alt.hn

4/20/2026 at 5:23:58 PM

At long last, InfoWars is ours

 https://theonion.com/at-long-last-infowars-is-ours/

by HotGarbage

4/20/2026 at 5:41:16 PM

Seems like it's still not theirs until a judge signs off on it.

That sale was scuttled by a bankruptcy court. Now, The Onion has re-emerged with a new plan: licensing the website from Gregory Milligan, the court-appointed manager of the site.

On Monday, Mr. Milligan asked Maya Guerra Gamble, a judge in Texas’s Travis County District Court overseeing the disposition of Infowars, to approve that licensing agreement in a court filing. Under the terms, The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, would pay $81,000 a month to license Infowars.com and its associated intellectual property — such as its name — for an initial six months, with an option to renew for another six months.

The licensing deal has been agreed to by The Onion and the court-appointed administrator. But it is not effective until Judge Gamble approves it, and Mr. Jones could appeal any ruling. That means the fate of Infowars remains in limbo until the court rules, probably sometime in the next two weeks. Mr. Jones continues to operate Infowars.com and host its weekday program, “The Alex Jones Show.”

The Onion Has a New Plan to Take Over Infowars https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/business/infowars-alex-jo...

by pogue

4/20/2026 at 6:43:50 PM

I can’t believe this.

I saw OP and went to infowars dot com to have a look. I scrolled a bit, clicked some links, looked at the store, had a good laugh at the comedy of this ironic site.

Now you’re telling me the site is not a joke from The Onion? Reality is stranger than fiction.

by fmbb

4/20/2026 at 6:51:46 PM

My favorite headlines:

"Video: ‘Homophobic’ 6-Week-Old Baby Cries After Gay Dad Tells Him ‘There Is No Mama’"

"UK Approves Bills To Remove Criminal Penalties For Women Who Commit Their Own Abortions"

"Nigerian Photographed Killing Cat And Trying To Cook It In Front Of Children’s Playground In Italy"

by troped2

4/20/2026 at 7:06:47 PM

> 6-Week-Old Baby

I appreciate this story appears to be all about the rage-bate headlines, but I don't believe that either six-week old babies say "Mama" (with purpose) or that a baby that age would be capable of responding in the way described to an adult saying "there is no Mama". It doesn't work like that at that age.

[Source: have three kids]

by logifail

4/20/2026 at 7:42:44 PM

Source: the video: https://x.com/OliLondonTV/status/2045335697893269640

Edit: but it is likely the baby is older than 6 weeks in that video - this seems to be the source of confusion (read carefully - the 6-week-old video was a different, older video):

In December, when Texson was 6 weeks old, he shared a video with the text overlay “6 week old homophobic baby,” which was viewed more than 36 million times. In that video, Texson smiles in response to being told he has a sister, a brother and puppies but frowns when McAnally says that he has two dads. In the most recent video McAnally has shared, Texson laughs and says the sound “ma ma ma,” when asked if he wants “dada or pop.” Later on, in the video, he cries and looks frustrated." - https://www.newsweek.com/entertainment/shane-mcanally-video-...

Of course, getting stuck on if they got the age of the baby wrong is throwing out the baby with the bathwater - the main thrust of the story is true.

by like_any_other

4/20/2026 at 9:16:46 PM

> In that video, Texson smiles in response to being told he has a sister, a brother and puppies but frowns when McAnally says that he has two dads

[Apologies for being somewhat absolutist about this, but...] babies do not (typically) understand the literal meaning of words - or indeed understand language generally - at 6 weeks. They may understand tone, but not words.

Again, rage bait headlines and all that.

> Of course, getting stuck on if they got the age of the baby wrong

Was hoping to provide useful data for any readers who may be here to "gratify their intellectual curiosity"* that certain claims referenced in this thread are ... implausible ... and that's putting it mildly.

* this is HN ;)

by logifail

4/20/2026 at 7:52:20 PM

"6-Week-Old" babies don't have the muscle strength to hold their heads horizontally like that (and IMHO it would be foolhardy to wave them around like that)...

Pronounced social smiling (as in the video) already by six weeks would also pretty unusual.

by logifail

4/20/2026 at 9:30:29 PM

Hah yes, many years I got into a debate with someone here or was it Reddit about the "intuitiveness of iOS" and someone claiming "I've handed my iPad to my 3 month old and they are able to swipe and navigate"...

No, your baby typically needs to be propped up to sit at that age. They simply don't have that fine motor control and coordination, let alone the comprehension of whatever app you put in front of them.

by FireBeyond

4/20/2026 at 10:37:36 PM

My 7-month old likes to play with my android watch. It's locked so she just futzes with the lock screen. But she doesn't know how to swipe or navigate, she just likes that it's shiny and does something interesting when she touches is.

That said, for me, having only ever used android phones, I always find myself wondering "how do you go back" when I help my mom with her iPhone. No back button! So I guess I'm not as intuitive as a 3 month old on reddit :)

by abustamam

4/20/2026 at 8:33:20 PM

So a Mr. McAnally told his son he has two dads? Sounds beleivable.

by Throaway8675456

4/20/2026 at 8:32:22 PM

[flagged]

by weirdmantis69

4/20/2026 at 8:28:17 PM

I'm not sure what point you're making but there's nothing satirical about the second headline. The UK really did just legislate to decriminalise abortion up to the point of birth.

I don't see how that's a laughing matter.

by arrowsmith

4/20/2026 at 8:42:23 PM

That is simply not true. https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/03/27/misleading-hea...

by kuerbel

4/20/2026 at 9:17:18 PM

TLDR: not legalised in the wider sense that any doctors or institutions involved with the abortion can perform the abortion until arbitrary late, but DOES remove liability from the pregnant women. So in case her abortion is aided or abetted those people are still criminally liable, but if she does it on her own somehow, then it is in fact legalised by the recent change. So, it depends on the situation, and if the mother is the sole actor or not. If she is the sole actor, it seems abortion has been arbitrarily legalized according to kuerbels' link. This also makes it important that people like kuerbel disseminate such a correction: the platitude that all abortions are now legalized would send the wrong message / legal advice to any accomplices in the abortion, even if the mother can do this with impunity, if you aid or abet her in it you can be held liable!

by DoctorOetker

4/21/2026 at 1:42:02 AM

> So in case her abortion is aided or abetted those people are still criminally liable, but if she does it on her own somehow, then it is in fact legalised by the recent change. So, it depends on the situation, and if the mother is the sole actor or not.

Wheter acting solo or with aid of others, the mother is no longer liable for criminal charges. Full Stop.

See, much better articles that address the actual ammended bill and passing into law rather than focussing on the confusion spread by various media sources.

eg: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/17/law-pardon-wom...

This is a change that would have impacted a total of 20 woman in the entire 100 years of the 19th Century and almost the same number of woman from the last two decades.

by defrost

4/21/2026 at 1:22:47 AM

I agree! Not at all a laughing matter; rather, a critical landmark in the preservation of individual rights.

by rexpop

4/23/2026 at 6:37:17 AM

“Up to the date of birth”

This is not an issue I care about at all, but even I can recognize that a voluntary abortion the day before a healthy birth would occur is truly a radical extreme that most people would object to.

by Dig1t

4/23/2026 at 6:46:58 AM

You can likely also realise that the UK expunging prosecution and conviction of women convicted of back street abortions isn't equivilant to legalising abortion the day before birth .. however much the hand wringing click bait press try and spin it.

by defrost

4/23/2026 at 6:46:47 AM

How can you not care at all about the government forcing people to sacrifice their bodies in the most intimate way possible? To put one's sex organs to use against one's will? Disgusting.

by rexpop

4/21/2026 at 12:13:07 AM

[flagged]

by hibberl6

4/20/2026 at 9:01:06 PM

Also:

> Trump Responds To Controversial Image Of Himself As Jesus, Says It Actually Depicted Him As A Doctor & Slams “Fake News” For The Misinterpretation

Had I not already heard this story via the mainstream media on this side of the Atlantic, this could easily be another satirical headline. With Trump as President, Poe’s law now covers reporting on facts – not just expressions of opinion.

by Anthony-G

4/20/2026 at 7:02:10 PM

"Afghani Arrested On Suspicion Of Raping Goats In France"

"Trump Anticipates Chinese Leader “Will Give Me A Big, Fat Hug”"

"Photos Of A Cucumber & Ron Paul Playing Baseball Massively Ratio Netanyahu & Mark Levin On X"

by troped2

4/20/2026 at 8:23:22 PM

> "Trump Anticipates Chinese Leader “Will Give Me A Big, Fat Hug”"

To be fair, he did.

by GaryBluto

4/20/2026 at 7:02:32 PM

[flagged]

by at-fates-hands

4/20/2026 at 7:14:25 PM

They are indeed cringe worthy. Even my four year old cries when his spoon is the wrong kind of spoon. This does not make him spoon-phobic. It means he is a kid who has no control of his emotions.

A baby has even less understanding.

Everyone who is debating the homophobia of the baby is projecting.

by bot403

4/20/2026 at 7:45:26 PM

I believe they call it "humour".

by like_any_other

4/20/2026 at 9:57:51 PM

Unfortunately many people are humourphobic.

by bcrosby95

4/21/2026 at 4:15:47 AM

>> Everyone who is debating the homophobia of the baby is projecting.

The gay men in the video were saying this about the baby. If its a joke? Then its a really sad one when people are filming their cringeworthy interactions with a newborn and then posting for the entire internet to view in order to get attention.

