The Onion buys Infowars
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Alex Jones response: https://x.com/RealAlexJones/status/1857058831135645739
(in fairness, those people tend to hate the Civil Service in the UK too. And they're elected hereditary Lords, albeit via a franchise consisting entirely of other hereditary Lords)
An indirect democracy is you voting for a representative who votes for policies.
The EU is a doubly-indirect democracy: you vote for local politicians who appoint commissioners who vote for policies. Each layer of indirection adds a new way for popular policies to be subverted. Hell, even in the US, the single layer of indirection is already sufficient to kill things like right to repair.
The EU Commission is the executive, not legislative branch. Though it does hold the initiative to create proposals, they have to be approved by the Council, which is where the real power lies. The Council consists of members of national governments. Also there is a directly elected, but much less powerful, European Parliament, that has to approve the legislative too.
I do not think they are the same people. The majority of votes were to leave the EU, the majority of people want to get rid of hereditary peerages.
> And they're elected hereditary Lords, albeit via a franchise consisting entirely of other hereditary Lords
The appointment is formally made by the monarch, in practice by the Prime Minister, with some recommendations coming from a commission that is not part of the house of lords.
You obviously haven't read the Telegraph or listened to many Conservative MPs recently. I don't blame you tbf!
> The appointment is formally made by the monarch, in practice by the Prime Minister, with some recommendations coming from a commission that is not part of the house of lords.
Those are life peers. Hereditary peers are, as the name suggests, people who get their access to the House of Lords by accident of birth rather than Prime Minister. But since Blair cut a deal to get rid of all but 92 of them, they have elected the 92, from a franchise consisting exclusively of people who had hereditary titles that had previously entitled them to a seat.
This is not always the case, although I guess it depends how you define bureaucrats. As an example, in France, most of the administration is not nominated. You become a public worker through exam, and the representative usually have no power over your nomination, raises, etc. It does make sense in a lot of cases. For example, in a city, only the mayor and its advisers are elected, and they do not have any control over the administration of the city. But the administration cannot refuse to work with a specific mayor. If they do, they would need to be moved elsewhere, or simply be fired for not doing their job. On the other hand, they are also bound by the law, so they also act as a counter power to crazy mayor who wants to do illegal stuff. Meaning, if the mayor ask the administration to do something illegal, they can absolutely say no with no fear of repercussion for their job.
It also makes sense for other counter-power office, where having the currently elected representatives being able to choose who control the office would go against its whole purpose.
Who else would have power over "nomination, raises etc" of anyone, if not elected representatives? Other public workers? At this point would they not be a sovereign group distinct from France, untouchable by the french people?
I guess the elected representatives have indirect power over everything in the end, if France is still a democracy. May be lots of layers of indirection, like the need to pass or change a law, but still.
Who defines and administers the exam you mentioned? Other public representatives? Can they decide to pass their relatives?
Yes, that's how the civil service works in most countries, more or less. The US is an outlier in that the executive appoints about 4,000 civil servants; most places don't work like that (even in the US; _most_ civil servants (about 2.8 million of them, federal) are hired, promoted, disciplined etc by other civil servants; the president doesn't sit in on every interview or anything.)
> I guess the elected representatives have indirect power over everything in the end, if France is still a democracy.
The elected representatives pass laws. The civil service implements them.
Separately, at least in many countries, not sure about France, you have the concept of power devolved to the minister, where the legislature passes a law allowing the minister to make orders in certain restricted areas, a bit like a scope-limited version of US presidential executive orders.
This occasionally has amusing repercussions if the original devolution legislation was insufficient or unconstitutional; for instance in Ireland nearly all drugs (morphine, heroin, cannabis and possibly cocaine remained illegal) were accidentally legalised for a day, when the supreme count found that the legislation used to enable the Minister for Justice to ban drugs was insufficient, thus legalising everything which had been banned since it was passed.
This is one of the concerning parts with the incoming administration.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/25/project-2025...
> Project 2025, which is backed by the rightwing Heritage Foundation thinktank, has proposed to “dismantle the administrative state”, while Trump’s official “Agenda 47” calls for “cleaning out the Deep State” and “on Day One” issuing an “executive order restoring the president’s authority to fire rogue bureaucrats”.
> That executive order would set up a system, known as Schedule F, that would revamp the federal bureaucracy so that far more jobs could be filled with political appointees rather than through traditional merit rules. Trump’s supporters say Schedule F would cover about 50,000 federal employees, but unions representing federal workers say it would cover many times that. Currently, approximately 4,000 federal positions are subject to presidential appointment. Trump’s allies are said to have compiled a list of 20,000 loyalists who could quickly move into federal jobs in a new Trump administration.
---
That 4,000 is looking to become 20,000 and potentially increase up to 50,000 (and beyond depending how far reaching the reclassification is).
Best to be aware of this, not deceive ourselves that public servants are untouchable. Some people might get the idea that voting for a very bad politician would just send a message and not have much real effect, as the civil servants are the same and will do the same job and cannot be removed. They can. Even in Germany.
Possibly. They’d need majority control of the legislature (not merely the sort of plurality control that seems within the bounds of possibility on some countries) and control of the courts. They’d also potentially need to be able to change the constitution; in most countries the Lisbon treaty is either implicitly or explicitly above local law. They’d need to be ready to face sanctions from the EU. I think Germany in particular also has some regulation of the civil service actually in the constitution. But ultimately, yeah, if the far right successfully took over the government (rather than just leading a coalition or something) they could probably do this; the Nazis did, after all.
The courts? If you have majority in the legislature, you can pass any law you want, and the courts are obligated to follow the law. You think they would just rebel and disregard laws that they consider not-ok?
In any case. The courts need to get paid, and need offices and electricity and computers and support from police and other branches. And judges need to be appointed, and sometimes leave. One way or another the courts would get converted to the cause. All the courts in a country are a lot of people. There are always some who would betray. Just adjust the laws and the salaries and everything you can (which is a lot if you own the legislative) to advantage those on your side and disadvantage those who oppose you. Prosecutors are typically under the executive, so start some made-up investigations against the most prominent judges that oppose you. No need to do it for all, set a few examples and the others will see the error of their ways. No need for the investigations to get convictions in court. Just place doubt on inconvenient judges, and use the media to amplify it. Your side of the media, while the other side also gets converted. Converting the media is much easier, again, using executive and legislative power.
The constitution as a document is irrelevant. The court(s) that interpret it would just get converted to the cause in the same way. This has already been done in Poland and the US, and I presume in Hungary, since there's no news about them creating trouble.
> in most countries the Lisbon treaty is either implicitly or explicitly above local law
The government and the converted courts will just start acting as if the Lisbon treaty does not exist. Who or what can enforce it? Look at Hungary. Look at Poland before the recent change. Look at Slovakia. A treaty has no power over a country that does not whish to follow it. Look at the Budapest memorandum and soon enough we will see Trump ignore the NATO treaty.
In my country the constitutional court routinely says our constitution (and therefore their decisions, which always favor a certain party, and corruption in general) are above the Lisbon treaty. The EU pretends nothing happened (presumably due to the war).
> the Nazis did, after all
Exactly.
In some circumstances, the plan would be to fire everybody and then just sit there and do nothing (except fire more people). The idea that all this is towards any kind of functional system, is an assumption. They could be looking to dismantle the entire administrative state and just collapse immediately to feudalism.
1. The law. For example, public worker salary's are explicitly defined on a public grid, which depends on several factor (exact position, how long you have been in the job, the national public worker salary index, ...).
2. Their boss / future boss. Promotion it partly a matter of law, but also partly at the discretion of your boss. Same for a lateral move. If a position open, and you are qualified to fill it, you have to have interview just like a normal job offer.
There is a bunch a caveat and details, but that's the gist of it. So, technically, representative do have power over this. Some representatives can change the law, and some are technically more or less the boss of the top officer at some administration. But it still make a lot of things difficult if not impossible. A mayor cannot change national law, only Deputé of the national assembly can, so he has no power over the salary of his administration. He also has no power to fire someone from the local administration unless he can prove that they did something that the law consider a fireable offense. The same would go for a minister.
Of course, in effect, they do yield a lot of influence. While public worker are very, very rarely fired, they can be moved to another position, which is easier to do and what usually happen when someone powerful want them gone without having the actual power to do so directly.
In many countries that is done based on laws describing career progression process.
In Germany most administration workers are "career" folks, who study at the university of administration and then have a career paths, where levels at are relatively clearly described. Only heads of different authorities are "political" positions, which are nominated by ministers and can be fired/retired relatively easily but even those in most cases stay across administrations. Only ministers and their direct staff change.
In some ministries there sometimes is the saying "we don't care who is minoster below us" but if a some minister with an agenda is appointed they still can be very effective.
But since the law is written by elected representatives, to say that the representatives have no power in this case seems wrong, to me. That's all.
If the voters will vote for the "fire Joe" party 20 years in a row, I guarantee Joe the civil servant will eventually be fired, even in Germany, France, anywhere. Well, maybe not in China, but that's different. Anywhere where votes still matter. Solutions would be found, laws changed, exceptions provided, and so on.
Have you watched the British documentary series "Yes, Minister"?
Civil servants are people like you and me, and have as strong will as anyone.
Building upon economic theory, public choice has a few core tenets. One is that no decision is made by an aggregate whole. Rather, decisions are made by combined individual choices. A second is the use of markets in the political system. A third is the self-interested nature of everyone in a political system.
As if it's not made of humans. This view is in grave error. Nobody is perfectly rational, nobody is beyond bias or subjectivty, nobody is beyond human emotions.
For certain classes of politician, this might actually be a problem.
However: Yes, who you vote for impacts government. If you vote for a party which sets priority in building bike sheds, the authorities will move staff to the required departments, while Joe remains in the department nobody cares about anymore and thus can't meet the promotion goals. (While he will still receive the regular raise for the job level he is in) And if one truly wants to get rid of Joe there certainly is a way to find a reason for demoting him ..
But it's way different from the American system which sweeps thousand of jobs, according to [1] about 4,000 jobs directly, where then many of those bring in their assistant, advisor etc.
[1] https://presidentialtransition.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/...
This goes also further: Many offices which are elected in the US are appointed in Europe (I'm not aware of a European country where population elects state/district attorneys, sheriffs, judges, school boards, etc)
> And before you say “constitution,”
I have zero idea why I would say "constitution" or anything really. My entire point is that nobody is beyond the reach of elected representatives, and that is by design and a good thing too.
That’s just stating the obvious.
> that is by design
No, it’s not. It’s just a fact of life that governments can control every aspect of a person’s life if it chooses. It’s always been this way and always will be.
This is why your statements are absurd.
When people refer to a civil service as being “apolitical” or “not politically appointed,” it’s obvious that they’re not referring to absurd cases like “a government can outlaw them from having a job.”
That’s why I said you’re reducing the argument to absurdity.
Yes, in the end of course. But these layers of indirection are extremely important. In my country right-wing politicians are currently rallying against prosecutors they think are "too lenient" with criminals. If it weren't for the indirection those prosecutors would have been replaced with the politicians' yes-friends long ago.
> 60 politicians of all colors stand for election in the 15 countries of the European Union: unimaginable benefits and positions of influence await their power brokers, for it is these Machiavellian lobbyists and self-appointed “leaders“ who hold the real power in the palms of their hands.
And from the rules:
> The player with the most total votes played in a given party is the party representative. If a player has two cards in the same party, their value is added. If two or more players have the same vote total in a party, the one with the highest single card is the party representative. Remember that a doubler card, if played, will always be considered the highest card. Also, note that it is possible for one player to control two parties.
> If Gaudino is played in a party in competition with another politician valued 7 in that party, he is considered to be the higher card.
> The green-leaf party is a special case. If two players tie for total value in green cards, it is possible that they will still tie for highest single card value. In that case, the two players are given thirty seconds to agree on who will be the green representative. If they do not agree in that time, each player with green cards may negotiate separately.
As long as we (and I mean the left side broadly) are talking about the government not being legitimate as we shoot ourselves in the foot, we won’t learn how to reverse this. Talking about stolen power is a weak argument when we’ve just been outmanoeuvred. And it makes us look like sulking children and in the end it just helps conservatives and fascists.
“If Gondor, Boromir, has been a stalwart tower, [those who work at public bureaus] have played another part. Many evil things there are that your strong walls and bright swords do not stay. You know little of the lands beyond your bounds. Peace and freedom, do you say? The North would have known them little but for us."
The mayor can still dictate policy and the administration have to implement it if it is not illegal, right?
The above is of course satire. We have idiotic regulations that require a good understanding of culture to get through. People are like the rest of the population: average. There are good ones send bad ones.
For the exam - it completely depends on the administration and your level.
We hate our administration because it is either complicated, or contacting them is a nightmare (or simply impossible)
That's also the case in the UK.
By the same argument you could say UK or US or any other solidly democratic is not democratic, because some commission or organisation is not directly, by the people, elected.
