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Comment by NelsonMinar | Hacker News Reader

The NPR article conveys that this was more than just a very clever stunt

> "The Connecticut families agreed to forgo a portion of their recovery to increase the overall value of The Onion's bid, enabling its success," according to their lawyers. ... Jones was hoping a bidder ideologically aligned with him would have bought Infowars and hired him back to keep doing his show.

https://www.npr.org/2024/11/14/nx-s1-5189399/alex-jones-auct...

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

https://global-tetrahedron.com/

Have it look like the year 2000 infowars website.

https://web.archive.org/web/20000229143934/http://www.infowa...

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

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

LOL, it's already being updated...

"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."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfoWars

> We don't know how much the families gave up (could be a little, could be significant)

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.

Jones owes them $1.5 billion. They're never going to see most of that judgement. They're likely giving up money they were never going to receive anyway.

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 likely giving up money they were never going to receive anyway.

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.

That is not going to be permitted by the judge or other bidders

They mean this is what _in practice_ they give up. In theory they can give up more, but this is the actual money difference from what they would have gotten otherwise in reality.

The judge in the case put the brakes on the sale after it was revealed that the bankruptcy trustee did not accept the highest bid, and instead allowed the Sandy Hook families to 'assist' by pledging their massive judgement towards the auction.

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.

I'm a parent. I've woken up in a panic just because I had a bad dream that something bad happened to my kid.

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.

It seems as if a win. However Alex Jones can just spin up another website and platform. It's the Internet, not a sandwich shop

>bought Infowars and hired him back to keep doing his show

So, if any, where's the value? In InfoWars, or with Jones? I.e., can't he just go into a new venture, or go onto someone's payroll?

Making life harder for Alex Jones, making him start again with nothing, is quite a satisfying thing to do for many counter-parties here.

What is hard? He can spin up a new YouTube channel in a day

This is actually one of the dumbest stunts I'd ever seen. InfoWars is nothing without Alex Jones. They've wasted all their money since Alex will start a new project and his viewership will move.

Oh no, far to the contrary, this is funny as hell. The fact that Alex Jones isn't there makes it even funnier.

And they got all of the stuff and the brands. The chemical brands, the infowars brands, all of it.

First of all, a judge just overturned this thing, so I hope you're still laughing. Secondly, if they really paid money for this, they're idiots because InfoWars is meaningless without Alex. He will just start "The Alex Jones Network" and recapture his audience.

All that said, I see that I got downvoted by woke idiots even though I don't even watch Alex Jones.

It has been paused based on normal steps in bankruptcy proceedings[0].

> 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.

When it comes to trusting the fake news outlet CBC or Alex Jones, I'd go with Jones on this one: https://x.com/glennbeck/status/1857529776866574769

Trusting Alex Jones is a bold strategy. And not one for anyone who has any media literacy, but you do you!

media literacy is another propaganda term

Damn, got me with the "understanding and being critical of the media you watch is how they get you".

Are you ok over there? It sounds like you might need some help...

You seem to think that I care about the audience. It's funny because it's a puppeteer piloting the shambling corpse of Jones's products around to mock him. A constant reminder of his failure he'll see every day.

I don’t understand what you think they want out of this. They don’t want to keep infowars the way it was, nor are they trying to make money off of it. Do you think their goal was to buy it, keep it running without any changes, and keep extracting money from its previous audience?

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