Welcome to the severe, rapid decline of Western Civilization.

by at-fates-hands

4/20/2026 at 8:33:55 PM

I think it’s pretty obvious that the cringe-worthy part is the story-selection. To refer to anoyher headline, do they run a story every time some Englishman fucks a goat? No, of course not; it’s only newsworthy if it’s [minority you should hate].

That’s cringeworthy.

by malicka

4/20/2026 at 9:45:35 PM

wait, hang on, someone did what to a goat...?

by dijksterhuis

4/20/2026 at 10:26:22 PM

Why do Scotsmen wear kilts?

by ChoGGi

4/20/2026 at 7:15:36 PM

Now, what would you think of a website with such headlines?

by Bengalilol

4/21/2026 at 4:16:41 AM

Considering its all over the internet? It would seem the issue is not with the website per se then is it?

by at-fates-hands

4/20/2026 at 7:50:07 PM

Do you think learning that 3/3 stories they thought were so ridiculous they were obviously fake, were in fact real, will cause them to reconsider their view of the world in any way?

by like_any_other

4/20/2026 at 7:18:56 PM

[flagged]

by striking

4/20/2026 at 7:00:55 PM

I don’t see what’s so funny about them, especially the last one.

by nslsm

4/21/2026 at 12:10:02 AM

[dead]

by hibberl6

4/20/2026 at 6:27:02 PM

I’m surprised they’ve said it so confidently given how it completely collapsed last time…

by pityJuke

4/20/2026 at 6:48:23 PM

I believe its because its a different structure.

Previously, they were trying to buy the assets outright. That got into the "one group of families is owned $1.4 billion and another is owned $50 million" and the "how do you maximize the returns from Alex Jones assets to satisfy those claims?"

This is using a different structure.

> On Monday, Mr. Milligan asked Maya Guerra Gamble, a judge in Texas’s Travis County District Court overseeing the disposition of Infowars, to approve that licensing agreement in a court filing. Under the terms, The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, would pay $81,000 a month to license Infowars.com and its associated intellectual property — such as its name — for an initial six months, with an option to renew for another six months.

They're not buying it - they're licensing it from the victims families instead.

by shagie

4/20/2026 at 6:42:44 PM

Well, that's an example of exactly the type of media outlet they're trying to create!

by anon84873628

4/20/2026 at 6:45:07 PM

Consider the fact this is a satirical news website; a fictional CEO; an imaginary corporation; and it literally proposes a vision of "Not just ads, but scams! Not just scams, but lies with no object [...] A digital platform where, every day, visitors sacrifice themselves at altars of delusion and misery"

I'm surprised you're surprised.

by michaelt

4/20/2026 at 6:38:17 PM

I think it's a good PR move. "Hey, look at how reasonable we've been in spite of the legal craziness. We've put money on the table and are moving forward with a plan that benefits everyone." Now anyone who blocks the plan will be seen as the problem.

by kstrauser

4/20/2026 at 7:44:31 PM

> Nothing can stop us now that we’re in charge of a website.

Somehow I don't think the confidence is meant to be taken at exactly face value.

by andrewflnr

4/20/2026 at 8:22:26 PM

> Seems like it's still not theirs until a judge signs off on it.

Does that mean their use of the branding and claims of ownership could be illegal or would it be covered under the first ammendment?

by GaryBluto

4/20/2026 at 7:30:49 PM

Misinformation is funny now! This is all part of the joke- they were a funny fake news site that bought an unfunny fake news site, now their fake news doesn't need to be funny and that's what makes it funny.

Maybe you're not highbrow enough for this...

by scottyah

4/20/2026 at 5:36:13 PM

This is not final and still has to be approved by a judge (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/business/infowars-alex-jo...)

by burkaman

4/20/2026 at 5:40:23 PM

> Tim Heidecker, one of the comedians behind “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, has been hired to serve as “creative director of Infowars.” He said he initially plans to parody Mr. Jones’s “whole modus operandi.”

> Mr. Heidecker has been working on his impression of Mr. Jones. But eventually, when that joke gets old, Mr. Heidecker said that he hoped to turn Infowars into a destination for independent and experimental comedy.

> “I just thought it would be just a beautiful joke if we could take this pretty toxic, negative, destructive force of Infowars and rebrand it as this beautiful place for our creativity,” Mr. Heidecker said in an interview.

by adzm

4/20/2026 at 5:58:26 PM

heidecker has been honing this persona for years now in the On Cinema universe. looking forward to this quite a bit

by arrakeen

4/20/2026 at 6:02:37 PM

He understands the modern conservative male mindset better than anyone, it's amazing

by mrhottakes

4/20/2026 at 6:30:13 PM

[flagged]

by frumplestlatz

4/20/2026 at 6:58:04 PM

Spoken like someone who isn't aware of any of his work :)

by phillipcarter

4/20/2026 at 6:37:41 PM

and another thing: im not mad. please dont put in the newspaper that i got mad.

by turtlesdown11

4/20/2026 at 6:39:51 PM

You’ve illustrated the point spectacularly.

by frumplestlatz

4/20/2026 at 6:40:22 PM

He's closer than you might appreciate.

by knowaveragejoe

4/20/2026 at 6:43:42 PM

It’s interesting how selectively applied standpoint epistemology serves in furtherance of exactly one standpoint.

by frumplestlatz

4/20/2026 at 7:11:45 PM

that's a lot of syllables.

by aaronbrethorst

4/20/2026 at 6:46:14 PM

Well there is exactly one truth.

by fmbb

4/20/2026 at 6:53:37 PM

Sure. But one cannot claim to know have an infallible insight into what that truth is.

by frumplestlatz

4/20/2026 at 6:56:48 PM

Trump does, why can't he too?

by DonHopkins

4/20/2026 at 7:56:02 PM

Two people can both be wrong. President Trump also has nothing to do with this unrelated truth claim.

by landl0rd

4/20/2026 at 7:02:57 PM

In this case, there is exactly one true scotsman.

by RajT88

4/20/2026 at 7:07:36 PM

Trump lies constantly

by UltraSane

4/20/2026 at 6:44:33 PM

[flagged]

by trial3

4/20/2026 at 6:51:56 PM

[flagged]

by DonHopkins

4/20/2026 at 6:40:52 PM

Tim Heidecker... from?

by davexunit

4/20/2026 at 6:54:58 PM

Only a real film buff will appreciate this

by mewse-hn

4/20/2026 at 7:26:06 PM

Of course Hacker News would be full of Greggheads.

by lexandstuff

4/22/2026 at 1:29:18 PM

Free Real Estate

by red-iron-pine

4/20/2026 at 6:22:33 PM

His brand of comedy is very hit-or-miss for me (the best way I can describe it is "smug"), but context drives me to wish him luck in his presumed efforts to turn InfoWars into a literal joke instead of just a figurative one.

by underlipton

4/20/2026 at 6:47:54 PM

I would describe it as absurdism.

by djmips

4/20/2026 at 9:16:04 PM

The two aren't mutually exclusive. Neutral third party Gemini T. Google, what say you?

  Tim and Eric's Title Explained 

  By calling the show "Awesome" and "Great" before the viewer has even seen it, Tim and Eric lean into a persona of unearned confidence.
Neat.

For contrast, this is what I'd call absurdism without being smug: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fs...

by underlipton

4/20/2026 at 11:06:15 PM

I can see that - kind of like Will Ferrell has reflected on playing dumb people who are extremely confident. So I feel smug does slot in there but I don't feel like it defines it.

by djmips

4/21/2026 at 1:40:08 AM

“Tinkle Outside the Binkle” is exactly something Tim would say.

by datsci_est_2015

4/22/2026 at 1:30:15 PM

"Neutral third party Gemini T. Google"

yeah public traded companies that donate heavily to the GOP are neutral

by red-iron-pine

4/20/2026 at 7:29:19 PM

My favorite recent thing from Tim Heidecker was him interviewing Fred Armisen in the style of Bill Maher. The parody is uncanny. I could see him doing a really good Alex Jones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ha6D1LQGD4

by fasterik

4/20/2026 at 5:53:00 PM

Birds aren't real 2.0

I love it.

by throwawayq3423

4/20/2026 at 5:58:59 PM

Right up with the crypto scam that followed it. Great.

In case you didn't know, the creators of Birds aren't real rug pulled and stole millions with their crypto coin.

by kvuj

4/20/2026 at 6:25:02 PM

If true, you have to admire their commitment to the bit.

I didn't find anything about this though.

by triceratops

4/20/2026 at 6:32:23 PM

You want to look for Enron - they bought the hostname as part of something

by nemomarx

4/20/2026 at 6:44:45 PM

I saw a couple stories about that which suggested it was a parody shitcoin. Even if not, the name Enron should've been an obvious clue.

by triceratops

4/20/2026 at 7:47:39 PM

I was unaware of that, disappointing.

by throwawayq3423

4/20/2026 at 8:51:34 PM

[dead]

by jasonmp85

4/20/2026 at 8:14:04 PM

I think it's better if they keep all the URLs as they are right now, but then add misinformation into each page and put a big banner saying that this site is parody. Then search and AI will index this and then it will another lawsuit from Alex Jones to get the information removed from those alternate sources.

by freediddy

4/20/2026 at 8:19:46 PM

> then add misinformation into each page

As opposed to the current factual information?

by solarkraft

4/20/2026 at 6:55:02 PM

Oh joy, the old Onion News Network is back! Welcome back, Jim Haggerty! Some beautiful examples below…

—-

Today Now!: Save Money By Taking A Vacation Entirely In Your Mind

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7qYL_KT06-U

Today Now! Host Undergoes Horrifically Painful Surgery Live On Air

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_5yR--35uqA

How To Channel Your Road Rage Into Cold, Calculating Road Revenge

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vuKnR8RvxHY

by nxobject

4/20/2026 at 6:51:52 PM

Worth highlighting:

> “The goal for the families we represent has always been to prevent Alex Jones from being able to cause harm at scale, the way he did against them,” said Chris Mattei, the lawyer who argued the Connecticut families’ case in court. The deal with The Onion promises “to significantly degrade his power to do that.”