(If you go for the direct election argument, the UK fares pretty badly BTW.)
In theory the Commission is mostly made up of civil servants who answer to commissioners, who are themselves nominated by each country's own government or civil service. Each commissioner has one area of responsibility only, and they answer to the head of the Commission who is their boss. So someone in the UK votes for a politician, who votes for a party leader, who appoints some ministers, and those ministers may or may not have much of a say in whoever gets nominated to be a commissioner - one of many. But there is at least a path there, even if long and indirect and the person your vote ends up influencing doesn't do anything important to your country or needs.
In practice it doesn't actually work that way. In practice, the head of the Commission has veto power over the nominations. They aren't supposed to according to the treaties but the treaties are ignored. This means that in reality it's the head of the Commission who picks the Commissioners, because they can just reject anyone who isn't sufficiently aligned with their own agenda.
So that leaves the question of how the head of the Commission is picked. Once again there is theory and practice. In theory, it's a decision of the heads of each state that they take together to select some candidates, and the Parliament then gets to vote for their preferred candidate. In practice ... nobody knows how the head is picked. Ursula von der Leyen was recently re-appointed despite being plagued by scandals and having a long career of failing upwards. Parliament was sidelined by giving them a voting list with only one candidate on it (her). Seek out an explanation of how she got this job and you won't find one because:
1. The heads of state don't talk about how they decide as a group. Is it a vote? Some sort of horse trading? Do they take it in turns? Are they even all able to take part? Nobody knows.
2. There's no record of which country voted for who, or why.
3. The process by which someone even becomes a candidate is unclear.
4. Because no head of state has any control over who gets onto the candidate list, they never talk on the campaign trail about how they will "vote" (assuming that's how it works) for who runs the EU.
In other words, the process is entirely secret. The potential for corruption is unlimited.
So when critics say the EU Commission is a bunch of unelected bureaucrats, they are right and those who argue otherwise here on HN are wrong. People who got their jobs via a process so opaque and indirect that how it functions can't be explained, not even in principle, cannot claim to be democratically selected.
You can also even just observe the following litmus test of democratic legitimacy: what percentage of people have even heard of Ursula von der Leyen (or most of her predecessors) before her appointment to the most powerful position in the EU? Contrast that with their country's president or prime minister and you will see why one is democratically legitimate and the other is not.
People dislike changes of party leadership by the party in power between elections because they get someone they did not vote for.
It is also only one layer removed from the people directly voted in. The EU Commissioners are another layer or too removed from who people voted for.
If politicians can engage in horse trading they will.
> Parliament was sidelined by giving them a voting list with only one candidate on it (her).
This implies that the parliament has to pick on who is on the ballot, which it doesn't: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20240710IP...
She was elected with a majority - albeit not a huge one. Still: elected. This is an example of "there is at least a path there, even if long and indirect".
How about another counterexample: In the US the members of the Federal Reserve are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate (so an indirect path, but fairly short), for 14 years! The Supreme Justices are appointed for life. To take this to a hypothetical extreme, image now calling a country "democratic" where you just hold elections once per lifetime.
That doesn't really strike me as democratic, as the "demos", the people, change their minds more often than once in 14 years, or once per lifetime.
Of course, the EU I'm sure also has appointments that go beyond the standard 4-5-ish years. But my point is: the EU isn't as undemocratic as you make it to be and the US/UK isn't as democratic as you may think. Both are muddling along, and probably neither reach Swiss levels.
> The process by which someone even becomes a candidate is unclear
Your points 1.-4. apply to many appointments in the US and UK that are similarly undemocratic: To take an example from the UK: The Governor of the Bank of England is appointed by the Chancellor+PM. Again, no one knows who or why they made the decision the way they made it. Were they friends with the future Governor? Did their party engage in some horse trading with the opposition to secure other benefits in turn for nominating a particular person? No one knows.
But people certainly do know how that position is selected, by whom and for what reason. The current governor of the BoE has a long history of running government financial institutions, including in the central bank itself. He is a civil servant and is thus picked by the Chancellor, who is himself picked by the Prime Minister. No mysteries there. He is eminently qualified for the role.
On 3 June 2019, it was reported in The Times that Bailey was the favourite to replace Mark Carney as the new governor of the Bank of England.[9] Sajid Javid had also intervened in support of Bailey.[10][11] According to The Economist: "He is widely seen within the bank as a safe pair of hands, an experienced technocrat who knows how to manage an organisation."[12]
Previously he served as the Chief Cashier of the Bank of England under Mervyn King from January 2004 until April 2011, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England for Prudential Regulation under Mark Carney from April 2013 to July 2016 and Chief Executive of the Financial Conduct Authority from 2016 to 2020.
It's a matter of degree rather than a binary. Representative democracy is a little less democratic than direct democracy. Elections every 20 years are a bit less democratic than elections every 5 years. Having the elected representatives appoint a head of state is a bit less democratic than electing one directly. The more layers of indirection you add, the more it becomes a bureaucratic oligarchy.
It seems here that because the EU likes to regulate more, people somehow perceive it as less democratic.
A bit; mostly as you say, but also it's a kingdom and has the House of Lords whose seats are partially heritable, partially religious appointments from the state religion with the monarch at the top, in addition to those appointed by the elected government.
There are also, in practice, a number of other religious appointments made to provide other religious groups with representation.
> in addition to those appointed by the elected government.
Those are the most problematic IMO. Businesspeople (because the rich do not have enough influence on politics and cannot get their voice heard?), and former politicians.
I think how it works is nicely summarised by the fact that at least one of the founders of an ecommerce website (lastminute.com) is a peer but no-one like (for example) Tim Berners-Lee is.
Alexandra Freeman [0] or Lionel Tarassenko [1] might fit your criteria as technocratic appointments to the peerage - just how "like" TBL do they have to be? Sir Timothy seems like the kind of character who could reasonably be appointed, too, if that's what he really wanted.
I agree with your point that it's dominated by businessmen and aristocrats, but maybe not quite as badly as you think.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Freeman,_Baroness_Fr...
Freeman, has spent most of her career as a science in science communication (director and producer of BBC documentaries, then a "communications" role at Cambridge).
I like TBL as an example partly because of his interest in the broader consequences of technology, and the contrast with people who have made money from the technology her inventented being peers.
So they are employees of their departments and don't change when a minister changes. Ministers are almost always a member of Parliament and appointed by the Prime Minister, so they can change at any time.
Usually a government will have some changes at the top of departments (the "Permanent Secretary") and high level executives, but that's also a "change of government to another party" event.
A big part of the "project 2025" idea was to reduce career employees and make everybody effectively a political appointee.
Sir Humphrey Appelby often explains to the Minister Jim Hacker how the Minister sets "policy" and it is the "humble public servants" that carry out that policy, having attended to the details that are required when dealing with the heavy business of government across departments, while leaving the Minister to concentrate on the "big picture", and doing his job, which is:
1. Defend the Ministry in Parliament
2. Make sure that the Ministry's budget is defended in Cabinet
It has a parliament, a flag (adopted - its the flag of Europe originated by the Council of Europe), a national anthem (likewise adopting a well known piece of music) and a de facto constitution (it was essentially PR move to drop plans to call it a constitution - the substance did not change).
Having a majority of countries recognize you as a country is pretty much all that's required, if that.
A Disney fan club can pass legislation?
None elected.
Unelected people are tasked with defending the free world. how about that?
I mean, one outcome is the obvious collapse of the Pentagon. But it seems like an oversight to have those people, now with a bone to pick, running around loose. Do they propose to take all the bad Pentagon bureaucrats and confine them in some way? I wouldn't want to be the Sgt. Shultz in charge of being those guys' jailer. Seems like it would be a tall, tall order.
It has the same soundbites, and the narrative same structure, and the gullible still takes it.
Now the true question: are they gullible people, or just people pretending to be gullible to push an agenda?
Unless you’re going to go for Best of the Worst. Then I might actually watch the movie itself too.
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.
Can you spot any problems with their plan for the supplement inventory?
> 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
as a regular reader of infowars and a happy customer of their supplements, i cannot see any flaw in that logic and can only hope that i, a successful business executive, will be the person they choose to give immortality to.
My interpretation is that the post you replied to was 100% satire.
His tweets were soaked in that glib faux-distinterested mid-2010s hyper-online style (but he would still tweet four times an hour, carefully calculating the most likely-to-trend level of ironic detachment for his 'epic' dunk on whoever Twitter's victim of the day was). He had a memorable feud with Nate Silver, in which he (Collins) demonstrated utter ignorance of elementary math, to farm likes off of the then-'out' Silver. Collins treated Twitter like he was the starring character in a high school melodrama.
For almost any 'bad Twitter take' cliché you can think of, there's a Ben Collins tweet (which, to be fair, is still much less bad than the worst of the new Twitter).
The Onion is a good landing point for him.
I think this is generational rather than decade-al. That's just how Gen X/early millenials talk about everything, and it's why Bluesky is still like that.
The other big example is that awful Cory Doctorow babytalk word "enshittification" - they love dropping in the occasional swear but only to make things sound even more smarmy.
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.
But I think the right to be wrong is way more important than getting at Alexander Jones.
The precedent is bad.
I think the opposite precent would be worse. Regulating your tone around anyone with even a mediocum of power for fear of repercussion is part of the reason we're in the situation we face today.
But when you profit off the suffering and harm you've caused by being wrong knowingly and continuing to cause harm, then its a very good precedent.
The right to deliberately lie in ways that harm people is not a "right" that we want to uphold.
A good reply I found online:
The Paradox of Tolerance disappears if you look at tolerance not as a moral standard but as a social contract. If someone does not abide the terms of mutual tolerance, then they are not covered by the contract. By definition intolerant people do not follow the rules so they are no longer covered and should not be tolerated.
Surely chairman mao agrees with free speech that doesn’t harm his society and social programs
Again, figuring out which speech is worth suppressing is a whole other can of worms.
EDIT: note that Jones did have his speech suppressed, and this was done because his speech was causing people to make death threats against the sandy hook parents. I feel like we could classify Jones's speech as intolerant against sandy hook parents, and the same logic applies as for any other type of intolerant speech.
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.
I believe Info Wars etc becoming big is pretty much a symptom rather than the problem. And it has escalated lately. I fear that they will be used as excuses for getting at others.
I believe the problem is how incredibly easy it is to both disseminate and consume utter bullshit. You're no longer that weird loner in town. You go online and can find hundreds and thousands of people who agree with you. Why would you go find people that challenge your views, when you can get those dopamine highs from people who love everything you say?
Get pushback from people in your life? Cut them out. They don't get you, and they're just hating.
The worst part? It's self-sustaining. Humans are really bad about going against a group. So much of our social behavior is around what others do, and the more we find out about others believing XYZ, we'll start to believe it ourselves. Unless they're from a different group, in which case it is anathema.
Combine those 2 things and you get these people who basically live in separate worlds. And social media/internet enables that.
But more importantly, how easy it is to make a lot of money disseminating it.
I don't know if Alex Jones is mentally ill or pretends to be. His targeting seems suspiciously self-aware and lame compared to how it usually sounds when people wander down that path.
But I guess most of his viewership is. But they existed on the internets in the beginning too. Plenty of them. Maybe the recommendation engines bring more people into the "self-sustaining" circle, than would be otherwise?
I think what has changed is mainly that there are more 'leaders'. I might have had the wrong conception of what it was like earlier, but apart from Alex Jones and the lizard guy (David Ike?) it didn't seem to be that many.
Something has changed. There are so many lunatic "influencers" nowadays that keep getting pushed to the top. Earlier you had to get out of your way to stumble upon them.
Obviously in some kind of minority, but I love having my views challenged. It’s how I grow. I want people to argue with me, though ideally, respectfully.
Of course, in a politicized legal context, these points may not matter since legal action could simply be an endurance trial.
To your other point, "a well-financed bad actor could ruin any business with enough SLAPP lawsuits" falls away because anti-SLAPP laws exist and award damages if you push too hard.
Do perfectly good people get ruined through litigation? Sure. Is it the epidemic that grifters trying to sway public opinion in their favor make it out to be? Highly unlikely.
There were several claims about things such as Alex Jones paying individuals to call the plaintiffs 24/7 and other direct forms of harassment.
Feel however you want about free speech but the lawsuit wasn't just Alex Jones said mean words.
* the system referring to the vast combination of peoples: politicians, legal, monied interests, lobbyists, news media, corporations, journalists, agitators, whatever, et al
Do you apply the same standard to public figures who call Trump a fascist or a Nazi? Are they responsible for the person who shot him?
>You’ve got parents laughing — ‘hahaha’ — and then they walk over to the camera and go ‘boo hoo hoo,’ and not just one but a bunch of parents doing this and then photos of kids that are still alive they said died? I mean, they think we’re so dumb.”
