeing.

With that said bankruptcy judges do reject plans quite often and this is a high profile case.

dboreham• 2 years ago

This is all totally ridiculous. The assets are only worth a large amount when run as a disinformation outlet for Russian/extreme-right propaganda. Since no buyer is going to do that (see earlier, that gets you sued), the assets aren't worth much.

kylecordes• 2 years ago

Now that it's public knowledge how low the bids were, a re-auction might attract many more bidders and raise a LOT more money for the creditors. It is certainly not an asset with any appeal to me, but a talented brand and e-commerce operator can likely generate a river of cash flow from the IP/audience for sale here.

devops99• 2 years ago

Given what was touted early, so loudly and by so many outlets, this is quite the narrative collapse, on an epic scale.

ginkgotree• 2 years ago

For an entire week, I thought this was an Onion parody headline, and didn't realize the Onion _actually_ tried to buy Info Wars. We're living in such an entertaining era. Life imitates art.

Breza3• 2 years ago

Not The Onion meets Actually The Onion https://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/1gr5jz8/the_on...

akkad332• 2 years ago

Refuses to allow? This is like saying I dislike to like instead of saying I don't like. I would assume there is a different way of writing that.

pinkmuffinere• 2 years ago

“Disallow” is one option, though maybe uncommon.

neom• 2 years ago

"Refuse" is an action verb, "Dislike" is a stative verb. The infinitive phrase ("to allow") serves as a complement to the verb "refuse," forming a grammatically correct structure. refusare = deny.

akkad332• 2 years ago

I wasn't saying it was grammatically incorrect, just that it was a very bloated and roundabout expression instead of saying something simpler like "the court refuses the merger".

pestaa• 2 years ago

'Deny' is the trivial choice here I think.

lowbloodsugar• 2 years ago

This other company is clearly part of the same legal operation and should also be held liable.

_zgx0• 2 years ago

The amount of folks here supporting Alex Jones is completely shocking to me.

He built a business out of attacking and re-victimizing parents whose children were murdered. He's scum of the earth.

That business was taken away from him, and folks think that's too much? What the actual fuck.

Eextra953• 2 years ago

It shocking to me too. I can't understand how people are 'both sides-ing' this or just supporting him under some free speech argument. Free speech has limits and a court found Jones went too far and that cost him his business.

kypro• 2 years ago

People have been arguing the same bogus free speech point in the UK recently because people have been arrested for saying things that are anti-immigration and offensive online.

People have free speech, but obviously that doesn't mean you are free to say things that could be considered hateful or factually untrue. If you go around tweeting hateful things about the Royal family and the courts find you guilty, don't be surprised if that costs you your freedom. It's pretty simple.

Alex is legally free to saying whatever he wants, but he had the wrong views on Sandy Hook and his wrong views hurt the families affected, therefore he deserves to lose his business.

llamaimperative2• 2 years ago

Reflexive contrarianism runs amok in these parts. It’s pretty pathetic.

dnissley• 2 years ago

To be clear I haven't seen a single comment that could be charitably characterized as "supporting Alex Jones". I see a lot of comments that are pointing out that the judgment against him seems unreasonable given the damage he did to these families.

Pxtl4• 2 years ago

Torts are not just about damage, they're also about deterrence. Jones repeatedly demonstrated in the court battle that no deterrence would work on him.

His entire business is built on this kind of defamation -- how much proceeds of this kind of business should he be allowed to keep?

hoten2• 2 years ago

It is unreasonable imo. He deserves to see jail time.

fzeroracer2• 2 years ago

The people pointing out that the judgment is 'unreasonable' are either intentionally lying or extremely ignorant.

The context is that the judge awarded a default judgment because Alex Jones literally refused to participate in the legal system. He committed overt perjury (and was outright caught on this) and proceeded to just stop complying entirely.

If any of us received a court summons and refused to show up or defend ourselves the court isn't going to shrug and say the case goes away. In a system of law you can't just ignore the law and expect the judge to take pity on you.

jotux• 2 years ago

I see a few instance of people defending his actions as "free speech."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42384921#42387916

"View it for what it is: a deliberate attack on free speech. This is essentially legislating from the bench. They can't ban him from speaking but they can make it very VERY expensive to do so, and warn anyone else at the same time."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42384921#42385358

"Maybe the “victims” should go after the actual shooter for a billion dollars then.