> The Onion also plans to sell merchandise and share the proceeds with the Sandy Hook families.

Great work by all on this effort.

by micromacrofoot

4/20/2026 at 9:49:13 PM

I reallyyyyy want a gay frogs t-shirt, I would wear the hell out of that. That entire rant and meme it spawned is the only good thing to come out of that man

by mghackerlady

4/21/2026 at 9:45:02 AM

neongrizzly.com (Erik of internet comment etiquette's webstore) has had a gay frog shirt for years, if you're interested.

Having an official infowars one without giving Jones any money might be more appealing though.

by throwawaymobule

4/21/2026 at 1:08:39 PM

yeah, I was pretty sure they already existed (and if not I have a printer and some tshirt iron ons) but thought an official one would be funny

by mghackerlady

4/23/2026 at 7:24:04 PM

Because it brought attention to the endocrine-disrupting chemicals that have been allowed to be dumped into our water supply,

right?

by DANmode

4/20/2026 at 6:28:31 PM

> Nothing can stop us now that we’re in charge of a website.

I love that. Like a familiar smell, it triggered in me a long lost memory of the old hacker ethos.

by falcor84

4/20/2026 at 5:38:38 PM

So they are now setting the content on infowars.com? Honestly, I can't tell since everything on that site looks so fake it isn't believable. The onion transition may be hard to detect.

by jmward01

4/20/2026 at 5:49:43 PM

Seems like there will be a new logo with an onion on it, judging from the tote bag merch shown in the article. That's when we'll know, I suppose.

by junon

4/20/2026 at 6:12:22 PM

I visited with my family in rural Missouri recently. Alex Jones and InfoWars is gospel to them. I was amazed at how many times cited him as an authority on various topics. I thought they were joking, but apparently, Obama made a promise with his father before his passing that he would destroy the United States. Oh, and of course, Obama is Satan, and Trump was sent by God to protect us all. Of course.

by jimt1234

4/20/2026 at 8:53:46 PM

It's your duty as a Hacker News to subtly introduce the Free Software Foundation and/or GNU into a conversation with them.

When they ask about it, throw a bunch of breathless praise on Stallman hacking the laser printer, building an OS from scratch, predicting DRM, fighting against cellphone surveillance, etc.

Tell them you'll send them a link. Then link them to the Alex Jones interview with Richard Stallman. (It's a pretty good interview, btw.)

It's like hiding broccoli in a chocolate bar they were going to eat anyway.

by jancsika

4/20/2026 at 6:39:45 PM

Grew up in Springfield, posting this from California. There's a reason for that.

by kstrauser

4/20/2026 at 6:49:13 PM

It’s the weather, right? Not a big fan of west coast politics compared to back home but I’ll tolerate it in exchange for the sun :)

by qwerpy

4/20/2026 at 6:53:01 PM

The winters ain't bad either.

by RajT88

4/21/2026 at 2:45:50 AM

How are they handling the breakup?

by cosmicgadget

4/21/2026 at 6:08:00 PM

[dead]

by jimt1234

4/20/2026 at 7:55:05 PM

As of even more recently, Jones believes Trump is under demonic influences.

by dfxm12

4/20/2026 at 8:13:54 PM

Maybe that explains the video Trump posted

by selimthegrim

4/20/2026 at 8:54:37 PM

Obama got to Trump now, too?! LOL

by jimt1234

4/20/2026 at 5:38:15 PM

Despite the article, infowars.com at least doesn't really seem to be run by The Onion yet? But I'm looking at that site for the first time so I have no idea.

by eatonphil

4/20/2026 at 9:47:01 PM

to be honest I doubt anyone will notice that much of a difference, infowars is so nuts that any sane person would think it parody

by mghackerlady

4/20/2026 at 6:54:07 PM

True. Still needs a judge to sign off, which I kind of doubt will happen.

by tim333

4/20/2026 at 7:06:19 PM

It's called Global Tetrahedron but it has a dodecahedron as a logo/emblem (guessing intentional)

by contextfree

4/20/2026 at 5:53:11 PM

Nothing else matters in the world today

by imagetic

4/20/2026 at 7:45:26 PM

Please can someone correct my opinion on this because I'm sure I'm missing something.

I find it crazy that in the US you can't take an opinion on something without risking being bankrupted because that thing you said is later proven untrue and that it hurt someone's feelings – feeling which in the US have a monetary value of billions apparently.

I agree that the media should be evidence based and it's bad when the media is presenting things which are clearly false, but I also think that sometimes the evidence is misleading and speculation can be useful to get to the truth.

Surely cases like this show that it's simply far too dangerous to report on something in the US which might both upset people and could later proven to be false?

We have a similar issue in the UK where even when it's widely understood that someone is abusing kids, if they're famous our media basically can't say anything because they'll risk being sued. While our law is well intentioned, it seems that it really just suppresses the free exchange of information which has repeatedly led to harms against children. The speculation while often harmful is sometimes useful.

I just feel like there's a middle ground here. Maybe you can sue, but perhaps your feelings are only worth a few hundred thousand pounds? I get the US is much richer than the UK but being sued for billions for being wrong and hurting peoples feelings just seems insane. And I agree Jones was completely wrong to have said what he said.

Why am I wrong on this? I hate holding this opinion and would like it changed.

by kypro

4/20/2026 at 8:12:08 PM

Yes, your understanding is not aligned with the facts of the case. This was not close to an unfair abridgement of Mr. Jones's rights.

Timeline:

1. Alex Jones hosts guests on his show questioning if a mass school shooting was a falsified event.

2. The controversy drove a massive increase in traffic to his videos.

3. This encouraged Mr. Jones to host additional guests who made direct claims that parents of the slain children were actors hired by the US government.

4. Those parents received intense harassment and death threats. Many had to move away from their homes.

5. The parents sent many requests to the Infowars show asking Mr. Jones to stop claiming they were actors; Infowars did not stop.

6. The parents sued.

7. Infowars failed to comply with standard evidence discovery requests.

8. After many attempts by the court to achieve compliance, the plaintiffs moved for a default judgement. The court accepted.

9. At the award hearing, plaintiffs provided evidence that Mr. Jones moved assets out of Infowars to a company owned by his parents specifically to evade paying the judgment.

10. The jury at the award hearing awarded the plaintiffs about $1B in damages. Rationale was to discourage Mr. Jones from continuing to libel family members impacted by mass shootings.

The award hearing was exceptionally dramatic and theatrical. The defense was repeatedly caught in lies and accidentally sent evidence to the plaintiff's lawyer, revealing Mr. Jones's perjury.

by linkregister

4/20/2026 at 8:18:47 PM

Let's not ignore the fact that Jones's lawyers also completely messed up the discovery process by providing the prosecution with everything, including correspondence they had with Jones essentially admitting everything.

The prosecution even told them that they had completely fucked up and did they intend to send everything, and the defense said "Yes". Then when these messages were brought up in court, the defense tried to say that they couldn't be allowed because they were private correspondence between them and their client. To which the prosecution supplied their conversation with the defense showing that tried to make them aware and gave them a chance to correct their error.

It was a monumental fuck up.

by bena

4/20/2026 at 8:46:55 PM

[flagged]

by kypro

4/20/2026 at 9:19:17 PM

If you actually cared one about about victims, you would not be putting on "it is just about fuzzy feelings" bullshit on.

Also, this is the kind of case where USA allows Alex Jones kind of bad actors a lot more leeway then most of world countries.

by watwut

4/20/2026 at 9:51:08 PM

> If you actually cared one about about victims, you would not be putting on "it is just about fuzzy feelings" bullshit on.

Ad hominem. Personally I think Alex Jones deserves far worse than this judgement.

> Also, this is the kind of case where USA allows Alex Jones kind of bad actors a lot more leeway then most of world countries.

Not an argument. I'm from the UK, I understand other countries police feelings more aggressively. That isn't justification.

My opinion on this is strictly in regards to what I feel is appropriate punishment from the government given what Jones did. I don't like the idea that you can be fined by the government for lying (even if those lies hurt peoples feelings). I could accept it if the fine was reasonable, but $1b isn't reasonable in my opinion.

We can disagree on these things without being mean to each other =) I appreciate your view. I guess I just disagree.

by kypro

4/21/2026 at 2:57:15 AM

The government did not fine Mr. Jones or Infowars. The plaintiffs recovered damages from the defendants for the tort of libel. The foundation of society is trust. If people abuse trust by committing fraud or by wrongfully harming a person's reputation, the impacted party needs compensation. The plaintiffs incurred expenses from moving, loss of employment, and emotional distress from receiving death threats. It is practical to expect the responsible party to compensate the harmed person. It is true that the government enforces civil law.

by linkregister

4/21/2026 at 8:06:39 AM

That is not what ad hominem is. I did addressed exactly what you wrote and how you wrote it.

> Not an argument.