>“Why did Hitler blow up the Reichstag — to get control! Why do governments stage these things — to get our guns! Why can’t people get that through their head?” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/us/politics/heres-what-jo...
Re double standards on Trump, I think people are ok with criticizing power hungry politicians, less so with parents who have had their kids killed.
The Jones case was a civil case for damages. He's not going to prison or anything - just losing some assets. Trump is free to sue people who've implied he's a nazi (maybe he could start with JD) but I don't know how sympathetic a jury would be.
Whatever you think about the case, it should be decided with factual statements, not emotional manipulative accusations that bend the truth.
"He didn't present a defense therefore it has been determined for a fact that he is guilty" is not especially sound. You'd have to concede the existence of witches on the absurd end, and that everyone who makes a plea deal is guilty on the more rational end. He's guilty because he publicly made harmful defamatory statements that he privately did not believe, both of which are made clear by evidence.
Not at all - I'm saying the liability should go in the opposite direction. If worldstar fight videos incite lots of people to start fighting in the streets, then worldstar should be partially responsible unless they take actions to distance themselves from their viewers' actions.
>To prove prima facie defamation, a plaintiff must show four things: 1) a false statement purporting to be fact; 2) publication or communication of that statement to a third person; 3) fault amounting to at least negligence; and 4) damages
So probably no in that case as there was no significant damage. Sandy Hook was different in that there were ongoing threats and harassment for years.
Don't want to be sued by defamation don't make BS about people in a fragile position. It's that simple
Why not call it one or the other?
new X is when your feed what Elon wants you to see and react to.
At the top of the feed, there are two tabs: "For you" and "Following". If you select "Following", then you only see people you follow.
- cannot disable/hide For you
- always default for you, and no way to default to Following2. This effectively makes everyone see whatever Musk personally likes/retweets
3. It is soft of correct that there is more freedom of speech due to slashing/nonexistent moderation
4. But because algo promotes whatever Musk retweets, it makes Musk chief in charge of the algorithm. Whatever Musk likes - will be shown to everyone.
5. Because the rest of the feed is noise and garbage, this effectively makes Musk inject a strong signal to a feed and makes him a moderator. If censors previously would censor by deleting posts, he censors by throwing garbage and noisy posts and sprinkling signal in a few places
Same thing happens with competitors though. That's all Threads is. I enabled Bluesky's occasional algorithm posts in the following feed and it will not stop trying to show me hardcore gay porn I very much didn't ask for.
Very much except FB.
I see more hate content on FB (which i have to use because of other people) than I do on Twitter on the rare occasions I look at it.
When I see "X", I think X Window System.
I saw your comment and thought, "I bet this guy is a Windows user." I was right! LOL.
https://hn.algolia.com/?type=comment&sort=byDate&query=autho...
So yeah, Jones fits right in there.
To me, as a casual user of the platform, that has been the trend. I've been visiting less because of it.
there are both in-depth studies and anecdotal evidence that suggest hate speech has been growing under Mr Musk's tenure.
Data Shows X Is Suspending Far Fewer Users for Hate Speech
On the other hand you had most other platforms like Reddit, with relatively heavy-handed moderation, where the impression you would have had in the first few days of November is that Trump was probably going to lose the election.
So when you want to make a prior judgement on an extremely consequential outcome, which a posteriori was not even close, and one information ecosystem gives you the right answer, and most of the other information ecosystems give you the wrong answer, which information ecosystems do you classify as "echo chambers"?
It's possible that this was just a fluke, but it should certainly make you update your priors on which ecosystems provide a more representative sample of base reality.
I’m on Reddit a fair bit and while it’s difficult to know the overall biases of the greater community based on what I see individually, I don’t have a lot of trouble believing that there was a bias toward a particular desired result. But, I honestly didn’t see much in the way of a bias one way or the other in the expected result. I mostly saw a lot of anxiety over not knowing what result to expect.
“It’s 50% probability. Either it’s true or it isn’t.” — what meddlers pretend when they’re not happy admitting the high probability of their enemy candidate being elected. It wasn’t a coin flip.
Polls always need to be skewed in some way to be accurate, since not everybody will vote. You can't just get a random distribution of the population's preference and assume the more-preferred candidate will win. Polls can never be truly accurate because people will lie about which candidate they're voting for and whether they're planning to vote, and sometimes people who genuinely intended to vote never make it to the polls. There are a huge number of variables to consider when trying to predict the outcome of the election, but it's important enough that it's still worth trying.
It's an incredibly small number of voters in the key swing states that actually decide the election. It's under 1% of the voters to swing the election. Winner take all + electoral college will give you that.
Imagine taking any of that seriously. Didn't they give Hillary an 80% chance?
PredictIt was predicting the opposite outcome up to the day of the election.
https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/7456/Who-will-win-t...
The point here is that there is no “the prediction markets” one can speak of as a cohesive unit.
Left. Censored media leans left. Censored forums, news, communities are censored to give credit to left ideas. Symmetrically, left ideas only thrive by hiding information.
With complete transparency, people lean right.
it’s difficult to know the overall biases of the greater community based on what any one person sees.
People who lean to the left tend to believe that it's bad to do some of the things that get you justifiably banned (such as intentionally using language that demeans people based on immutable traits). Because of this, it's much easier for them to avoid being deplatformed.
4 swing states were decided by a 1% difference. this election was close.
Trump won all 7 swing states and the popular vote by a few million. it was not a close election whatsoever. even Clinton won Nevada
The idea that I stopped clock is right twice a day but because it's twitter that means it's always right is a bit... come on. Hackernews commenters are supposed to be better than that.
The people on the right seem satisfied for now that they can "combat misinformation with more information". (That's a misquote by the way, I believe he said better information, not more. On second thought, he may have said it both ways.)
Has anyone discussed why the right believes this can work, and the left doesn't?
By the time Community Notes has appeared, tens or even hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of people will have seen the misinformation.
Even once Community Notes have appeared, many won't read them.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_asymmetry_principle
If they’ve internalized/amplified it, they’ll believe the source, and disregard the contradictory information.
This has been well-established over the last, oh, 10 years. Facts are irrelevant if you can choose your own sources.
But if you can prove it wasn't, I'm interested
These are recounts, audits, and security guards. No recounts deviated by that much, even the massive Arizona recount found no significant deviation.
> It is not difficult to find historical precedent of election fraud
Please provide that. The evidence AFAIK is counted as essentially "parts per million", it is so small. Meanwhile there are a variety of safeguards, audits, verifications & recounts.
The null hypothesis in this case I don't believe would be "fraudulent election", so it is a claim.
In the scientific world, a hypothesis that has no evidence is treated with skepticism.
In the rest of the world, it gets treated as fact, even as evidence against the claim pours in.
In the aftermath of this clearly deceptive behavior, they've maintained the support of Republican voters who still believe the lie despite none of the evidence ever being released.
It's one thing to claim something is true and that you have evidence, then release the evidence and find out that it's insufficient to win in court. It's another thing entirely to make a claim, say you have overwhelming evidence to support it, and never release any evidence at all. In the former case, maybe you got overzealous or maybe you were dealing with an unsympathetic judge. In the latter, the only rational way to interpret the situation is that you were intentionally misleading your audience.
If you have a substantial response, cast it forth.
Eventually, yes, but until it happens, bodies are piling up.
EDIT: Also, FWIW, the truth is often exposed nearly immediately, yet for some people, once they have chosen to believe the lie, they can't be convinced of the truth.
Because I'd much rather my grandma get a COVID vaccine than trying to find a source of Ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine.
And I imagine the owners of Comet Ping Pong would have greatly preferred that adults didn't read lies about Hillary running a child sex ring in their basement. [0]
Haitian immigrants in Ohio certainly weren't fans of Trump claiming that they're kidnapping and eating pets.
Speech has consequences.
> Once they eventually find the info was wrong they'll be more sceptical of that source.
...have you been living in a cave for the last 10 years? I just can't fathom how someone can be so naive to actually think this.
If there was any truth to this, Infowars would have been damn near been dead on arrival. Fox News would have been bankrupt before Obama even began his second term.
Or maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse and operating under the assumption that people will accept when they're wrong.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory
So the misinformation didn't affect your decision making. Instead, the misinformation you were exposed to was corrected by your exposure to more, better information.
As for libel, it has always existed and always will. There are laws against it to protect people if they suffer any damage from it. It's not without consequences.
What you're proposing is so much worse. Imagine a tyrant government is after you and has control on information like you propose. How will you protect yourself from the goverment's false accusations?
You're straw-manning. I never proposed anything like government enforcement against misinformation.
I don't think misinformation should be illegal, for the reasons you touch on: You certainly don't want government deciding the truth.
Who gets to decide what is misinformation is an entirely different issue. But I can at least hope you can agree that misinformation as a concept is unethical, right? People are literally dying because of misinformation. Again, set aside the question of "Well, who decides what is misinformation?" and consider just the mere concept of it.
Tyranny is the only alternative to free speech. I just don't see it ending in any other way.
> I don't think misinformation should be illegal, for the reasons you touch on: You certainly don't want government deciding the truth.
Awesome! Then we can stop making such a big deal out of misinformation and protect free speech.
> But I can at least hope you can agree that misinformation as a concept is unethical, right? People are literally dying because of misinformation.
Yes lying is unethical it's been established thousands of years ago.
As long as misinformation is costing people's lives, I will make a big deal out of it.
I recognize that I am raising a stink about a problem without proposing a solution.
> Yes lying is unethical it's been established thousands of years ago.
It took us way too long to realize that we agree.
Absolutist free speech would allow you to publicly plot the assassination of whomever you wanted to, or permit insider trading, etc.
Speech is a tool. It's utility and morality depends on the weilder of it.
In particular, it's been shown that people with dogmatic beliefs strengthen those beliefs when shown evidence to the contrary rather than questioning them.
How do you explain that there are smart people who have known about these very disadvantages for many years, and still respond positively to "the solution to misinformation is more/better information"?
I don't suppose you know of a solution (to a problem that I admit I haven't fully specified) that has no disadvantages. The proposed solutions I've seen appearing on the left are frightening.
Someone can be intelligent and still have misplaced hope for humanity to the point where I would consider them to be outright naive.
All it took was an hour or two on social media back in 2020/21. You could easily find someone who insisted that Ivermectin cured COVID, point out tons of studies showing that it's worthless against COVID, and yet they would reject all those studies as lies.
> I don't suppose you know of a solution
Nope. :-(
Kids are taught the scientific method, but that doesn't seem to be enough. They learn enough to pass a test and then forget about it all.
> The proposed solutions I've seen appearing on the left are frightening.
Agreed, though be careful to not read words that aren't there. Elsewhere in this thread, someone accused me of being in favor of government enforcement against free speech despite me saying nothing of the sort. Arguments that misinformation is bad is not an argument that it should be legally enforced!
In other words, yes, some leftists believe that misinformation should be illegal, but not everyone arguing that misinformation is bad is arguing that it should be illegal.
Say something happened, they'll say you don't have proof.
Show proof that it happened, they'll say it isn't a big deal.
Demonstrate a negative consequence, they'll say it's an isolated incident.
Show that it happens a lot, they'll say the victims deserve it.
And so on. Of course I don't have any proof.
So when you have people like Musk constantly posting by the time a note is added the value of it has long since diminished.
Also your left/right wing argument is entirely something you’ve invented.
Unless there's a more specific example you can think of w.r.t rewriting.
Apparently children's books can't use the word "black" or "white" any more. And in the children's book "Witches", a witch posing as “a cashier in a supermarket” now poses as “a top scientist”. It's blunt-force rewriting by patronising leftists. Witches are not meant to be role models for little girls. It doesn’t matter where they work.
Of course it's scalable. Community notes are written by people, so increasing the amount of people writing notes means it's scalable. Users find the added context helpful, so more notes are rated by more people more often. That's the definition of scale.
> the value of it has long since diminished.
No. The note remains forever on the tweet. There is no "diminishing". Anyone who has interacted with that post in the past is notified about the note. Our own Prime Minister here in Australia has had a few of his posts community noted. Politicians love to make bold claims about how awesome they are. They are note magnets. It's not a perfect system, but it's a good system.
Having read or seen a post seems to be the most important part. That is not defined as part of "interacted". AFAIK, most X posts are viewed once and then never viewed again. It is a tiny fraction that actually "interacts" with a post. Hence, the value is diminished since the majority of people that read a post are never informed of the community note.
Per X: "Community Notes sends notifications to everyone who has replied to, Liked or reposted a post after a note starts showing on it." [1]
[1] https://communitynotes.x.com/guide/en/contributing/notificat...
Are you claiming we're in "information danger" because community notes isn't there to watch people post things in real time? Exactly how much of a pre-school do you want the internet to be? Do you want a school teacher looking over your shoulder as you type?