Instead we have people crying that free speech is the actual evil crime here."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42384921#42389350

archagon2• 2 years ago

Consciously or unconsciously, people begin with an unshakable feeling of “my tribe good,” then reverse engineer a justification for whatever issue is being politicized. Even if it involves defending a repugnant conman and slanderer like Jones.

It just goes to show that far too many people have no fundamental values, only political affiliations.

talldayo• 2 years ago

It's Hacker News. I hate to say it, but this is all the website is known for at this point. Bring it up in passing conversation with the in-crowd and you'll get laughed out of the room for using "Orange Site" and fraternizing with drug-addled Elon worshipers and "soloprenuers" that beg for recognition for their dogshit SaaS product. The score has been known for years, the political leaning of Hacker News is basically the same as the "curious individuals" that inform themselves via JRE and random X accounts from Russia.

The people using Hacker News are regularly a stone's throw away from the sort of people that use 4chan. Except Hacker News has usernames and karma so it tends to create cults of personality around people that say what people want to hear.

LordDragonfang• 2 years ago

The thing is, this (admittedly common) opinion is as facile as the opinions of progressives who act as though all of reddit is /r/TheDonald. Overall, both are actually very left-leaning websites (in reddit's case, almost overwhelmingly so), they just tolerate the existence of pockets of very right-leaning individuals - because of lofty ideals of "free speech". However, even then, you'll usually see legitimate social conservatism get downvoted pretty heavily, and even fiscal conservatism will garner rapid disagree in most cases.

(That said, to a lot of those people, it doesn't matter if the "majority" are left leaning. And for some of those (e.g. trans people), they're even somewhat justified in that stance, since it doesn't make a difference if the harassment they get from being brought to the attention of "orange site" users comes from the majority or the minority)

anigbrowl2• 2 years ago

About 30% of people are assholes, and birds of a feather flock together.

dtquad2• 2 years ago

The amount of folks here supporting Alex Jones is completely shocking to me

That shouldn't be a surprise considering how many American libertarian techbros are fans of Alex Jones Lite (Joe Rogan).

uv-depression3• 2 years ago

You're surprised? In any vaguely political thread HN is pretty much just a more well-spoken 4chan. Moderation here is entirely based on tone, not content, which along with its techno-libertarian origins makes it the perfect breeding ground for fascists and pseudo-intellectualism.

andrewmcwatters2• 2 years ago

Moderation here is entirely based on tone, not content

My least favorite thing about reading HN, by far. Glad someone else said it.

phatfish• 2 years ago

This articulates something I couldn't put my finger on. I think it comes from the internet becoming the main propaganda tool of -- well could be any government -- but for the audience here nation states or actors hostile to the English speaking "west".

The well-spoken troll gets people that are not caught by the meme gifs/jpgs. It requires more work on the propaganda side, but persistence pays off it seems.

Memes alone are not enough to turn most people here, but an account spewing hard-to-disprove nonsense on social media, or someone willing to shill on podcasts tickles the "DYOR" itch.

This feeds back into the comments here and "talking points" are spread.

dang7• 2 years ago

This is a common claim, but it only ever seems to be made by people with a strong ideological commitment who are mad that the opposing commitment isn't banned on the site. In other words, the complaint is that we don't moderate HN based on ideology. Since to do that would contradict HN's reason for existing (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...), I'm not inclined to start.

The irony is that people with the opposing ideological passion—the ones you refer to as techno-libertarian pseudo-intellectual fascists—make exactly the same complaint that you do, just with the ideological bit flipped. They think that HN is (let me see...) full of uber sensitive, far left ideologues [1], not only socialists but delusional anti-socials [2], full of leftist ideas and anti-capitalism snark [3]. Virtually every leftist post is upvoted [4], anything that can be remotely considered right wing is automatically flagged and/or downvoted [5], and only the most extreme progressive positions can be posted here, because I have destroyed this site! [6]

It's not really ironic, because these perceptions are only opposed to each other on the surface—just one bit is flipped, as I said. The underlying mechanisms have to be the same.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42160087

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42330143

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41846634

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41851430

[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41799361

[6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42076694

ljsprague2• 2 years ago

he built a business out of attacking and re-victimizing parents whose children were murdered

That not what he built his business on. That was one (bad) thing he did.

lbwtaylor3• 2 years ago

That is exactly what he built his business on - attacking people with bald face lies and using the generated outrage to sell snake oil.

crossroadsguy2• 2 years ago

When the right wing Govt was elected in my country suddenly right wing nutjobs appeared out of the woodwork on country/cities subreddits (seen quite sometimes here on hn as well) overnight as if they were just always there and were just dormant waiting for a time to show up in the right climate. No, they were not immediate new inserts from some IT Cell at all. They were always there.