It was an argument. You really framed your whole comment in American stereotypes, so it is entirely valid to address that.

by watwut

4/20/2026 at 8:15:14 PM

The key element you’re missing is that the lawsuit accused Alex Jones of knowing that he was lying. I.e., it’s not that he was speculating — it’s that he knew he wasn’t telling the truth.

To quote Jones:

“We’ve clearly got people where it’s actors playing different parts of different people. I’ve looked at it and undoubtedly there’s a cover-up, there’s actors, they’re manipulating, they’ve been caught lying and they were pre-planning before it and rolled out with it.”

That isn’t even phrased as a “what if” — it’s asserting that Sandy Hook was staged. It’s framed as a truth, not a possibility, and the jury found that Alex Jones knew it wasn’t true when he was saying it.

Why so large? A few reasons. First, this was for 26 families, so a substantial number of people. Second, we’re not just talking emotional damages — we’re talking harassment that these folks received as a result of Jones’ lies. Third, a big chunk of the damages were punitive. Alex Jones has a history of lying to expand his audience, recklessly ignoring the effects of those lies. A judge decided that the verdict needed to be big enough to discourage Jones from continuing to lie.

(Arguably that didn’t work.)

by BryantD

4/20/2026 at 9:00:30 PM

> That isn’t even phrased as a “what if” — it’s asserting that Sandy Hook was staged. It’s framed as a truth, not a possibility, and the jury found that Alex Jones knew it wasn’t true when he was saying it.

I think the deliberate maliciousness of it should bare more punishment, but I still think $1B is extremely unreasonable.

It's also absurd to me that a judge should have the right to make up an arbitrarily big number as a means to inflect a secondary punishment. $1 million is discouragement, $1 billion is an attempt to destroy the business and his life. While I have no sympathy for Jones, I still find this problematic if what you're saying is true.

by kypro

4/20/2026 at 10:45:23 PM

Judges don't have that ability.

They have the ability to determine punitive damages within guidelines (many states have caps, for example), and if the defendant feels the damages are unreasonable they have every right to appeal to a higher court. Eventually the Supreme Court may make an unappealable decision, but the appeals process has to stop somewhere.

And at some point society needs a way to tell people who ignore lesser consequences that they don't get to participate in that society any more. In this case I think Alex Jones crossed enough malicious lines to deserve it; he's in bad shape because he's the kind of person who accuses school shooting survivors of fraud even though he knew he wasn't true! He had every chance in the world to back off and apologize, but he didn't. He tried to avoid facing judgement by hiding behind bankruptcy. He is a very bad human being.

Now, is that always the case for this kind of judgement? Nope, sometimes the system fails. Some people would say Gawker is an example of that failure. I am not totally sure about that one, but even if it is... I'm reluctant to toss out an entire system unless it's a systemic problem. And Alex Jones experiencing consequences for lying for profit does not seem, to me, to be evidence of a systemic problem.

by BryantD

4/22/2026 at 1:18:30 PM

Thank you for engaging with me in good faith and helping me understand your perspective.

> And at some point society needs a way to tell people who ignore lesser consequences that they don't get to participate in that society any more. In this case I think Alex Jones crossed enough malicious lines to deserve it; he's in bad shape because he's the kind of person who accuses school shooting survivors of fraud even though he knew he wasn't true! He had every chance in the world to back off and apologize, but he didn't. He tried to avoid facing judgement by hiding behind bankruptcy. He is a very bad human being.

I do agree that he deserved to be punished, and it's interesting because I also agree he deserved it.

I suspect it's because I'm wired extremely libertarian that I don't agree with the $1b damages judgement.

Fundamentally I don't like a system which has the power to make you pay $1b because you lied and hurt people. Even though I acknowledge these things are bad I think are deserving of punishment.

Maybe a good analogy is kids on motorbikes – motorbikes are deathtraps and anyone who allows their kid to ride on a motorbike without deserves to have their head kicked in. But no more what stats I cite for whatever reason it's one of those things where people just say, "don't care, I should be allowed to do that even if I'm risking killing my kid". I'm kinda like that with everything. I don't know why. I don't choose it, I just seem to prefer liberty at the cost of harm in almost all cases.

A just society would be free to take care of individuals like Alex Jones in whatever why they see fit.

by kypro

4/22/2026 at 6:34:21 PM

Thanks right back at you.

FWIW, I don't think "don't get to participate in that society" is exactly the same as punishment, but it certainly can have that aspect for the theoretical abuser so I'm probably quibbling over a semantic discussion. I just care much more about deterrence than punishment.

Kids on motorbikes is a good analogy. The line I'd draw is between dumb actions that cause harm only to the actor and dumb actions that cause harm to others. Another, more charged analogy is smoking in public -- I have no doubt that the world is better when fewer people do this. It both reduces harm to others by a measurable amount and, since it reduces the overall number of smokers, reduces the cost to society created by people with poorer health.

But wow there are a ton of implications to just blindly saying that's a good idea. The implication that it's OK to mandate behaviors in order to improve an individual's health is not one I'd accept universally, to choose just one example.

Ideally you want people to recognize that Alex Jones is a bad actor and ignore him by themselves, which mitigates the harm he's doing to others by lying. I have no idea how to get there, though.

by BryantD

4/20/2026 at 11:02:52 PM

> we’re talking harassment that these folks received as a result of Jones’ lies

Remember when BBC edited someone's speech to call citizens to storm and riot at a certain building?

by dzhiurgis

4/21/2026 at 3:17:34 AM

> and that it hurt someone's feelings

This is the part where it becomes impossible to have an honest discussion.

by cosmicgadget

4/20/2026 at 8:09:46 PM

An opinion would be something like "I think it's good that those kids were shot".

You could say that all day and people would not like you, but no one could do anything about it.

What Alex Jones did was deny reality. He suggested that the victims did not exist. He suggested the event did not happen and the grieving parents were government-hired actors. He riled up his listeners and effectively sent them after people. He did this in spite of knowing what he was saying on his show was not true. That was a large part of things, that Alex Jones was aware he was spreading misinformation.

Let's not pretend Alex Jones was doing was voicing a "difference of opinion".

by bena

4/20/2026 at 9:53:59 PM

> What Alex Jones did was deny reality. He suggested that the victims did not exist. He suggested the event did not happen and the grieving parents were government-hired actors. He riled up his listeners and effectively sent them after people. He did this in spite of knowing what he was saying on his show was not true. That was a large part of things, that Alex Jones was aware he was spreading misinformation.

> Let's not pretend Alex Jones was doing was voicing a "difference of opinion".

I agree. I'm disagreeing purely on whether $1 billion is a reasonable fine for deliberately lying. Not on whether he is guilty.

by kypro

4/21/2026 at 12:26:02 PM

What do you feel would be an appropriate punishment?

You've done a lot of whinging about how you feel the $1B is too much but that you do feel Alex Jones should be punished. Try staking out a position on what you think should happen instead of this continual "yes but not that" mess.

by sjsdaiuasgdia

4/21/2026 at 12:09:09 AM

Honestly, I'm not sure about the $1B number, but it needed to at the very least be the amount he made from slandering them on InfoWars, otherwise he'd still have profited off it. That would probably bankrupt him either way.

by traderj0e

4/20/2026 at 10:09:09 PM

I think with Alex Jones in particular it's that people knew he had money, and so they wanted a piece of it. If you're a nobody and you say false things no one cares really. Look at all the randos on X spouting nonsense without repercussions. It didn't help that these people in power don't like him.

It's dangerous to say false things and have a lot of money. People in power will use it as an excuse to take your money away, unless you're allied with them, of course.

by booleandilemma

4/21/2026 at 12:51:58 PM

> It's dangerous to say false things and have a lot of money.

Correction: As someone who has developed themselves as a media personality, it's dangerous to say false things, particularly if the saying of false things is explicitly intended to enrich themselves further as a media personality, and they're aware of the falseness of what they're saying.

When you add in the rest of the details the outcome starts to make a lot of sense!

by sjsdaiuasgdia

4/21/2026 at 3:16:41 AM

Sorry, you're saying the parents of kids killed at Sandy Hook were just using Jones as a payday?

by cosmicgadget

4/21/2026 at 12:02:03 AM

The randos on Twitter didn't cause actual harm to the people they were slandering. You can't make a case for libel against them.

by traderj0e

4/20/2026 at 11:20:19 PM

The victims went after a slanderer who systematically profited from his lies. Don't see why we should compare him to randos on Twitter.

by lolc

4/20/2026 at 11:51:22 PM

Depp v. Heard is another famous US libel case, but more controversial. They ruled that Heard made false claims (not just speculation) that harmed Depp's career, and she intended for it to hurt his reputation. Alex Jones met similar criteria except much worse.

True though, you could be held liable if you used what you thought was real evidence to ruin someone's reputation, only to find out that it's false. I think it's on you to be careful of that.

by traderj0e

4/21/2026 at 2:01:52 PM

The tik-tok psychic defamation case would likely be better comparison (which is on par with Depp v. Heard). She defamed an innocent college professor about committing murder based on tarot card readings and continued to do so after the actual murder was convicted and receiving cease and desist letters.

Local newspaper - https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/northwest/idaho/article3...

Legal Bytes (actual lawyer commentary) https://youtu.be/80h2048o7Fc

by shagie

4/20/2026 at 5:31:17 PM

> Such is the InfoWars I envision: An infinite virtual surface teeming with ads. Not just ads, but scams! Not just scams, but lies with no object, free radical misinformation, sentences and images so poorly thought out that they are unhealthy even to view for just a few seconds.