As you should know, interaction with a post by liking or replying, means the post had the most impression on that reader. The people you're worried about who don't interact, you have zero data on. You don't know whether they disagreed with the post, disbelieved or otherwise unaffected by the post. In fact, we do have some data. The post made such little impression that they didn't bother liking or replying.
People are not damaged goods after reading an untrue post online. The internet contains endless examples of disputed information, corrected only after the first post is read. For example, right here on HN. This place historically contains the following pattern:
"I think X should Y because Z"
Later that day or week, someone counters:
"actually, you haven't considered A or B in your reasoning of Z, which points to Y being inadequate".
Twitter is right wing because your country (and the world) are shifting right. Sorry.
You can't run a service where it shows every single post that someone wants to put up, even if they're "legal". It'd get full of spam, offend everyone so much they leave, or just force everyone to see Hunter Biden's penis.
In what way? I still only see the very same industry-focused information that I first started using Twitter for. If anything, X has improved in pulling in information from more industry players than I was seeing before, so I consider it to be an even more compelling product now.
But perhaps that same algorithm improvement is what you ultimately mean? As in, that X has become better at finding the information you want to see, so if you have an interest in "right wing" or conspiracy content then it is a greater likelihood of it exposing you to that than the Twitter of yore did?
I suspect those who complain it is a "right wing" echo chamber are using longstanding accounts and actually engaging with "right wing" content, which trains "the algorithm" of their preference to see more of the same. Anecdotally, those I know who complain of "right wing" echo chambers are also the first people to gorge on "right wing" media to see what "they" are up to.
https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2024/nov/13/the-guardian-n...
On second thought, this is clearly an advertisement disguised as news trying to latch onto searches for Twitter/X. They are no doubt backing away, but only because nobody wants to read widely published news on X in the first place. X's niche is in providing a place for everyday people to get their own personal news out, like the aforementioned industry practitioners sharing what they are doing in industry.
This is not an accurate characterization of The Guardian's reasoning.
> They are no doubt backing away, but only because nobody wants to read widely published news on X in the first place
This is your claim - presented without evidence. You are also making multiple claims, also that The Guardian is publishing (essentially only) news on X and not also reactions, commentary and other content to X.
> X's niche is in providing a place for everyday people to get their own personal news out
The changes in the algorithm seem to have shifted this. News is difficult to convey when an algorithm suppresses it or is drowned out by loud voices. The null hypothesis here would be that X is a place for nothing and beyond that - "maybe, or maybe not". I'm curious what evidence there is for X being an effective vehicle for 'personal' news distribution over time. Without that evidence, we should not accept any such claims.
Go on. There is no logical association with "right wing" conspiracies in their decision unless they believe they are contributing to it. But as they are not backing away from producing the content on the same concern, the association doesn't add up at all.
> This is your claim - presented without evidence.
Of course. That's what a discussion forum is for. If you want someone else's claim naturally you'd go talk to them instead. But as you have chosen to interact with me, logically you are here to hear my claim as I give it.
Is there some additional pertinence to you pointing out the obvious here? Because if so, I am afraid I missed it.
> News is difficult to convey when an algorithm suppresses it or is drowned out by loud voices.
Most importantly, the news is difficult to convey when the users aren't there for news from a news organization. Let's face it, X is not well suited to conveying long format news in the first place. While the character limit isn't what it once was, the entire format of the service remains not particularly amenable to that kind of content. It is really only good for individuals sharing small tidbits of information, like something they did at work.
There are much better services for news publishers. That is where the users are. That is where publisher effort is going to be best spent. Of course you are not going to waste your time posting news on X for that reason.
"X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse." [1]
"Social media can be an important tool for news organisations and help us to reach new audiences but at this point X now plays a diminished role in promoting our work. Our journalism is available and open to all on our website and we would prefer people to come to theguardian.com and support our work there" [1]
> There is no logical association with "right wing" conspiracies in their decision unless they believe they are contributing to it.
Could you define more precisely what you mean by "contributing to it?" I think my understanding there might differ from what you meant. I don't want to talk past nor at you.
> Of course. That's what a discussion forum is for. If you want someone else's claim naturally you'd go talk to them instead. But as you have chosen to interact with me, logically you are here to hear my claim as I give it.
Hacker news discussion has a culture of discussions based on supported claims. Unsupported claims are often challenged as being unsupported. The culture war topics often degrade as it gets more of the Reddit & X style crowds that are more interested in winning discussions rather than having discussions. I believe the culture of hacker news in this regard sets it apart. In essence, this guideline: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
> Is there some additional pertinence to you pointing out the obvious here? Because if so, I am afraid I missed it.
I want to drill into the substance of your claim, and/or better understand it. I think my first interpretation might have actually been off-base. (So please, do define better what you mean by "contributing to it.")
> Most importantly, the news is difficult to convey when the users aren't there for news from a news organization. Let's face it, X is not well suited to conveying long format news in the first place.
I largely agree and is a major criticism I have X and lots of social media (eg: reddit, facebook, instagram). I would go further and say that none of those forums are all that well suited for sharing truth, nor discovering truth. I am passionate about truth (it is why I love math, logic, science & programming so much. There is very little in life that is black & white, true or false, correct or wrong.)
> It is really only good for individuals sharing small tidbits of information
I agree. On the other side of the coin, tidbits of misinformation too. The culture on X I do not believe is to reward sharing true viewpoints. Instead, dunking & hot-takes are rewarded (AFAIK, my impression, particularly so for Reddit as well).
That may be true, but irrelevant to the Guardian – unless they feel they are feeding it. That would deserve action, but otherwise...
> "X has become a cesspool, our work no longer belongs there."
That doesn't really make any sense, but even if we accept the irrationality of it, they claim to still want others to share their content on X, so apparently their work does belong there. A curious contradiction.
> The culture of hacker news is to present evidences based discussion. Unsupported claims are challenged, very frequently with "citation needed." This is something that sets hacker news commentary apart from Reddit or X.*
I have to disagree. "Citation needed" is stupid Reddit nonsense (that sometimes creeps into HN, but thankfully infrequently; it is not acceptable behaviour). On Hacker News, there is an expecting of being smart enough to carry on your own conversation using your own words without needing to outsource to an arbitrary third-party. If bringing in data helps with your comment, so be it, but if all you can offer is something like "citation needed", you contribute nothing and are participating in anti-social, bad-faith behaviour.
Logically, if a comment is so poorly prepared that you can't figure it out on its own standing, you either:
1. Work with the author in good faith to understand what they are trying to say. If you find value in reaching for external resources to accomplish that, then fine. Offering something like "XYZ says this, which contradicts what I think you are trying to say. Was that your intent?" would be reasonable, but "Go do my homework for me!" is uncalled for.
2. Accept it as a lost cause and ignore it. Those who cannot string a worthwhile post together will soon grow bored with being ignored and leave. Don't feed the trolls, as they say.
(Why did you remove the rest?)
>> That may be true, but irrelevant to the Guardian – unless they feel they are feeding it. That would deserve action, but otherwise...
To be clear, the first quote is a direct quote from the Guardian article. Not my words. Does that change your response? I suspect it would, since their words would seemingly not be "irrelevent to the Guardian."
> I have to disagree. "Citation needed" is stupid Reddit nonsense
Interesting. My perspective is that this is more a wikipedia phenomenon. Reddit enjoys responses like "Sir, this is a Wendy's." The HN guideline that discussions should get more substantive I think means discussions should become more grounded in facts as claims are challenged and discussed.
> On Hacker News, there is an expecting of being smart enough to carry on your own conversation using your own words without needing to outsource to an arbitrary third-party.
Can you link this expectation back to the discussion guidelines? The first part of what you wrote here I could be convinced of. The second part, the "needing to outsource" part, I disagree with. Either a person on HN is an expert in the field, and if not, they should very much "outsource" their claims (AKA provide evidence) to show that those claims are supported and are not just random thoughts. Random thoughts are not truth, our perception and gut instincts are often wrong. What we think is generally kinda worthless, what we know via data & facts OTOH is information.
> but if all you can offer is something like "citation needed", you contribute nothing and are participating in anti-social, bad-faith behaviour.
If someone is making claims that are unsupported, potentially incorrect. Is pointing that out and asking for the basis of the claim completely without value? I agree it is a bit anti-social, but this is not improv where the best response is "yes, and...". In contrast, the alternative is to let bad info just sit, unchallenged, and IMO be perpetuated. So, is there no value in saying "hey, wait a minute, there is no data to support your claims; please back up and give that data, or make it clear that you're spouting pure opinion." We disagree seemingly that HN comments is a place for pure opinions (which is okay to disagree).
> Accept it as a lost cause and ignore it. Those who cannot string a worthwhile post together will soon grow bored with being ignored and leave. Don't feed the trolls, as they say.
Interesting. My view is there are plenty of trolls, they are legion, and they can "win" through sock puppetry and sheer volume. For example, this article is about The Onion & Infowars, yet most of the discussion is back to X. Most HN discussion of Elon Musk usually go off-topic and become dominated by very tired and familiar discussions. In part, it is not about the trolls but the other readers. It is clear when people cannot support their claims vs when they can.
> (Why did you remove the rest?)
My apologies. I was hoping you would not react quite so quickly. After getting a coffee, I think I may have profoundly misunderstood what you wrote and deleted my first response. The second response needed a little cleaning up to read well (my intent was not to alter the substance, but enhance clarity).
[*more edits, to enhance clarity]
No. It was understood to be of their origin. But X being a toxic platform has no bearing on the content The Guardian might post, unless they think their content is also toxic. Recognizing that would justify no longer posting toxic content, sure, but otherwise there is no reason to stop posting.
I mean, aside from the obvious: That nobody is reading the content anyway, not fitting X's niche on the internet, so it is a waste of resources to post. I can understand why they are no longer going to do so. Frankly, I'm surprised they ever did.
> My perspective is that this is more a wikipedia phenomenon.
That is where it originated, as far as I know, yes. But it actually serves a purpose there as collecting quotes around a subject is what that service is largely about, and quotes benefit from citations.
But if you are writing comments on HN made up of quotes from others, why...? Why not let the authors of those quotes speak for themselves? This is, as far as I can tell, not a wiki, it is a discussion forum. Do you disagree? Surely we're here to read what the first person has to say? If I want to have a discussion with a third-party, I'll go talk to them instead. No need for a pointless middleman.
Furthermore, a citation by its very nature requires a quote, but any time I have seen "citation needed" here a quote is nowhere to be found. The HN comment being replied to with that saying is literally the citation! So, not only is it in bad faith, it doesn't even make sense. Fine for a tired Reddit meme, I guess, but has no place on HN.
> Can you link this expectation back to the discussion guidelines?
I don't know. I'm not about to read it. It has no relevance here. The expectations of a service like this come from the users, not some arbitrary guideline document.
Do you want this service to be anything else? Surely we don't need another Wikipedia? I, for one, come to HN because users here actually know things and are willing to talk about it. They don't have to rely on some other person to feed them information. That's the value proposition.
Wikis are fine for what they are, but Wikipedia is right there. Do we really need another one? I say no, but if you think otherwise?
> My view is there are plenty of trolls, they are legion, and they can "win" through sock puppetry and sheer volume.
They only "win" if you react to them. That's what they are here for: Attention. Ignore it and they'll quit wasting their time.
I mean, think about it: If you kept posting and nobody ever replied or pressed one of the vote buttons, wouldn't you get bored of being here too? You may as well write in a private journal if you want to write for no audience. The value over and above a private journal is the audience.
One thing is for certain: You are not going to chase them away with "citation needed".
I want to emphasize a bit up front that (after having sat on it a bit), I really reject the framing of "outsourcing" thought when giving citations. 'Sourcing' is giving evidence to why a thought might be correct, without it - it's navel gazing, frankly worthless. I go into a bit more detail later in the below responses.
--------------
> I mean, aside from the obvious: That nobody is reading the content anyway
I find that quite doubtful. X does have a large user-base. I suspect the number was tens of thousands (but I don't rightly know).
> But if you are writing comments on HN made up of quotes from others, why...? Why not let the authors of those quotes speak for themselves?
The authors are not omnipresent and clearly won't respond to every random discussion forum. On the other side of the coin, personal opinions are not worth a lot - particularly here on HN.
Which reminds me of your "outsourcing" framing". Backing statements with facts and data is not outsourcing, but instead it is evidence, data, reason. When a person is forced to provide data, to think about why they think they know things - two things happen: 1) quality of statements relative to being truthful goes up (ie: you say more things that are actually true). 2) you realize how much you think you know turns out to be completely wrong, that without data or evidence, you're probably wrong and don't actually know (ie: we think we know a whole hell of a lot more than we actually do, and we are wrong quite often when speaking without facts and without data).
This is something I learned very deeply at Amazon, a place with a culture that is data driven to the max. The saying is there are only three answers at Amazon: "(1) Yes, because of this data. (2) No, because of this data. (3) I don't know, I will get data for that soon."