I do not find anything shocking about Jones support in this post. A great social mistake has been thinking that people supporting nefarious stuff or shady, disgusting, and pathetic people do not know any better - but they do. Thing is - that is exactly what they want!

dudeinjapan• 2 years ago

“Judge refuses to allow sales of Infowars to The Onion, allows sale of Super Male Vitality Alpha-Z Colloidal Silver instead”

dang7• 2 years ago

All: if you're going to comment here, please review the site guidelines and make sure to stick to them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

There's way too much nasty dross in this thread. No, the topic does not make that ok. As you'll see when you review the guidelines, "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

thorum2• 2 years ago

Am I missing something or does this NYT article not actually say what the judge based his decision on? That would be an important piece of information to have when deciding whether the decision was good or not.

gms7777• 2 years ago

From the article: "Judge Lopez said that the bankruptcy auction failed to maximize the amount of money that the sale of Infowars should provide to Mr. Jones’s creditors, including the Sandy Hook families, in part because the bids were submitted in secret. “It seemed doomed almost from the moment they decided to go to a sealed bid,” Judge Lopez said. “Nobody knows what anybody else is bidding,” he added."

nativeit• 2 years ago

Wait, couldn’t this same argument be made in reverse? If the bids were open, the competing parties could simply go $1 above the highest offer, which suggest sealed bids are most appropriate to maximize the value. Auctions can’t be fairly judged in hindsight, generally speaking.

NoGravitas2• 2 years ago

This is the legal pretext, which appears about 2/3 of the way through the article:

Judge Lopez said that the bankruptcy auction failed to maximize the amount of money that the sale of Infowars should provide to Mr. Jones’s creditors, including the Sandy Hook families, in part because the bids were submitted in secret.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF• 2 years ago

auction failed to maximize the amount of money

I don't run auctions but something tells me there's a lot of research behind them that goes into optimizing for this precise thing. It's wild that the judge is disregarding the expertise of the person who was appointed by another judge to run the auction without asserting that the person is not qualified to run it.

thorum2• 2 years ago

Thanks! The archived snapshot doesn’t have that, it must have been added later.

doctoboggan• 2 years ago

Shouldn't all of the mechanics of the auction been agreed upon explicitly or at least implicitly with past precedent of bankruptcy auctions? How did the lawyers go ahead of an auction that even had a chance of being thrown out by the judge?

anigbrowl2• 2 years ago

You're not missing anything. Most US legal reporting complete shit, opting to write about the implications rather than do any legal analysis.

throwaway484762• 2 years ago

Journalists almost never cite and link to sources either. They make it so hard to verify anything.

OneLeggedCat• 2 years ago

NYT reporting has been trash for at least 10 years. Anyway Matt Levine, who has as good an opinion on this kind of thing as any columnist, sees it as mostly a technicality, and believes Onion can just submit their bid again. Of course, Elon also now has an outside interest, and can outbid anyone via proxy or otherwise.

Nemo_bis• 2 years ago

Matt Levine quote:

That strikes me as mostly wrong? One, it is not really impossible to value the families’ claims; they have won judgments in court. Two, “whatever the Connecticut Families decide to do with distributions” obviously adds to the value of The Onion’s bid, if what they do with the distributions is give them to other creditors. Three, it is not so much “a text book example of collusion” as it is a pretty standard case of the biggest creditor of a bankruptcy estate using its debt to subsidize its bid for the assets. It’s pretty normal stuff. > I don’t know? Global Tetrahedron’s bid was “$100,000 more than anyone else will pay,” so it’s not clear how much an auction would have helped. I suppose now they can have another auction and Global Tetrahedron can just bid $100,000 — or $1 — more than whatever FUAC bids, including the families’ waiver, and win the auction again.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-12-11/the-on... (https://archive.ph/uetH6)

memtet• 2 years ago

I posted the same news 24 days ago, it got downvote-brigaded by malicious actors (at the same time they were upvote-brigading fake news that he lost InfoWars to The Onion): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42160692

jonnycomputer• 2 years ago

What kind of news article doesn't explain the judge's reasoning?

NylaTheWolf• 2 years ago

Isn't Jones being forced to give up his site to pay off the debts, if I remember correctly?

I am also confused on why it took a whole month for them to reject the sale when it seems to have been accepted for weeks.

Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

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