In any age where Polymarket didn't already exist, we'd have called this satire.

by bigyabai

4/20/2026 at 5:39:31 PM

It's still not as bad as the actual InfoWars, which if I recall was selling "Alex Jones Natural" supplements, which were mostly just stuff like regular iodine tablets with a massive market and a cool name like "Survival Shield X-2."

by CobrastanJorji

4/20/2026 at 5:49:56 PM

Maybe that could help fund The Onion. Why should the rich on the right have a monopoly on swindling the poor on the right with fake supplements?

by add-sub-mul-div

4/20/2026 at 6:15:50 PM

That assholes are kicking rubes is not a good reason for you to kick rubes.

by CobrastanJorji

4/20/2026 at 6:49:32 PM

"Tu Stultus Es"

"Drugs Win Drug War"

"History Sighs, Repeats Itself"

and of course...

"SICKOS"

by jakedata

4/20/2026 at 6:24:13 PM

>With this new InfoWars, we will democratize psychological torture, welcoming brutal and sadistic ideas from everyone, even the very stupidest among us. It will be like the Manhattan Project, only instead of a bomb, we will be building a website.

This is hilarious.

by netcan

4/20/2026 at 6:47:36 PM

Finally, competition for Clickhole.

by Kye

4/20/2026 at 8:05:06 PM

The Onion also owns Clickhole

by bena

4/20/2026 at 8:23:37 PM

Used to. Sold to Cards Against Humanity.

by tootie

4/20/2026 at 9:03:54 PM

Oh shit, was not aware.

by bena

4/20/2026 at 8:26:21 PM

I hope they invite the knowledge fight guys, a couple of podcasters who mock and debunk infowars, down to film a show in the infowars studio. They helped the sandy hook families legal with their case and are generally awesome guys.

by sleepybrett

4/20/2026 at 7:09:28 PM

This is a very impressive satire on the Palantir manifesto.

Accidental and ironic, but still impressive.

by TheOtherHobbes

4/20/2026 at 8:10:59 PM

I looked it up and was not surprised to see the rabid ramblings of a tech bro psychopath (but I repeat myself) with a drug addiction who gleefully admitted to wanting to hunt down Palantir's detractors with AI drones used to spray them with fentanyl-laced urine.

by htek

4/21/2026 at 1:45:29 PM

Incidentally, this also describes the greater part of HN. AI made it possible.

by classified

4/20/2026 at 6:08:26 PM

It was barely funny when I read the headline a few years ago. Really weird story, I guess I just don't understand the humor at all. I'd rather stop hearing about InfoWars entirely.

by pton_xd

4/20/2026 at 6:48:01 PM

Bear in mind buying it to ruin it is a very real public service. Alex Jones was hoping a conservative ally would buy it and then just continue to let him do what he wants.

Jokes aside, The Onion is basically spending a giant pile of money to burn the website down.

by ocdtrekkie

4/20/2026 at 7:14:24 PM

I remember when The KLF burned a million quid. They were being internally consistent. It was artistically relevant.

Most people thought they were insane. Bill Drummond wrote about how it strained his relationship with his kids. You can tell that he regrets it.

Personally I think a million bucks to lease a domain name for a year is a really terrible business decision. You might be able to argue that it's going to victims but you could almost certainly just park that money into an interest-bearing account and do better for those victims.

But it's also been obvious from the beginning (starting with Jones' own comments) that nobody really gives a shit about these families and they're just props in other peoples' theater show.

by busterarm

4/20/2026 at 7:42:34 PM

I get the impression that beyond the money from the sale, the victims would very much like Alex Jones control of InfoWars to end. This accomplishes both of those things. I don't generally find The Onion that funny, and probably will never visit the new InfoWars, but I'm eternally grateful that they were willing to step in and do this. Because someone had to. A "good business decision" is to let Alex run his show if you buy the brand, but that's still a win for him.

Not only would another owner likely allow Alex Jones to continue to operate, but The Onion can truly salt the earth around Alex Jones' business. If they own the InfoWars trademarks... if they own The Alex Jones Show as a trademark? They can potentially shut down Alex Jones' future works if they violate InfoWars' trademarks and intellectual property. They can sue him if he says something defamatory about the new InfoWars. One of the perks here is that The Onion is well-versed in free speech rights, intellectual property rights, and trademark law. They already have lawyers good at this stuff.

The Onion can be a truly significant thorn in Jones' side, the way most other outcomes for this could not. I'm guessing the new site won't be that funny, but thankfully I don't really care about the "art".

by ocdtrekkie

4/20/2026 at 7:28:38 PM

If benefitting the victims is a goal, then clearly sending them money now is more valuable than sending them interest-borne money later.

If the victims don't benefit from the money now, they can bear their own interest. Time-value, etc.

by quesera

4/20/2026 at 8:03:52 PM

The cost seems really high. On the other hand I thought bringing the Onion back as a print comedy newspaper was insane too, so possibly they know things I don’t. There is a business plan here, even if it’s a dumb one.

by BryantD

4/20/2026 at 6:51:09 PM

The original goal was to put money in the hands of the Sandy Hook victims without the website continuing on to another set of deplorable owners.

by anon84873628

4/20/2026 at 8:26:07 PM

Alex Jones lives rent free in peoples heads. They mistake a phyrric victory for a real victory.

by themafia

4/20/2026 at 8:28:01 PM

they took everything he owned and are now unraveling all the bullshit tricks he used to hide his assets. Certainly it's more real than phyrric.

by sleepybrett

4/20/2026 at 8:49:06 PM

He can own new things. So, other than inconveniencing him slightly, I'm not sure what we've accomplished.

by themafia

4/20/2026 at 9:04:40 PM

... after he services his debt, then he can have toys.

by sleepybrett

4/20/2026 at 10:25:49 PM

That's not at all how corporate or personal bankruptcies work. You exactly prove my point.

by themafia

4/21/2026 at 8:01:48 PM

.. but in this case: https://www.npr.org/2025/08/13/nx-s1-5501648/alex-jones-info...

"If Infowars' brand and property are sold, Jones could still start a new company or work for someone else. But because the bankruptcy judge ruled Jones' behavior "willful and malicious," the bankruptcy will not erase Jones' debt, meaning families can keep claiming any money he makes in the future until he pays the $1.3 billion he owes them."

by sleepybrett

4/22/2026 at 3:51:17 AM

Take some time to see how bankruptcy works. You cannot take all of someones property, nor can you take all of their paycheck. There are specific limits. You can also still come to an alternate settlement with your creditors.

This idea that he "can't have toys" or the court is "going to take is cat" because he has debts is insanity.

Let's say it's your family member. And they go bankrupt due to medical bills. Is this how you want the system to treat them? Justice isn't an opportunity to demean people you don't like.

People will tolerate all kinds of bad precedent and injustice simply because of their emotions. Which might be fine, but to see it drizzle onto the front page of Hacker News, I have to agree with the OP, is annoying.

by themafia

4/22/2026 at 6:24:49 PM

I know how bankruptcy works, i've seen it up close. The problem, for him, here is that bankruptcy does not absolve him from his debts on this particular judgement because of his own behavior and choices. That's on him, if it is 'demeaning' so be it.

He could have cooperated with the original trial instead of stonewalling discovery until he was dealt a default judgement, he could have cooperated with the other trial but he didn't, he could have not tried to hide his assets in the bankruptcy process but he didn't... he could have done SO MANY THINGS. But he chose not to. fuck him.

by sleepybrett

4/20/2026 at 6:51:26 PM

The Onion's humor is like that drawing of the angry crying guy wearing a laughing face mask. It's only "funny" if you're pissed off about something.

by traderj0e

4/20/2026 at 7:11:49 PM

Who isn’t pissed off about something in 2026?

by snowwrestler

4/20/2026 at 7:16:10 PM

Yeah people are, and they do make fun of some things I'm pissed off about too, but that doesn't make it funny. It's an "only-if" relationship.

by traderj0e

4/20/2026 at 7:06:12 PM

Finally, wojak invocation on HN

by ro_bit

4/20/2026 at 7:43:15 PM

Proud to be part of this historic moment, took until 2026 but better late than never

by traderj0e

4/20/2026 at 7:00:54 PM

[flagged]

by DonHopkins

4/20/2026 at 7:13:54 PM

[flagged]

by traderj0e

4/20/2026 at 7:45:09 PM

> Idk what the Sandy Hook shooting has to do with this, the Onion has been around for much longer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_...

> 'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

They've reprinted / reposted that article 39 times since 2014 (Sandy Hook was in 2012)

Gun violence is something that the editorial board of The Onion feels strongly about.

by shagie

4/20/2026 at 8:09:33 PM

Ok so they feel strongly about gun violence, where's the humorous part here? It's a pretty funny headline being used the first time, maybe they were better in 2014.

by traderj0e

4/20/2026 at 8:25:56 PM

Satire doesn't always have to be "ha ha" funny. They've got plenty of that material.