Working in programming, at those jobs, just stating stuff and being right 90% of the time gets you fired. You have to provide data & reasoning why you think something is true. You can't rely on just how you feel or your intuition. The latter is a poor methodology for finding truth. It goes to why we use science to find truth and not intuition. Science is a powerful way to find truth, intuition is not. We can see what science has done for the last 200 years, vs intuition that turns out to be wrong so often (but seemed like it must have been right).
> not a wiki, it is a discussion forum. Do you disagree?
To my previous point, discussions not grounded in truth are largely going to be incorrect, navel gazing. Having a reasoned discussion is different from a wiki. A person is able to very well make multiple points, backed my multiple sources to provide well founded conclusions. It is the difference of talking to a scientist vs someone else that spouts a series of unfounded conclusions. Now, we don't all have to be 'scientists', but we can use the same methodology to support what we say. Even experts would provide citations of why they think certain things - their benefit is largely that they have already read most of the material and can draw from a much larger knowledge base to connect facts together. In contrast the lay person needs to be concerned of the Dunning-Kruger effect and would do well to remind themselves they are approaching a topic as a novice.
> If I want to have a discussion with a third-party,
Except you're not. It is akin to me saying 'I am saying X, because of Y data and Z reasoning'. That gives a much greater probability of actually saying something meaningful. Rather than simply saying "X" without reasoning. As I mentioned earlier, without any type of backing, that is truthiness, not truth. It goes to methodology of deciding what is correct.
> Furthermore, a citation by its very nature requires a quote
People often give a link to where data comes from, or where a conclusion comes from without a direct quote. There is risk of mischaracterizing the source, but no direct quote can be needed when the conclusions or data from a source are amalgamated. Sometimes a person can give multiple sources to back up a single statement. I don't agree to this framing.
> "citation needed" here a quote is nowhere to be found
This is bad framing. 'citation needed' is another way to ask for evidence, data - more than just an opinion that is based on what you think and feel. It is an ask to move away from truthiness, to truth. It is a way of saying "that is your opinion, please provide data so we can decide if there is a basis in reality, or if you are just communicating your own truthiness."
> Fine for a tired Reddit meme
I have never seen that as a reddit meme, and have an opposite perspective. I've found the bar for truth on reddit is essentially non-existent, nobody cares about evidence there (my impression). Reddit is almost more entertainment than it is a place to learn something.
> but has no place on HN
I respectfully disagree, HN asks that we get more substantive when discussions go on. To me, that means the conversations should become more rooted in fact, data & truth - rather than back and forth with more truthiness claims aimed "at each other" rather than discussed with each other.
> I don't know. I'm not about to read it [HN discussion guidelines]. It has no relevance here.
Everyone is expected to read the discussion guidelines before posting here. AFAIK it is asked that you do. The guidelines of the discussion forum where you are discussing are of course relevant.
> The expectations of a service like this come from the users, not some arbitrary guideline document.
Agree on the former, but the latter does follow from the former. The guidelines frame the expectations of users.
This article is actually something to be flagged. The discussion here is largely an aberration. Notice how we have yet to mention once "The Onion" or "Infowars". Overall the article is not a good fit for HN.
> They only "win" if you react to them. That's what they are here for: Attention. Ignore it and they'll quit wasting their time.
In some cases I would agree. In other cases though, trolls seek to dominate conversations. The 'Seattle Times' discussion threads became completely unreadable. Any comment was followed by 30 responses that veered away to some other talking points and was a noise that drowned out all other conversation. I call it akin to an intellectual DDOS. Trolls don't have to be right, just loud in order to dominate the discourse and prevent the truth from being heard by obscuring it in noise. I feel HN is well enough moderated and has a particular community where that is not tolerated and there is therefore often a good bit to learn form the discussion. The discussion is not just noise of people talking at each other, ignoring what the other has written and just waiting to write platitudes and endless truthiness of their perspective.
> I mean, think about it: If you kept posting and nobody ever replied or pressed one of the vote buttons, wouldn't you get bored of being here too?
I can see that as being the case. On the other side, do you not think there are people who are simply ideological? That want to be sure if there is a conversation about a topic that they care about, that they want to be sure the conversation concludes with 'their points', and 'their truthiness?' In a way, it's defending an in-group.
> You are not going to chase them away with "citation needed".
I agree. Though, sometimes conversation threads are not intended solely for the other party. HN is read by many, having read such threads myself as a third party - it becomes clear when one side is talking in bad faith. Not answering questions, not responding to points, not providing data. It reveals their argument to be bad; sometimes that is the strongest form of persuasion IMO when someone is so clearly making bad arguments. Again, the persuasion is not of the troll, or necessarily the other person, but the thousands of readers. Sometimes it's more the readers who are the audience than the intractable mind of someone that is wanting to die on some hill of truthiness without a shred of evidence.
[edits: clarity]
-----------------------
[edit, added this section]
Now, there are still places where citations are not needed and are useful and interesting for HN IMO. To this extent I think we might agree. Namely when additional perspectives are raised, and questions asked. That is very different from making unbacked claims. It is very easy to change an unbacked claim into a question - and that keeps the dialog more open IMO and away from incorrect rabbit holes. For example: "Nobody reads the Guardian on X", vs "how many readers do you think they engaged with on X? Do we think that was a significant number?" Staying away from assumptions of what you don't actually know I think gives a lot of healthy space in a dialog, so long as the questions don't go into a bad faith & leading territory (eg: gish-galloping).
----------------
[additional edit, added this section]
Backing up a bit - I think The Guardian layed out their motives very clearly. I believe you ascribed additional motive incorrectly. To which my response is: "show us", and otherwise gave key quotes so you can argue with the motive as written by The Guardian itself. Ascribing the additional motive IMO is incorrect and/or borderline conspiracy theory. To which I want to know why you think that, what you are basing those beliefs on. That is why a response that was largely just quotes from The Guardian was appropriate, it was a "here are their words, here is their exact reasoning."
>but irrelevant to the Guardian – unless they feel they are feeding it. That would deserve action, but otherwise... (from your child comment)
One can choose to leave a group/platform/party without believing they are contributing to the negative direction the group has taken. If I go to a social club and find that new leadership and new members changed the focus from sports to anti-immigration, I might not want to be associated with them anymore. That has nothing to do with feeling like I was "feeding it" or "contributing" to it.
It is true that one can make up any arbitrary reason for leaving, sure. They could have also said they decided to leave because the moon crossed into their zodiac. But when you get down to it, that's never actually the reason.
Undoubtedly the real story is that there is no compelling economic reason to post on X. It is not a service for long-form news content. Nobody goes there to read that kind of content. It is like trying to post cat photos on HN. Soon you're going to realize that you are wasting your time. There are places for cat photos, as there are places for long-form new content, but HN and X, respectively, are not it.
> If I go to a social club and find that new leadership and new members changed the focus from sports to anti-immigration, I might not want to be associated with them anymore.
With material impact, perhaps. But posting on X is a solitary activity. This is more like giving up on Solitaire because you thought the Queen of Hearts looked at you funny. Which, no matter how much you claim it to be, doesn't make much sense. More likely you were just bored of the game and made up an expiation to not have to admit that you were bored.
Before you could just filter out that stuff as it was fairly rare. but its just everywhere.
That's all I ever read. I only follow a small number of people who produce high quality content related to my industry, though. Perhaps that is what primes the "For You" page to say within the same realm and not go off the rails as you suggest?
I'm sure you are right that garbage in, garbage out applies. But why feed it garbage?
In the old times, you could see _why_ a tweet appeared in the stream (as in x follows, y liked, z replied) so curation could happen. But that's gone because musk finally figured out that him liking porn tweets was public.
Before I could say "I don't like edgelord content" and that class of tweet disappeared.
Hence the utility of lists for me. It allows me to follow people who regularly like content that I hate, but allows me to see what they tweet.
So, you are indeed right. I think I follow more than one subject, which causes the issue.
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?
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?
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.
They ranged from insane horse bone dust stuff to plain overpriced vitamins; https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/we-sent-a...
Behind the bastards also has a few that are good summaries if you want something shorter, with the Knowledge Fight guys as guests.
(Yes, this is the one rightwing joke).
/s
Supplements are a good alternative for podcasters. They’re like merch is for musicians etc. but usually run as a recurring revenue stream.
Scratch the surface of any of these people and you’ll find they are like this: huberman, Bryan Johnson, they’ll all have a DTC business.
Which, you know what, tracks.
He does it pretty much out of habit. He literally did an ad pivot while on the stand in his court cases.
| 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.
My lego builds from when I was 5 were a scam?
If I EVER go so crazy as to buy one of THOSE trucks
the plate is going to read 'LOPOLY'
I don't even care who gets it, or doesn't.
Some are dominated by reverse mortgages, supplements, buy-gold ads, Franklin “mint”, and, if online, crypto scams.
This happens to be a convenient way to quickly tell when you’re headed deep into a particular part of Bullshit Country.
[edit] point is I find it unsurprising they had a supplement business. It’s probably the easiest of the above to break into.
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.”
It means Onion sues Jones will likely be in the headlines a fair bit.
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.
- Collins buys InfoWars
- Auction money ends up going to SH victims
- SH victims have an anti-gun organization set up
- This org enters into a long term ad deal with Collins
- Some of the money therefore flows back to Collins, effectively helping with the auction buy
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.
The onion was kind of dead for a while under various shitty owners, but was bought this year by Jeff Lawson of Twilio and is now being run by former NBC reporter Ben Collins. The new stuff since the acquisition has been a bit hit or miss, but at least they're trying again.
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?
How is censorship?
How does he make future money, you know for living?
The judgement basically means the courts get to garnish his wages until the judgement is paid.
Jones is a goof to me and I like seeing him rant and rave and wear foil hats. But I don't think anyone should have their livelihood taken from them by censorship of the courts. EDIT: remember all judgments and penalties cut both ways. Today Jones tomorrow someone you follow in the media.
Lower the judgement to 1M USD (EDIT: or something reasonable) and let's move on.
He can go get all sorts of jobs. Yeah his wages will be garnished, but that doesn't mean his whole paycheck - just the lesser of 25% of the paycheck or 30x minimum wage. He can make money and a living with that just fine. Same as I'd expect for anyone intentionally lying and hurting people for money - whether I "follow" them or not.
Perhaps you should find some reputable sources for information, instead of relying on the proven liar to tell the truth about his situation?
Anyone who knowingly spreads lies about a person and causes them harm should face legal consequences.
Christ. As a non-American, this comment says a lot about the hilariously broken state of your political landscape.
“It could happen to one of your guys, and that somehow makes it bad!”
Anyone that does what Alex did deserves his punishment, and I’d be against anyone that did what he did, even if I previously “followed” them.
I don't think defamation law is unconstitutional, but, no it doesn't.
If someone said on the Internet said that rs999gti was a "tax-evading, pyramid-scheming, mullet-wearing, karaoke-ruining, ferret-hoarding, snake-oil-selling, cereal-with-water-eating, grammar-mangling, table-manner-less, engagement-ring-pawning, salad-dodging, traffic-cone-stealing, apology-dodger," and it wasn’t true, I think you’d probably like to sue them and take their money too.
Yes the court's judgment is so high, 1B USD, that he cannot make money without it being garnished. How does he get back to work? I personally do not think anyone should lose their livelihood over speech, NOTE: I did not say free speech. What he did is reprehensible but not enough that he is basically black balled from making a living. Penalties yes, loss of livelihood no.
"The garnishment amount is limited to 25% of your disposable earnings for that week (what's left after mandatory deductions) or the amount by which your disposable earnings for that week exceed 30 times the federal minimum hourly wage, whichever is less."
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/if-wages-are-garnish...
He was harassing parents of dead children in order to personally enrich himself. Why do you think he shouldn't have to forgo his ill begotten gains? It's only 1B USD, because he refused to stop doing it. And then he decided not to really show up for court and accept the summary judgement of 1B USD.
Most of his penalty has nothing to do with speech. He can keep on speaking all he wants. He might suffer consequences, but he is free to say whatever he wants to.
Alex Jones wasn't even subtle about it. He was getting judgements telling him to stop spouting blatant lies about victims of a mass shooting and he just doubled down on the lies. Repeatedly. The courts kept giving him more rope and he kept tying more nooses.
I think the idea is the US’ terrible gun situation
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?
Not a chance; they just flee to other outlets. Even Fox News saw huge numbers of people jump to NewsMax and OANN and whatnot.
I can't articulate what you're admitting to exactly, but it's an interesting admission.
On a more serious note, most of the readers of these kinds of outlets aren't stupid in this specific sense. They go looking for confirmation, rather than new information. This is why they're hard to untangle.
This applies to most readers of most things, not just fringe content on the Left or the Right.
Most people are stuck in their confirmation biases, and few make an intellectual effort to look at topics from multiple angles and via multiple media outlets on various sides of the political spectrum.
The hate remains the same today, except now the “sin” is being gay, or getting raped, etc.