As mass shootings became more and more common as a news satire site they felt that they couldn't continue to keep their heads in the sand and needed to write something about it. They couldn't continue to not write something about the news, and yet they felt they had to write something. Jimmy Kimmel is often Ha Ha funny... and yet https://youtu.be/ruYeBXudsds https://youtu.be/sB0wWEFIr50 https://youtu.be/Z0vLiQLpsc8

When you make jokes about the news, sometimes you have to write about the not ha ha funny, but rather the tragic news instead. This is how The Onion has addressed it.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-the-onion-became-one-of-th... ( https://archive.is/hEJhg )

> And as mass shootings increasingly became a tragic and appalling feature of the Obama era, it also became a subject that The Onion could not avoid covering all too routinely. “As more and more shootings happened, it became something that—as an organization that comments on the news—we couldn’t not write stories about…and it kept on growing and growing and growing to the point where [the problem of gun violence] just seemed overwhelming.”

by shagie

4/20/2026 at 8:42:28 PM

Sounds like what I originally said, it's not actually funny, it's just sad/angry. South Park has some examples of doing satire right.

by traderj0e

4/20/2026 at 7:15:37 PM

[flagged]

by DonHopkins

4/20/2026 at 7:21:41 PM

What joke is on me? Some people are downvoting/flagging me, maybe the joke is on them.

by traderj0e

4/20/2026 at 8:33:03 PM

[flagged]

by DonHopkins

4/20/2026 at 8:45:57 PM

Damn that's crazy

by traderj0e

4/20/2026 at 10:17:24 PM

The fact that you're incapable of grasping the humor is so sad, and it says much more about you than The Onion.

by DonHopkins

4/21/2026 at 12:58:04 AM

Yeah, it says I'm not some cranky old guy

by traderj0e

4/21/2026 at 8:33:14 AM

Right, that's not all your are: you're a humorless cranky old guy.

by DonHopkins

4/20/2026 at 7:44:05 PM

Can someone put me to speed on it? Who is the onion? Who is info wars? What is happening? I can't comprehend but it feels that I cannot really Google for it

by motbus3

4/20/2026 at 10:42:51 PM

The Onion is a long standing satirical news site. They run crazy stories intended to make readers laugh. Infowars was a disinformation/conspiracy site that ran crazy headlines to outrage their audience. The owner of Infowars was sued into oblivion for saying the Sandy Hook school shooting was faked as a pretense to pass gun control. So now crazy conspiracy site is sold to satire site to help pay off the massive judgment against them. Basically a merger of the two fakest news sites on the Internet except now we can all just laugh.

by tootie

4/23/2026 at 12:46:51 PM

Not just for saying - for intentionally and provably lying about the victim's families for profit.

by sophacles

4/20/2026 at 10:59:51 PM

The Onion used to be a humorous satire news site before wokenites took over.

by dzhiurgis

4/20/2026 at 7:33:26 PM

Like Scientology suing and taking over The Cult Awareness network.

by narrator

4/20/2026 at 8:13:05 PM

Thank you, Tetrahedron - you are the best possible end for that nasty site.

Between this takeover, and Trump’s BRUTAL takedown of AJ a few days ago, karma seems to be catching up with that shit peddling, abusive bottom-feeder scum that is AJ.

Here is to them eating each other, and choking on it.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/knowledge-fight/id1192...

by dlev_pika

4/20/2026 at 9:56:55 PM

[dead]

by cindyllm

4/21/2026 at 4:38:41 PM

[dead]

by cindyllm

4/20/2026 at 7:09:58 PM

[flagged]

by jazz9k

4/21/2026 at 3:40:29 AM

I'll just go in order... This is because of a bankruptcy not social condemnation of dumb conspiracy theories. Bluesky doesn't compare to InfoWars, it is a peer of Twitter, Facebook, and the like. Jones was not targeted, he was sued by numerous people he did harm to. They won in multiple venues with multiple juries.

I'm going to skip that last one.

by cosmicgadget

4/20/2026 at 6:22:49 PM

[flagged]

by thrance

4/20/2026 at 7:08:01 PM

There are some folks really upset about us not platforming a maniac. If you feel like stopping Alex Jones from being actively harmful is a slippery slope directly to something you might say, boy, I would want to take a minute and think that through.

by tclancy

4/20/2026 at 7:26:14 PM

Don't read too much into it, it's just a joke, I'm very happy with Jones losing his platform. I thought I could add to the Onion's satire with a bit of my own, but forgot how hard it is sometimes to tell apart humor from Fox News-induced mental illness. Sorry about that.

by thrance

4/20/2026 at 8:42:27 PM

Ooh, my bad for not even considering the possibility!

by tclancy

4/20/2026 at 6:27:52 PM

Do you think there is an acceptable third option between "the globalists winning" and "it is OK for a single media outlet to wage a war on the grieving parents of the victims of a mass murder"?

by exogeny

4/20/2026 at 7:23:01 PM

My comment was just a silly joke, reusing some of Jones phrasing. I never fully grasped who "the globalists" were in his mind, and why they were seemingly behind everything he dislikes, but I always found if funny. I'm just happy he lost his platform, and I find the Onion's piece rather amusing.

I thought I could add to it with this dumb joke but I forgot about the fact that Jones still has a sizeable following, and it's sometimes hard to tell if someone is just kidding or an insane lunatic. I'm in the former camp (I hope).

by thrance

4/20/2026 at 6:53:36 PM

[flagged]

by htx80nerd

4/20/2026 at 6:57:48 PM

Who cares what exogany says about it when actual juries have ruled on the matter?

by justin66

4/20/2026 at 5:38:02 PM

[flagged]

by mhh__

4/20/2026 at 5:53:57 PM

It's always funny to see a statement that is clearly meant to convince the author, not any external party.

by throwawayq3423

4/20/2026 at 5:55:44 PM

I wouldn't say he's more popular than ever, I think his peak popularity was during his youtube time. What is true is he was replaced by people who are decisively worse. I'm not sure Alex was really that bad, he was a performative comedian who complained about big government projects. There are a lot of properly racist people who are finding large audiences on tiktok/instagram/X with young people and seem to be strictly worse

by guywithahat

4/20/2026 at 6:01:32 PM

There are people who laugh at Alex, but his views are genuinely held.

by kube-system

4/20/2026 at 7:35:04 PM

Genuinely held by him? I remember seeing this guy 10+ years ago on YT and thought he's simply trying to sell water filters by scaring people.

by traderj0e

4/20/2026 at 8:46:53 PM

And? Most grifters believe their own grift; it's confirmation bias.

by kube-system

4/20/2026 at 8:49:53 PM

It's a conflict of interest that anyone serious would avoid. No I don't think he believes it, I think he wants to be famous and sell things.

And I don't think most grifters believe their own grift. Those guys selling NFTs obviously didn't believe their own grift enough to hold them instead. I knew some personally.

by traderj0e

4/20/2026 at 8:56:33 PM

Let me get this straight: he accused grieving families of lying about their children's deaths, and put a target on their backs, to sell stuff...and he didn't believe his own bullshit?

by macintux

4/20/2026 at 9:17:33 PM

Yeah, especially because he contradicted himself several times, it doesn't seem like he believed it. He's really committed to trolling.

by traderj0e

4/20/2026 at 9:22:35 PM

Labeling someone a "troll" for that level of evil feels enabling to me.

by macintux

4/20/2026 at 9:44:44 PM

Saying that he actually believes his grift can make him seem kinda innocent, but I'm not going to assume that's the intent if someone says it.

by traderj0e

4/20/2026 at 9:48:17 PM

Saying two different things at two different times is not prima face evidence of lying. For instance: changing your mind is not lying.

Again, I find it ironic that you're using the same conspiratorial line of thinking that Jones himself does: e.g. "The CDC has changed their mask guidance so they must be lying about it"

by kube-system

4/20/2026 at 10:16:24 PM

It was convenient timing for him to call the shootings "100% real" the moment he ended up in court for it.

by traderj0e

4/20/2026 at 10:31:17 PM

People often do realize they were wrong about their prior convictions when they're sitting in a courtroom, a decade later, faced with a life changing situation, and forced to hear overwhelming evidence of how they were wrong.

If this guy was some kind of savant, he wouldn't have been in that situation at all. There is no evidence that he is some evil genius. He has no higher education and is a diagnosed narcissist.

by kube-system

4/20/2026 at 9:26:15 PM

> It's a conflict of interest that anyone serious would avoid.

You're putting the logical cart before the horse. The phrase "conflict of interest" by definition implies a perspective of a negative impact on one of said interests. An external observer who doubts what they say might view this as a conflict of interest (rightly so), but from the perspective of someone who genuinely believes the interests are aligned, it is not a conflict.

It's kind of funny but this is exactly some of the logic conspiracy theorists use to discredit authority: "Scientists profit from [vaccines/moon landing/whatever research] so therefore it is a conflict of interest when they [recommend/make policy/teach kids]"

Of course some people lie. But Jones? This guy has been doing this forever, he either is the most talented actor to ever walk the planet, or he is an idiot community college dropout with paranoia and confirmation bias. It is way more likely the latter.

by kube-system

4/20/2026 at 9:30:35 PM

Alex Jones' entire livelihood relies on making these bogus claims and maintaining his following, so I'm not surprised he was able to keep it up. He's also the most famous internet conspiracy theorist among countless others, so yeah I would chalk it up to acting talent.

by traderj0e

4/20/2026 at 9:40:55 PM

Everybody's livelihood relies on the thing they do for a living. That's doesn't mean we're all lying.

People with fringe views do actually exist, they aren't all actors.

by kube-system

4/20/2026 at 10:01:57 PM

Most jobs are honest enough, but there are plenty of dishonest ones that people do for the money and not because they think it's right.

I'll bet those people I mentioned who post videos like Alex Jones and only get 10 views, some of them believe it. But they're dull and aren't making money off it. Also plenty of people have a few fringe views and theories, but they aren't claiming something far-fetched every time something happens.

by traderj0e

4/20/2026 at 10:19:33 PM

Being successful and wrong doesn't make someone a liar. History books are full of people who were earnestly wrong. There's no way this guy spent 30 years playing a character without once slipping up in any aspect of his personal or professional life. He is not a savant method actor. He's a conspiracy theorist.

by kube-system

4/21/2026 at 3:48:47 AM

He doesn't actually believe God told him Gene Hackman was going to die. Just no. It is an act - and not a good one - designed to make money.

by cosmicgadget

4/21/2026 at 3:21:32 AM

They aren't. He so clearly chases controversy and clicks. He has no ideological consistency and it's been painfully obvious during his years of supporting Trump. To say nothing for the random hodgepodge of lore about aliens and demons.

by cosmicgadget

4/20/2026 at 6:00:04 PM

> he was a performative comedian who complained about big government projects

That rather downplays the destructive impact he had on the families of Sandy Hook victims.

by macintux

4/20/2026 at 6:50:53 PM

Indeed, that is the precise reason for this situation, right?

by anonymars

4/20/2026 at 5:51:41 PM

Yea, that's the vibe I'm getting from it. Suppose you have to kiss your own ass if no one else is...

by GlacierFox

4/20/2026 at 5:49:44 PM

^Copium

by buellerbueller

4/20/2026 at 5:51:26 PM

[flagged]

by gregbot

4/20/2026 at 5:53:33 PM

> Rupert Murdoch does not own The Onion. The satirical publication was acquired in April 2024 by Jeff Lawson, the co-founder of Twilio. The Onion was previously owned by Univision Communications (later Fusion Media Group), not the Murdoch-controlled News Corp or Fox Corporation

?

by tosser12344321

4/20/2026 at 5:58:06 PM

This is simply untrue. Rupert Murdoch has never had an ownership stake in The Onion. It is currently held privately by Twilio cofounder and former CEO Jeff Lawson and former NBC News reporter Ben Collins.

Was this a mistake, something you mis-remembered?

by itsdesmond

4/20/2026 at 5:59:34 PM

Or perhaps obvious parody content, such as the type The Onion might publish.

by niloc132

4/20/2026 at 7:53:50 PM

C’mon. Making this argument doesn’t even respect yourself, let alone anyone else.

by itsdesmond

4/20/2026 at 5:58:10 PM

It was sold though it sure as hell wasn't to Rupert Murdoch. In 2016, Univision Communications bought a controlling stake in The Onion (during the election season) and later sold to private equity company Great Hill Partners in 2019.

by rockskon

4/20/2026 at 5:58:45 PM

It’s owned by the guy who was the CEO from twilio now.

by taurath

4/20/2026 at 6:13:34 PM

The Onion running Infowars sounds objectively less entertaining even if you believe EVERYTHING Alex says is a lie.

by djgleebs

4/20/2026 at 8:53:18 PM

alex, apparently, has set up a fall back channel. He's gotta keep hocking those dr. jones naturals boner pills to the boomers.

by sleepybrett

4/20/2026 at 6:53:34 PM

[flagged]

by weberer

4/20/2026 at 6:59:36 PM

I thought the entire point of all of this was that I no longer needed to care what Alex Jones thinks about literally anything.

by onychomys

4/20/2026 at 7:31:09 PM

You're always free to not click on things you don't want to watch.

by weberer

4/20/2026 at 7:00:33 PM

Does it seem like he has a plan to fight the acquisition again this time?

by nemomarx

4/22/2026 at 8:16:20 PM

They somehow cut off the ability for him to pay rent for his current studio, so he's moving to another one at the end of this month. He's also switching his domain from infowars.com to alexjones.network. Apparently that site and thealexjonesstore.com are owned by a third party so it can't be taken as part of the bankruptcy case. The people suing him also want to claim his likeness entirely but that's unlikely to make it past the 13th amendment. He also claims that Michael Bloomberg is bankrolling the entire case against him.

by weberer

4/20/2026 at 8:06:19 PM

Alex Jones is a professional liar and is adjudicated as such. What he has to say should rightly be disregarded.

by tootie

4/20/2026 at 6:27:59 PM

[flagged]

by mothballed

4/20/2026 at 7:05:55 PM

It is not clear to me what you are saying or what you are defending/ decrying. Ridiculing Alex Jones and the mindset that has run through a couple of centuries of American cranks is about all there is to do to draw some of the venom out. You make it sound like Alex Jones was simply a victim of being wrong about a fact.

by tclancy

4/20/2026 at 6:35:41 PM

The amount of the judgment seems reasonable for years of harassment against a bunch of people, all done for a profit, plus a bunch of egregious misbehavior in court.

by wat10000

4/20/2026 at 6:44:54 PM

Reasonable by what metric? I've seen judgements that are tiny fractions of this for corporate crimes that affects hundreds or thousands of people. Is it reasonable because Alex Jones can afford it (hint: he can't, not even if he wasn't hiding his money)?

This judgement ends up being more akin to punishing him by forcing him off of his platform, which is actually unconstitutional even for a shitbag like him.

by NoMoreNicksLeft

4/20/2026 at 6:48:51 PM

To be clear, you don't actually have a constitutional right to slander people.

by neaden

4/20/2026 at 8:04:11 PM

Yes, by definition, you do. It is not illegal to slander anyone. The police cannot arrest you for this, you can't be convicted and sentenced to anything.

Those people won a tort (in theory), because he caused them damages that he was responsible for making remedying.

by NoMoreNicksLeft

4/20/2026 at 8:18:26 PM

> Yes, by definition, you do. It is not illegal to slander anyone.

By the legal definition of slander, your statement is false.

by jamesmiller5

4/21/2026 at 4:23:03 AM

Slander is a tort. Not a crime. No one can punish you for slander. The government isn't allowed to incarcerate you for slander, to fine you for slander, and once the court case is over, they do not attempt to put any obstacles in front of you to prevent you from slandering in the future.

You merely have to pay any damages you cause someone else. You truly have a child's grasp of these things.

The court case itself isn't a criminal trial. It's dispute resolution. Someone claims that another caused them damages, the court is empowered to provide remedy to those damages if the claims are found to be true. How does anyone make it to adulthood not knowing this?

by NoMoreNicksLeft

4/20/2026 at 7:06:08 PM

I'm curious why you'd bring up those corporate crimes and not think that the obvious response would be that corporate crimes obviously need greater liability, Rather than Jones needing less.

It's not the court's problem that Jones won't be able to afford to broadcast his messages so broadly after this judgment. I guess he'll have to use the same tools as the rest of us now.

by wat10000

4/20/2026 at 8:17:09 PM

>I'm curious why you'd bring up those corporate crimes and not think that the obvious response would be that corporate crimes obviously need greater liability, Rather than Jones needing less.

Sure, some company poisons the groundwater with hexavalent chromium: let's fine them $2800 quintillion. That makes sense to me. I mean, it makes sense to you, right? I know that it must make sense to you, because I actually do see evidence of stupid shit thinking like this out in the real world all around me.

When you levy fines/awards that could never hoped to be paid in any real-world circumstances, you're not levying fines (or awards) at all, you're trying to fabricate a scenario, as a judge, to stop them from existing or doing what they do. And it isn't without consequence.

Here's an example... a judge sits at a bail hearing, finds out the arrestee is a cannibal murderer that eats babies, the cops found him with a half-eaten baby still screaming in his mouth but the doctors weren't able to save it. Does he deny bail, like a reasonable human being does? No, "Bail's set at $10 million!". You're happy because that monster will stay in jail until the trial. But now every other defendant will have their bail mysteriously drift higher, until you're crying that bail is unjust (it's not) because someone shoplifts and the bail is $50,000. And you just seem profoundly incapable of seeing this causal chain. Bail, for instance, was only ever meant to secure someone's appearance at trial. By definition it needs to be a high enough amount that they'd rather lose out on the money than skip the trial, but low enough that they can scrape together the money at all. Done correctly, there are amounts that carefully (but narrowly) find that overlap. But because apparently no one gets that or can get that, everything's fucked up beyond all sanity.

Awards are like this too. By setting the award too high, these people will never even get a fraction of it (the damages they suffered will never get recompense), and rather than incentivizing Jones' future good behavior, they pushed him into even more noxious and socially maladjusted behavior and have inspired some sort of narcissist-martyr complex beyond even that which he was already making the world suffer for.

That's why I didn't bring it up. Because it's a dumb idea that totally misunderstands everything.

by NoMoreNicksLeft

4/20/2026 at 9:41:27 PM

Surely there's a number between $2800 quintillion and whatever low number actually gets awarded that would make sense.

The actual damages awarded here is about $64 million per plaintiff, which is a lot, but not utterly absurd. If we used that amount for your chromium hypothetical, the company would need to have killed about 44 trillion people. This is, I'm reliably informed, more people than there actually are. A reasonable amount for damages in the groundwater case would be whatever it costs to either clean it up or take ownership of the affected land. If it's discovered after it has already hurt people then it needs to include damages for those people.

It doesn't really compare with bail. As you say, the purpose of bail is to ensure appearance at trial. The purpose of tort awards is to compensate for damages, and sometimes to punish. Bail is set based on the defendant: how likely are they to flee, what sort of means do they have? Damages are set based on the consequences of the tort: how much damage was there, does the person deserve additional punishment on top?