How the parents of the Sandy Hook victims use their compensation is their business but I feel supporting advocacy for better mental health facilities in the USA would be a better use of the money.
I don’t think they expected anything different. I think they saw the brand for sale at firesale prices, and decided they could use it. In fact, they’re one of the only ’mainstream’ outlets that can use the InfoWars brand, since it’s funny. Perhaps they will set up a ‘competing’ ‘right-wing’ satire site ala Colbert Report vs Daily Show.
He's spent the whole time since losing the lawsuit illegally shifting assets to his parents and they bankruptcy courts haven't seemed to be able to stop that.
See also https://reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/ if you haven't yet.
Glorious.
> 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.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/not-funny-onion-buys-inf...
"Walter Cicack, an attorney for First United American Companies, told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez that Murray changed the auction process only days before, deciding not to hold a round Wednesday where parties could outbid each other. Sealed bids were submitted last week, and the trustee chose only from those, Cicack said."
"“We’re all going to an evidentiary hearing and I’m going to figure out exactly what happened,” he said. “No one should feel comfortable with the results of this auction.”
An exact date of next week’s hearing was not immediately set.
After the hearing, Jones said on his show that he thought the auction was unfairly rigged and expressed optimism that the judge would nullify the sale."
I can't fault a judge for wanting to make sure everything is copasetic with the kind of numbers and personalities involved.
I'm not sure of the legal details but apparently the judge had misgivings about the procedure so here we are
In this case, the creditors are the Sandy Hook families who were wronged by Jones. It is my understanding that they had a hand in The Onion's offer. I suspect they signaled a desire for this sale to the trustee - but that is just a guess.
source:prepped personal bankruptcy cases for a couple of years
Perfect
> 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...
For example everybody knows Swift's Modest Proposal does not seriously intend that the problems in Ireland ought to be fixed by literally eating children, but if you read it, the proposal also very clearly explains what should be done, in the form of taxation of the wealthy absentee landlords (many of them English) for example - it just couches all these boring but entirely reasonable steps as ludicrous and easily dismissed while insisting that eating babies is a good idea.
I often suggest that satire is a dangerous double edged sword and not a good primary vehicle for positive change. Part of your audience will understand it's satire, but a significant part maybe even a majority, might take is as genuine or worse come to embrace/support the satirized.
I believe we ask and expect too much of satire which relies heavily on hypocrisy and shame, two concepts that no longer carry the same weight.
Examples: South Park, The Colbert Report, SNL, The Onion
And ok, if there is some committee somewhere to dictate that all satire must be "responsible", must follow its founding Swiftian maxim, then fine, we don't have to call it that. But whatever it is can still be good, can help those find a little fun in an absurd world. We should care as much about the simply depressed people as we do the possibly confused or evil.
I don't need to use a toilet on a train most of the time, but I think long distance trains obviously should all have toilets - even if I didn't need one this trip.
In larger works the other side of the coin needn't be in the next paragraph. When I read Private Eye for example the cover headline "MAN IN HAT SITS ON CHAIR" isn't doing anything beyond poking fun at the King (the crown is just a hat, the throne is just a chair) but the magazine overall funds a lot of serious investigative journalism and sheds light on important issues. Years before a TV drama made it into a government scandal problems with Horizon and getting justice for those wrongly convicted were extensively discussed in the Eye for example.
Yes, if you expect anything from satire you expect too much. Let it be art, not propaganda.
Allow yourself to find poor execution of agreeable messages distasteful. Allow yourself to enjoy good execution of messages you disagree with.
My friend I have some news for you.
Edit: almost ended it there but remembered what website I’m on.
I don’t think there’s a material difference between art and propaganda. The art you like is merely the propaganda which you do not question.
What is it's message?
But we're not ready to go full on free jazz/postmodernist/de-constructionist. You're not ready for it yet, but your kids are going to love it."
It could be merely that watermelons are beautiful. Or it could be that the artist supports the people of Palestine.
For a less extreme example, think about the paintings of Norman Rockwell. Are they just pretty images? Or do they communicate norms?
Think also about what is censored vs what is not censored.
If your point is “all art is propaganda aside from art that exists and must be replaced piece-by-piece with hypothetical counterparts in my head to support this conjecture” you could have just written that. Though “some art is propaganda and some is not” is less profound sounding than “all art is propaganda”
(significantly he made a gift of these paintings to the french state as a war memorial)
Propaganda doesn't inherently mean bad or political. Healthy lifestyle propaganda is actually a good thing, for example (also the current healthy lifestyle propaganda seems poorly executed. I much prefer the 60s american, european and soviet versions of it).
I like this thought because it can be directly refuted by Cotton Eye Joe by Rednex — a highly popular piece of art that does nothing but present the audience with questions to ponder.
You cannot “explain what you do believe under the cover of pretending to dismiss it” without blurring the line between propaganda and art. That is true of both the best art and propaganda. If someone disagrees with the message, or coöpts it, it’s propaganda.
This makes sense. If you find yourself understanding and judging messages based simply off of their merits then you have failed to insert an arbitrary aesthetic filter into your cognitive process. The wisest sages know to value style over substance
Or even: 'the wisest sages know that incorrect results can be based on some sound thinking and some muddled thinking, and correct results can be derived by tortuous thinking'
Or maybe: 'the wisest sages know that some things are neither objectively true nor objectively false, and can appreciate good arguments for positions they disagree with'
When I write with the intent of my words being read at face value I get downvoted, flagged or my post get sent into the void by some AI depending on platform.
So satire and memes it is.
Indeed. It's amazing to me how many people I encounter these days who don't appear to consider hypocrisy a moral failing.
ALSO: thinking means changing your mind, which often exposes you to being called a hypocrite
However people are not always in a position to change things and satire can be a useful outlet for venting, but culturally can also be good for providing talking points.
Southpark and the Onion strike a chord with me the others less so, I think because they believe that they are agents for change.
I love John Oliver though. He follows up his rants with some sensible ideas sometimes. Not everyone’s cup of tea though for sure.
I've never read this definition from any historical author or famous literary critic. I think you made this up yourself from first principles-- am I right on that?
In any case, this definition would make a special case out of Animal Farm which is probably the most famous satire. I cringe imagining Orwell have one of the animals "dismiss" his preferred theoretical vision of good governance as a wink to the audience. I don't even think Orwell presumed to know what that would look like.
When you take a satirical concept and ratchet up the absurdity such that only ignorant (willfully or otherwise) people believe it, the result can be a powerful influence over them. Conspiracy theories often use this approach, as do talking heads on some networks.
Think about how early Stephen Colbert skits often comprised of him acting like Bill O'Reilly; not saying funny things in the style of O'Reilly, but merely imitating him. The difference between satire and propaganda is often packaging and audience.
For another example, you can look at posts of people who read Onion articles without realizing they are satire. These people are often pissed off, so much so that they share a 3 year old article on social media to spread the word.
Sounds like that's sort of what's happening:
"The publication plans to reintroduce Infowars in January as a parody of itself, mocking “weird internet personalities” like Mr. Jones who traffic in misinformation and health supplements, Ben Collins, the chief executive of The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, said in an interview."
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/14/business/media/alex-jones...
- Radium girls
- Eugenics experiments
- Forced sterilization
- ~600 Tennessee sober "drunk driving" arrests
- The Douma Gas hoax
Fun times.
And, ironically since it's what launched Jones' career, Bohemian Club & Grove: https://x.com/abbieasr/status/1462953203067240450
Luckily my conscience is clean because I discovered the existence of that place not from AJ but by studying the North Pacific Coast Railroad, which used to go directly to The Grove in Sonoma:
https://archive.org/details/bwb_W7-BOG-168
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1SkFrgLj-TR4gyw9Y4m...
For anyone so inclined, the path of the NPCR makes a beautiful Sunday drive!
Too late to edit but I just realized the version of this I linked removed the “Bohemian Club” that was present in this older version. Strange! https://x.com/abbieasr/status/1312512066071060480
> “The September 1942 meeting [of the S-1 Executive Committee] was held at Bohemian Grove. Nichols and Major Thomas T. Crenshaw, Jr., attended, along with physicist Robert Oppenheimer. This meeting resolved most of the outstanding issues confronting the [Manhattan] project, but [Vannevar] Bush and [James B.] Conant felt that the time had now come for the Army to take over the project, something that had already been approved by the president on June 17, 1942. After some discussion, it was decided that [Leslie R.] Groves, who would be promoted to the rank of brigadier general, would become the director of the Manhattan Project on September 23, 1942. He would be answerable to the Military Policy Committee (MPC), which would consist of Styer, Bush (with Conant as his alternate) and Rear Admiral William R. Purnell.”
What a deranged fantasy this is and yet how often it shows up. The audience will notice. Those who don't and eventually discover your duplicity will never forgive you for it. What you propose is disgusting and amoral, as it has no value, and is designed to mollify yourself by bulling people you clearly perceive as being beneath you.
Or is just the usage of the word "duped"? Some people are more interested in sensational rhetoric than more even-keeled reporting. It's unfortunate that they're currently mostly taken advantage of by hucksters. I think the creation of publications genuinely interested in facts but that use more appealing rhetoric is important to preserving journalism as an institution.
Crazy bullshit is only tempting if it's part of your engrieved group. A clever roleplay won't have the spiritual depravtivy needed.
it's probably the first site I've manually added to my dns blacklist.
more than once I caught myself clicking on a shared headline of theirs, so I've added them to my DNS blocklist to avoid giving them clicks, decades ago.
my problem is not with their obviously ridiculous headlines, but the ones that hit the grey area, where it's as much good humor as a screamer is good horror.
Also, I don’t think their agenda is political, it is personal.
I've watched the trial, the SH lawyers are not loyal to the victims and families.
They don't need money, I'm sure they have enough. They denied his money because that isn't the point - they want to mock him.
And, I fully support them. They're in a unique position and frankly I'm very impressed at their restraint in choosing the legal system over violence. If I were Jones, I would consider myself very lucky.
> They don't need money,
These are normal people, what are you talking about?
> I'm very impressed at their restraint in choosing the legal system over violence.
That's not impressive, that's what the vast majority of people do.
The vast majority of people don’t have to endure someone with an audience of millions falsely claiming their murdered children were part of a government conspiracy. Under those circumstances, many might be driven to retaliate violently. It’s a testament to these individuals' strength and restraint that they pursued justice through the legal system instead.
No, defamation is illegal. Me suing you for lying and directly causing me financial harm is not illegal.
> These are normal people, what are you talking about?
They've gotten a lot of money on account of the fact their families were victims of a tragedy. I'm assuming they don't need more money because they literally turned down a few hundred thousand dollars from Jones.
Also, this "what are you talking about?" BS needs to stop. You know what I'm talking about, or at least you can assume. Don't pretend like what I'm saying is so outrageous and unbelievable. You can respond without being annoying, please and thank you.
The 1st amendment doesn't protect all forms of speech. Shouting Fire in a theater, sedition, inciting mobs, entrapment, accessory to a crime (by encouraging someone to do it). None of these are covered in the 1st Amendment.
That's actually very rare. Most cases get settled out of court and most court case don't make it to appeal; thus no legal precedent.
> Shouting Fire in a theater
This is a common misconception. This decision was reversed by the Supreme Court.
> sedition, inciting mobs, entrapment, accessory to a crime (by encouraging someone to do it). None of these are covered in the 1st Amendment.
None of which are what Jones was sued for.
… he was sued for defamation[1], which is sort in line with the parent's point that the 1A doesn't grant you unfettered immunity to the consequences of your speech.
AIUI, the cases in total have awarded nearly $2B cumulative to the plaintiffs. That's a pretty hefty sum. According to Wikipedia, most of it hasn't been paid by Jones. ("By the end of the summer of 2023, Jones had paid nothing to the families" [for $1.5B of the cumulative penalties, 1])
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones#Sandy_Hook_Elementa...
> This is a common misconception. This decision was reversed by the Supreme Court.
(IANAL.) Partially overturned. And the existing jurisprudence still seems to say that like the above, you'd be held accountable for your actions. It isn't going to be "you can't say that", it would be something like "your actions (shouting fire, falsely) caused a stampede, and people were trampled, and you're now charged with manslaughter". (The Wikipedia article goes into this, too.)
And he’s definitely experiencing consequences.
Also on the Sandy Hook case, Remington settled out of court, which prevents setting precedent on culpability in gun violence.
[1]: https://www.npr.org/2024/11/19/g-s1-34985/alex-jones-infowar...
That was part of the SH families' lawyer final argument to the jury.
> There is more to this life than money.
Sure. But there's not much a civil lawsuit can ask outside of damages and reparations.
Unless Jones manages to limit himself to telling lies about people who use his new company he will be open to lawsuits outside of Texas.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:x4qyokjtdzgl7gmqhsw4ajqj/po...
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:x4qyokjtdzgl7gmqhsw4ajqj/po...
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.
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.
> Had a crazy theory that a school shooting was fake.
This is absolutely not what happened. Jones is a grifter, and was never a journalist. He had no journalistic aspirations, and peddled exclusively in inane conspiracy theories either crafted personally or adopted selectively to inspire a constant state of fear and paranoia in a particular type of vulnerable person while aggressively channeling their anxieties into purchases of his prepper gear and phony health supplement business. This is a rare case of such a fraudster managing to accrue enough ire and attention that legal charges stuck and sunk him for the harm caused by one of his many careless lies. There are many like him who continue on with much the same strategy, some of whom have gained enough power and influence through their actions that they are now effectively untouchable by the legal system.
> "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...
Because now the Wikipedia entry is going to say "parody site" at the top.
"InfoWars was an American far-right[2] conspiracy theory[3] and fake news website[1] created by Alex Jones.[36][37] It was founded in 1999, and operated under Free Speech Systems LLC."
It's hard to put yourself in someone else's shoes but as a parent I can imagine the money not playing an important factor at all in this. Money would hopefully be the least of my worries.
My hunch is that the judge and everyone involved knows that they aren't going to get anything substantial from Jones, which is why they allowed them to use money they are owed from the judgement as part of the bid. It allows them to get something of value out of the ruling (or at least take something of value from Jones).
They're giving up money that a higher bidder would have paid for infowars. Essentially the difference between The Onion's bid, and the bid of whoever else would buy.
It isn't reasonable to pledge money they didn't have because the families aren't the only creditors of the estate. The rest of the creditors get a lower recovery if the assets are "sold" for the price of one group reducing their claim.
If I were one of the Sandy Hook families, I don't know if anything in life would ever bring me true joy again. But contributing to this would make me smile a little.
https://web.archive.org/web/20000229143934/http://www.infowa...
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?
And they got all of the stuff and the brands. The chemical brands, the infowars brands, all of it.
All that said, I see that I got downvoted by woke idiots even though I don't even watch Alex Jones.
> A court hearing is typically held after a bankruptcy auction to finalize the winning bids and sales, and to hear any objections, so the process in Jones's case hasn't strayed far from the usual — yet.
[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/onion-infowars-court-1.7385221
Also try and cut out the name calling, especially when you're incorrect.
Are you ok over there? It sounds like you might need some help...
[0] https://www.infowarsstore.com/24-karat-999-pure-gold-collect...
[1] https://www.infowarsstore.com/infowars-media/books/the-great...
They will instead receive a set of carefully designed nocebos.
The real supplements will be shipped needy areas in developing countries and then strategically withheld from anyone that desires them.
They've got $1.5billion. Probably don't need the gold as well. There might be equally valid causes with less funds.
No, they've got a judgement on paper for $1.5 billion. This is part of the process of actually getting that money.
- school administration
- rifle manufacturer
- the shooters mother (home insurance)
- other journalists who wrote about the event
I don’t know exactly what compensation they should get, but this does not seem like a healthy or sustainable way for our society to deal with tragedy.
I don't know if it's healthy or sustainable, but it definitely sounds healthier than ignoring the tragedy altogether.
They didn’t though. Holding a rifle manufacturer liable for a shooting makes no sense, unless applied universally.
A journalist writing a book did not cause the shooting.
This is greed and lashing out in pain. I’m sure members of the community have ruined their life in pursuit of these things.
The company that makes rifles makes them to be sold. It is in the company's best interest that as many mass shootings happen as possible. By providing guns, they DID contribute to the tragedy. We can tell, because if they had never produced that gun then it would've never shot anyone.
This doesn't even touch on the fact that the reason gun laws are so lax is because these companies lobby for it to be so. Again, they are incentivized to cause as many people to die as possible. Incentives matter. If mass shootings were the next blue jeans, these companies would quickly overthrow Apple.
Blame is very hard and tricky, but any institution or system in place is responsible for an intuitional failure. And that's what mass shootings are - an institutional failure.
The people who are responsible are dead.
The suit against the school administration was eventually dismissed (the families lost on appeal) (https://www.newstimes.com/news/article/Two-Sandy-Hook-famili...). I agree it seemed kinda dubious, and I think the right outcome happened here.
The suit against Remington ended in a settlement, probably because Remington didn't want a chance in hell to set any legal precedent. The fact that the families got settlements is really a symptom of how unsettled the issue of gun control is in America. Like it's completely inane that it's fully legal to manufacture and sell AR-15 rifles to basically anyone, BUT that somehow marketing them to civilians is inappropriate. Remington settled because they just don't want any possibility of the status quo moving against them.
If you have ever trained with any rifle you will quickly realize that while there are hunting oriented semi-automatic rifles out there, the minimized recoil, the high rate of fire, the lightweight nature, and all the ergonomic accessories make AR style rifles incredibly fast and easy to shoot. Using a red dot site you can fire two rounds to the chest and one to the head at 25 yards in under 2 seconds with a small amount practice and training. Minimally trained people can do the same with iron sites in under 3.
I am a big fan of the AR platform because of these reasons. They are not unique to the AR, but they are unique to a class of gun that is designed with these characteristics in mind. These are not the characteristics of hunting rifles.
Honesty is important, even if it works against your beliefs!
I don't know, this, to me, is the proper set of incentives. Nobody wants to lose money, so you better do everything you can to prevent these tragedies. If we just sob a little and move on, the systems in place will not change.
In the absence of that, what else would you propose?
Not suing others for millions or billions and spreading misery. Nothing can bring those kids back.
Maybe the government could have offered education and employment guarantees to the families?
> only country
Want to list some other things only the US has?
> Maybe the government could have offered education and employment guarantees to the families?
The lawsuit wasn't about responsibility or compensation for the school shooting. It was about the years of harassment and death threats that the families of those killed had to endure from people who believed the lies that Alex Jones repeatedly told about them.
How about not slandering the parents of the victims causing Jones' followers harass and threaten them? He could have admitted he was wrong (which he only did finally at trial and under oath - far too late), but chose to double down. What about that misery?
Jones is not a victim here. He chose greed, but got owned. The motives of the families, lawyers, etc are whataboutism at best. You're essentially arguing that if somebody throws a punch at another person, said person has no right to hit back because hitting back won't take away your black eye.
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.
[0] https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/prop65/notices/2017-02319.pd...
[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/we-sent-a...
Or a monument / memorial to the deceased, in the hopes that the truth would outlive Jones's lies.
I hope Jones is never named on the new site, but frequently and flagrantly referenced in a manner like this.
Satire is protected in the US and many other countries, but "cloning" a person using AI implies that it makes difficult to distinguish between the real person and the clone. I guess it can pass if it is obvious that it is indeed satire, but that would be risky.
Maybe it could be remediated by having him wear a clown hat or something.
Source: https://x.com/behizytweets/status/1857195724242329997
But then again, you clearly seem to have a dog in this fight.
The correctly should be something like "The Onion is attempting to buy Infowars"
This seems to be a notable story and doesn't need nakedly partisan hair-splitting.
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.
Most likely the sale will be awarded to the Jones-friendly high bidder.
We do not know what the onion's bid was. We only have what Jones says it was. Until the actual hearing happens the exact details of what the onion offered are unknown. We do know they worked with the sandy hook parents and it stands to reason that they are leveraging their outstanding debts against jones to fund the purchase.
The ONLY source of the "it was a lower bid" is known liar Alex Jones. Who also spent the entire day yesterday talking about how the democrats were going to storm his building to evict him. Only to later meekly walk out of the building when he realized that wasn't going to happen.
> The judge is going to toss that out.
Maybe, depends on what is found in the evidentiary hearing. Sort of the point of such a hearing, to get everyone in the room and crack open what happened and why.
But I have 2 bits of cold water for the Jones narrative of "the deep state democrats" treating him unfairly.
1. The trustee is a professional receiver court appointed. Meaning they are unlikely to have tried to "fuck" over Jones (That'd screw them out of future receiverships).
2. The company that ran the auction does it professionally. They are unlikely to have to have done the deep state's bidding just to screw over Jones. That would impact their ability to run future auctions. Further, the auctioneers earn money based on the final sale price which would doubly hurt them in the case that the trustee ended up accepting a lower bid.
> Jone's people are also saying the auction (other than selecting the winner) wasn't conducted in accordance with the judge's order.
I got news for you, Jones says that about every single court case or action against him that doesn't go his way. It's always a secret enemy that's out to screw him or silence him. That's because that narrative allows him to sell more sea algae.
> Most likely the sale will be awarded to the Jones-friendly high bidder.
If it's found that there were major problems with the auction, the most likely outcome is the auction will simply be reran with a new auction house and a new trustee. If there were such major problems with the way things were done, it's highly unlikely that just letting the results of the last auction stand will be good enough. After all, were their other bidders excluded by the auction house? Was there really a transparency issue? If an auction was ran counter to a court order, you throw out the results and redo.
Jones is alleging the DOJ has been orchestrating this from behind the scenes. We'll see what's going on once Trump takes office.
Reports from who? The auction, especially with the media coverage of the auction, was very public and publicly listed [1]. The bidding was sealed and under an NDA, which is exactly what you'd want when selling such a controversial property.
> Since apparently there were only 2 bidders, it's most likely going to the actual highest bidder. It would be highly prejudicial to hold 'another' auction, as now we know what the original bids were.
Prejudicial to who? And again, we do not know what the original bids were. We know what one of the original bids was and not the other because of the aforementioned NDA.
> Jones is alleging the DOJ has been orchestrating this from behind the scenes. We'll see what's going on once Trump takes office.
Jones also alleged that nobody died at sandy hook. He alleged, on multiple occasions, that the parents of dead children were crisis actors working for demons. He also alleged that the democrats would steal the election and that the DOJ/CIA/FBI/CDC/FEMA/etc were all planning a coop. Jones alleges a lot of shit. Why do you believe him?
His MO is to say 10000 lies and then whenever anything in reality comes anywhere close to 1 of his lies, he brags that it is absolutely proof that he's correct about everything. He's literally predicted that Trump, Biden, Obama, Bush, and Clinton would be assassinated. He's predicts riots and civil unrest every year. Every single time there's a mass shooting event he calls it a false flag.
I urge you to think critically about this. For starters, what exactly would the DOJ do in his lawsuits? Let's assume that Jones' claim is correct and the CIA/FBI/NSA/DHS/DEA all got together to go after him.
1. Do you believe that the DOJ somehow strong armed not only the 2 Judges of his case, but also the appellate judges and the supreme court judges who have each ruled against him on appeal?
2. Do you believe the DOJ somehow strong armed the 2 juries against Jones? And do you believe after that strong arm those Jury members decided to stay quiet?
3. And if you believe both of those things, why do you believe that Trump can somehow make a difference here? How can you believe that a DOJ with enough power to literally strong arm the supreme court is going to just roll over for Trump?
4. Do you believe that the DOJ somehow managed to fully cover all of this up, yet somehow the one person who figured it all out was the alcoholic Alex Jones? The very target of the conspiracy? There was no other corroboration?
And one further thing to consider. The lawsuits against Alex Jones started in 2018, very much while Trump was president. Why do you believe that Trump would be the person to "get to the bottom of this" when if we believe Jones, it was Trumps DOJ plotting against him.
We know the government has conspired against Americans to prohibit 'misinformation' on social media, why would this be any different, when the censorship regime considers Jones public enemy #1? We'll find out the full extent once Trump takes office.
As far as the judges, rulings, juries, etc in the civil suit, I'm not up to date on all the facts, but Jones alleges foul play, that he was found in default because they asked him to produce non-existent items. Reporting on both sides of the issue are very partisan and surface-level, so it's unclear what actually transpired for Jones to be found in default.
I don't know the venue off-hand, but if it was in CT, then the judges and jury would be 100% partisan. That places is almost as far-left as California. Judges and juries in Texas or Florida would likely result in a much different outcome.
According to Jones, the first trustee in the bankruptcy was fired by the judge for misconduct.
That "conspiracy" was the US government asking media platforms not to share covid misinformation. The "shock" of it was literally just the gov sending out "Hey, could you please limit this?". Not a court order, not a "we'll take you down if you don't" just a "Hey, please take this down". Something that every gov admin has done (and many non-US govs do).
> when the censorship regime considers Jones public enemy #1
Jones is public enemy #1 according to jones. He's wildly irreverent in both left and rightwing media.
> I'm not up to date on all the facts, but Jones alleges foul play, that he was found in default because they asked him to produce non-existent items.
Hey, before you take Jones' word for why he was defaulted, perhaps actually get up to date on the facts. Perhaps, look into them not from what Jones says but read the facts for yourself.
I have to point out that you are rushing to defend someone without actually knowing why they are in the mess they are in.
> so it's unclear what actually transpired for Jones to be found in default.
No, it's not. There are actually public records and court docs for why he was defaulted. It's not a "left right" thing.
It's only unclear because apparently your only source for what transpired is Jones himself.
You can see for yourself the kind of garbage Free speech systems was trying to pull in the depositions [1]. Mind you, this is not the first or only deposition with a corporate representative. They were given a list of topics to prepare for and they did the deposition multiple times because the Court had to instruct them, multiple times "Prepare for these topics and questions, this is what due diligence looks like".
The answers in the video are literally "Who did you ask about this" nobody. "What did you do to prepare for this" nothing. "Did you know I was going to ask this" yes.
That sort of "I'm not playing your game" action from Jones and co is exactly why they got defaulted.
> I don't know the venue off-hand, but if it was in CT, then the judges and jury would be 100% partisan.
Jones was defaulted in both CT and TX. Two different cases, two different judges, two different juries. But he played exactly the same games and lost the same way.
> Judges and juries in Texas or Florida would likely result in a much different outcome.
Found guilty in Texas. Again, maybe familiarize yourself with what he did before defending him.
https://apnews.com/article/onion-buys-infowars-alex-jones-64...
Now, it is possible that the onion only bid $1.75M in which case there might be something to the claim. But, I doubt that's the case.
I did, however, want to flush out exactly what sort of math the trustee would be doing in this case to justify taking the lower bid.
https://theonion.com/sources-hackers-vandalized-drudge-repor...
- Wikipedia
Seems like a nice fellow
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
EDIT: the sale been blocked, Alex Jones is still live as of this edit (NOV 15th 12:28 EST)
He has, in aggregate, around 4-5 years of experience as a junior officer. Most of his time is IRR which has ~zero [1] obligations and is basically just a higher priority draft list for former military.
I know you know all of this, of course, and you’re either defending him in bad faith or pure ignorance, so I’m mostly replying for the benefit of others.
[1] https://ec.militarytimes.com/guard-reserve-handbook/joining-...
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.
Mind sharing how she came around? My dad fell a similar hole but I haven't been able to rescue him yet.
Are you sure that your arguments are more solid than his?
E.g., are you and he both relying on outside source of information, which neither of you have the time / resources / motivation to verify?
And if so, are you and he just assigning different levels of trust in a given source?
When I've been in situations slightly similar to yours, I was disheartened to realize that my own justifications weren't as solid as I originally thought.
That is, I was still pretty well convinced of my own position, but I realized that the main reason for it was a judgment call and intuition, rather than an unassailable argument.
I remember her being convinced that the parents weren't reacting like she'd expect a grieving parent to. She was deep in Sandy Hook Truther groups.
I wish I could say it was arguments and logic and reasoning, or the pain being borne by the community around her. But I think she just believes everything she sees on Facebook, and Facebook stopped showing her Sandy Hook Truther stuff.
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.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/families-settle-court-b...
This would hopefully avoid letting him just rebuild another slime empire.
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.
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.
Even when a system nominally has more than two parties, there are usually two dominant parties. Other parties either align with one or the other, or are sidelined. People associated with losing parties never seem to be pleased just that their voices were heard.
But it's still not all-or-nothing. For example, the Liberal party often adopts NDP positions if they're gaining popular support. And when the big parties get complacent, they risk losing their "one of two" status. In 2011 in Canada, the NDP was the Official Opposition (second winning party) and the Liberals were a distant third, leading to a big shakeup in strategy. And the provincial parties are different than the Federal parties. I think our system is flawed and too "two party", but the small plurality of parties is what makes Canada a lot less prone to political extremism in my opinion.
Canaidan-Australian Youtuber Paige Saunders has a video arguing that instant runoff voting tempered more extreme politicians in Alaska:
But watch out: America tends to be on the forefront of things. Political extremism persists because it's politically successful. Extremists are enthusiastic, and moderates often follow them because it gets them what they want.
I hope Canadian's cultural adversion to the kind of behavior Americans display will save you for a long time to come. But the fact is that extremism works, and many people will prefer to win against their principles than lose with them.
In my opinion, American Exceptionalism is not a pretension that the USA is the best, but a general assumption that culture primarily drives a nation's systems and not the other way around.
Or because after Iraq war and Covid the default is to be skeptical of everything government.
[1] https://www.jezebel.com/dont-ignore-the-trolls-feed-them-unt...
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...
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
Alex Jones is not a reliable source
I think that's the most likely outcome, but it isn't a safe bet by any means.
In any case I hope it's a good long time before we have to find out, since I wish Linus long life and good health.
I don't expect the structure to change. I guess we'll see.
Woke scaremongering makes the old red scare hysteria look like a mild panic attack.
https://bsky.app/profile/bencollins.bsky.social/post/3law23r...
It's encouraging that an org based on humor / even a little truth here ultimately buys and will discard an empire of hateful lies.
How hard is it really to start a new podcast?
The domain obviously has changed owners.
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.
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...
I can see it looks a bit iffy saying there's an auction and then taking a private bid without letting others bid.
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/?
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."
There are "weather", "climate" and "Climate"... And that above is "Climate". A concise definition of the Times.
Bless the Onion!
So did Joe Rogan.
It's encouraging that an org based on humor / even a little truth here ultimately buys and will discard an empire of hateful lies.
Not a thing for most places
I don't think those people actually exist. I've never seen an actual person who wasn't satirizing or parodying an image of this person.
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 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 money they paid is going directly to Sandy Hook families
Nobody can use Infowars for evil.
Alex Jones looks like a fool.
> “US seeks to destabilize Canada into a war with Mexico to solve the border crisis “
The poet they sent couldn't have done better.
Reality is their biggest competitor.
But trash belongs in the dumpster, and nowhere else.
Now that he's been stripped of his assets, what's to stop him declaring bankruptcy, then using his name and reputation to get rich with another, new InfoWars-like brand?
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.
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.
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.
So... I guess it's real? Still feels surreal...
Justice has prevailed.
Welcome Back, Alex.
Maybe "performance satire"?
It's insanity that you can flat-out kill someone and get paid less in civil court than denying a murder ever happened.
How do you make government smaller?
Step 1: Make government bigger by inventing a new department!
(Strictly speaking, it's not a government department. It is a private entity that will operate outside the government, and influence the president. What could possibly go wrong?)
National Science Board is an external advisory board to the US gov. There's tons of examples of this sort of thing, especially in education and science.
The president can’t make a task force consisting of external advisors (non full time federal employees) in an official matter unless their activities are public and open to inspection.
Clinton got in trouble for this by putting Hillary on a Task Force in the early 1990s.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DepartmentOfRedu...
Asking as a non-American: how disturbing would it be if he appointed Putin?
Either on Hacker News or as an "own the libs" choice for Trump?
Okay, but really... If you're going to criticize, can we at least make valid analogies?
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?
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.
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.
EDIT: Also you can disagree with the amount, but the award is literally the jury saying that the plaintiffs “prevailed with better arguments”
The normal corrective for such a thing is to appeal the amount of the award, on the grounds that it is clearly unreasonable. For Alex Jones, it probably didn't matter - he was bankrupt either way, so the extreme amount of the award is just a middle finger from the jury, with no practical effect.
That can come from broken systems as easily as a dictator.
It is hard for me to imagine what would support 150 million per plaintiff. That is and order of magnitude more civil damages than are often awarded for cold blooded murder.
Everyone hates Alex Jones, and I don't like him either, but that shouldn't trump justice and proportionality. It makes me think that the penalty was for more than what was on trial, and rather a reflection of mob justice by other means.
I mean that the system prosecutes these kinds of cases seemingly quite unfairly, as with Assange, or some of the maneuvers against Russell Brand, and that the actions just so happen to mesh with the interests of those in power.
People can claim that everything is OK because, court of law, etc, but to me the system is clearly not delivering correct answers.
Someone should get to lie and spread conspiracy theories for decades and have to only pay a little? The man had been doing it because he could, not because he didn’t understand it was a lie. Then when called out and asked to stop, he kept doing it.
show some actual, material damage.
If you are saying the fine is an appropriate punishment because of harm done to some other people, than that itself is illiberal. That isn't what Jones was on trial for.
That is intentionally giving an excessive penalty because you want to punish them for something else, that certainly wasn't litigated, and may not even be a crime.
Do you understand how people might be uncomfortable with that logic?
The fines are mostly punitive, which I frankly support. Why? Because Jones deserves it. If anything, Jones should consider himself lucky to be surrounded by such outstanding citizens that they go through the legal system instead of taking matters into their own hands.
Maybe if it was someone else I would care more. But for him, I can't bring myself to care much. Maybe that's illogical, but I don't mind much. Life is always a case-by-case basis.
Still waiting on your more appropriate number.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:s6j27rxb3ic2rxw73ixgqv2p/po...
If he wanted to avoid losing a billion and a half dollars, he sure went about it oddly.
Oh "we would have made 10 billion if everyone downloading illegally would have paid." Except of course most people wouldn't have bothered if it wasn't free.
So, how much is 1.5B, per 'victim' of some obvious crackpots' rants.
The courts might as well have assigned a 1 trillion dollars of damages.
https://x.com/AlexJonesMW3/status/1856495252850229386
its so frustrating that the only reason i am able to post this is because of X... because searching for this guys name or "poject veritas nudge" does not produce the result that it obviously should anywhere except for X. this is the tactic that is so often used by people like you. state something that is factually correct but completely incorrect and misleading when the full context is taken into account. even if this were an actual civil case brought on in the normal way it would still be the undeniable truth that one billion is silly and that this is political.
> 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.
If you become a monster to fight the monster, the monster always wins!
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.
If someone claims false facts about you, and is credible, and that then has a material impact on you, then sure, that might be something for the law.
Otherwise we'd be prosecuting every gossip.
You can, within some reasonable margin, quantify the opportunity cost, though, which is what such reparations are intended to compensate.
Best I can find was that there were 15 plaintiffs, each representing a family. If we assume an average family of four, let's say there are 60 beneficiaries, or $25 million per person. That's about an order of magnitude more than the typical person would expect to make in their lifetime.
There should be something to suggest that they had an income trend or other demonstration of similar potential to have otherwise earned that much if Infowars/Alex Jones had not done what they did. I wonder what showed that?
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.
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.
Like no he didn't literally say "go torment them" but come the fuck on. The connection between the events here isn't 1/10th as complicated as most of Alex's actual theories, it's literally just a line.
(Beside the fact that in other liberal democracies, he would be in prison now)
Or his entire lifetime earnings were 100s millions?
The point is the law has been used (imho totally disproportionately) to bankrupt someone for things they said, and therefore censor them.
The same as with Thiel and Gawker.
Whether or not you agree with what they say, they should be able to say it.
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.
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.
For example; ~15% in the US have earned more than a bachelor’s. While public polls show people believe close to 50% have a PhD. Close to 50% have a bachelors.
So the majority misunderstand ground truth but understand how to abstractly find the answer.
Seems better to have people know how to count their way out of a bag and miss some inane specific than everyone being actually uneducated.
The lack of copies on street corners has a lot more to do with the collapse in print advertising revenues than it does the jokes printed inside.
Fast-forward to 2024, and, well... It just doesn't work as well anymore. Like, imagine an Onion story about Trump's appointments. What could it possibly say that would be stranger than the reality?
Compare to this celebrity satire of the golden era: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9QisdRPwEM.
I remember hearing my dad talk about how SNL isn't as funny as it used to be, too. It happens to the best of us.
The Onion will go down in history as one of the most influential satire projects of all time, and is filled with genuinely talented writers and comedians. Even their early Youtube work was prescient and brilliant.
They aren't even playing the same game.
They're an uninspired impersonation of The Onion, with a clear political purpose.
comparing both instagram pages, BB posts mostly political content and they're all critical of democrats/liberals. the onion's page has much more variety
> Hundreds of thousands of women across America were left standing utterly clueless as to what to do at a voting booth after their husbands failed to tell them who to vote for.
> Voting at several polling stations ground to a halt after all of the booths became occupied by bewildered women. "This is a disaster," said poll worker John Bingham. "We've had thirty women taking up every booth for the past three hours, just staring like deer in headlights. We offered to bring them lunch while they made their choice, but they couldn't decide on a restaurant."
> At publishing time, voting stations had been forced to designate one voting booth for men only to allow voting to continue.
Given the history of women's right to vote, current laws causing women to needlessly die, and that many women today are undoubtedly being coerced by spouses to vote a certain way, calling this simply tone deaf would be extremely charitable. It is only truly funny if you have "women, am I right" as one of your shibboleths. Without that, it is clear misogyny.
All this to say I don't think a site promoting sexist views is a good alternative for a site that has made a master-class punchline out of trying to take a terrorist bigot off the air.
That's the joke. It's 2024 and that's not a thing anymore in America.
Vance’s backer, Peter Thiel, has also previously implied that women being able to vote has weakened democracy.
It’s 2024 in America, and this is a joke indeed.
https://theonion.com/biden-trump-die-2-minutes-apart-holding...