If a person has $100, then setting bail above $100 doesn't make any sense. It's equivalent to no bail. Awarding more than $100 in damages makes sense, because they can obtain more money later. Even if they don't, you're meant to award based on damages, not ability to pay. If the damages were $1,000 then the award should be $1,000 regardless of whether the person is a hobo or Jeff Bezos.

by wat10000

4/21/2026 at 4:25:40 AM

>Surely there's a number between $2800 quintillion and whatever low number actually gets awarded that would make sense.

But it wasn't a low award. Are you unaware, or are you thinking that awards above $1.4 billion is low?

>The actual damages awarded here is about $64 million per plaintiff, which is a lot, but not utterly absurd.

If we divided it among 1.4 billion people, it'd only be a buck each. How can it be high if it's just one dollarino per person?

by NoMoreNicksLeft

4/21/2026 at 1:06:09 PM

> But it wasn't a low award. Are you unaware, or are you thinking that awards above $1.4 billion is low?

That was referring to dumping chromium. You said you've seen such judgments be tiny fractions of what was awarded against Jones. When I said maybe that means those judgments should be higher, you came up with this ridiculous $2800 quadrillion number. I'm saying, perhaps there is some reasonable number that is less than $2800 quadrillion but more than the low numbers you've seen.

> If we divided it among 1.4 billion people, it'd only be a buck each. How can it be high if it's just one dollarino per person?

If Jones had damaged and been sued by 1.4 billion people, and lost, then $1.4 billion would indeed be an extremely low award. But he wasn't.

Again, it's about actual damages, not assessing the moral severity of the injustice against the defendant's ability to pay. The jury determined that Jones damaged these specific plantiffs to a degree equivalent to a bit under a billion dollars. You can certainly disagree with that, but "if we divided it among 1.4 billion people" doesn't make a lick of sense. If 1.4 billion people were damaged to a degree that worked out to $1/person, then it would be the correct award. Nothing to do with Jones' ability to pay or how many people it's divided among.

by wat10000

4/20/2026 at 6:51:39 PM

> I've seen judgements that are tiny fractions of this for corporate crimes that affects hundreds or thousands of people. Is it reasonable because Alex Jones can afford it (hint: he can't, not even if he wasn't hiding his money)?

If there is one thing courts do not like, it is people thinking they are above the law and defy the courts. Jones was dumb enough to do so multiple times. FAFO.

As for the high monetary amount: that was dealt by a jury, not a judge - the system the US (for whatever long gone reason) still seems to prefer over career professionals. Juries are even worse to piss off, and juries have been known to bring the hammer down on parties showing egregiously bad conduct - see e.g. the McDonald's hot coffee case, which partially ended up being (for the time) pretty expensive because McDonald's claimed utter BS in court that they knew was wrong. Jones' conduct was similar: he kept blathering stuff he knew was untrue and, on top of that, his army of suckers kept terrorizing people with Jones knowing about that and doing not even lip service to rein the suckers in.

by mschuster91

4/20/2026 at 7:49:31 PM

I was a juror once for a civil case that lead to some fairly significant harm. It was a very odd experience to have to put a dollar to it at the end. The plaintiff attorney gave us numbers for the damages but the defense at the end just basically said "if you decide against my client, just be reasonable" which means we had to just kind of put a dollar value to everything. Some of it like estimates of labor lost were easy, but having to put a dollar value to the pain of a severe injury wasn't something any of us really felt prepared for.

by neaden

4/20/2026 at 6:48:47 PM

When corporations are sued, they tend to take the lawsuits seriously, which is probably a big factor in why their outcomes are so different than Jones'.

by tptacek

4/20/2026 at 7:39:13 PM

Also idk what corporation has gone out of its way to slander innocent families

by traderj0e

4/20/2026 at 7:46:12 PM

I mean, yeah, but the subtext of the preceding comment was that corporations have done stuff like Bhopal, which while not as luridly evil as what Jones did was still objectively worse as a civil offense cognizable to a court of law.

But when a corporation does something like Bhopal, you can generally count on them hyperprofessionally attending to every detail of the ensuring tort case. Unlike Jones, who at literally every step of the legal process thumbed his nose at the court, including, at one point, attempting to boycott the process outright.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

by tptacek

4/20/2026 at 7:58:24 PM

> Unlike Jones, who at literally every step of the legal process thumbed his nose at the court, including, at one point, attempting to boycott the process outright.

Legal Eagle and the commentary on the cell phone evidence (3 years ago) https://youtu.be/x-QcbOphxYs

by shagie

4/20/2026 at 6:48:05 PM

those judgements should be higher too

I think this one was high because alex jones harassed parents of murdered children to the point where they had to move out of the town their children were buried in. These people were harassed to the point of being afraid to visit the graves of their children. Sometimes examples need to be set in egregious cases.

by micromacrofoot

4/20/2026 at 8:23:35 PM

>Sometimes examples need to be set in egregious cases.

And if he had been fined $35 million dollars, the example would have been set, they'd have been paid, and he'd have spent the next 20 years figuring out how much that award fucked him when he couldn't be insured for anything, when no one would touch him for any sort of gig worth having. He might have ended up destitute. But if you do the Dr. Evil "1 billion dollars!" thing, which he could never actually pay, the plaintiffs get nothing for all their misery, and the money he does hide in offshore accounts is there for him to loaf around on forever. Why is this so counterintuitive for everyone?

by NoMoreNicksLeft

4/20/2026 at 8:59:04 PM

> He might have ended up destitute. But if you do the Dr. Evil "1 billion dollars!" thing, which he could never actually pay, the plaintiffs get nothing for all their misery, and the money he does hide in offshore accounts is there for him to loaf around on forever. Why is this so counterintuitive for everyone?

He was busy hiding millions of dollars in assets well before the judgements were handed down [0]. He fraudulently declared bankruptcy in multiple shell companies to try and delay the proceedings [1]. He made no secret of the fact that he was going to do everything in his power to avoid giving a single dime to the Sandy Hook families, regardless of the outcome. He had known for years that he was lying, his own staff had repeatedly raised objections to his behavior in writing, and if the award was $35 million, that's only a few year's profits for him to sacrifice. For reference, his personal expenses are $100k/mo [2] and his previous salary was $1.4 million/yr [3]. On Infowars' best days, they would rake in $800k in profit [4]. Sure, those $800k days weren't super often, but they are still a cartoonishly profitable business by every measure. $35m would not be a real punishment.

It should also be noted that $1.4b is the combined amount for all of the plaintiffs, not just one person. And this isn't an isolated incident; he's been defaming people his entire career, and every time he got a small judgement or was only required to apologize, he just went on to defame other people [5], and all the times he didn't get sued he never even apologized. He only cares about money, so that's how you send a message to him.

Edit: I completely forgot to mention that the Sandy Hook families did offer to settle: $85 million paid over 10 years [6]. Jones countered with $55 million [7]. If Jones and his companies could afford $5.5m/yr, that says a lot about the profitability of the operation and the inadequacy of $35m.

[0]: https://apnews.com/article/business-alex-jones-austin-texas-...

[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61142905

[2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64644080

[3]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-19/alex-jone...

[4]: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alex-jones-testifies-in-sandy...

[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones#Litigation

[6]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/11/28/alex-jones-...

[7]: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alex-jones-offers-to-pay-sand...

by tart-lemonade

4/20/2026 at 6:53:15 PM

Alex Jones did not, as far as the evidence we have seen, harass the parents. Alex Jones did not direct anyone to harass the parents.

Some of his viewers used Jones' statements as justification for harassments.

Interestingly, as far as I know, nothing was pursued against the people harassing the parents. They went after the rich guy saying lies they didn't like, then depended on the fact no one besides the defense wants to side with someone who says such shockingly vicious lies about the facts surrounding dead kids.

by mothballed

4/20/2026 at 7:12:26 PM

The defense - including Jones himself - also did a very poor job, so it's debatable whether anyone at all wanted a different outcome.

by Shog9

4/20/2026 at 7:33:04 PM

That's understating things rather substantially. He ignored court orders. He continued to defame the plaintiffs during the trial, including a statement on air that one of the plaintiff's death by suicide was actually a murder and part of the conspiracy.

If you were sued and your objective was to lose as badly as possible and get as harsh a judgment as possible, it would look a lot like what Jones did here.

by wat10000

4/20/2026 at 7:40:01 PM

That might have been his objective really. All that talk about the govt being after us for years, and now he can point to them forcing him to sell everything off, while he still maintains the same fanbase. But what can they do, he really deserved the judgement.

by traderj0e

4/20/2026 at 7:16:33 PM

the lies they didn't like lead to the harassment, it's not at all complicated

free speech doesn't absolve you of responsibility for the damages your words cause, despite not causing them directly

by micromacrofoot

4/20/2026 at 8:08:32 PM

In a criminal case, if you refuse to cooperate, ignore warrants, etc, the state can and will send in the police to arrest you and continue their investigation while you sit in jail.

In a civil case, that power doesn't exist; opposing council cannot order your arrest or send the police in to break down your door and execute a subpoena. This presents an obvious question: if there is no way to compel cooperation in a civil trial, why would anyone play along if they were guilty? To provide an incentive to do so, civil trials have sanctions, penalties issued by the judge to the offending party, which ratchet up in accordance with the severity of the misconduct displayed in the proceedings.

Alex Jones/Free Speech Systems/Infowars repeatedly withheld and spoliated evidence, ignored subpoenas, verifiably lied under oath, committed bankruptcy fraud to delay the proceedings, and sent woefully unprepared corporate representatives to depositions in direct defiance of court orders. Their conduct was so egregious that two judges independently handed down default judgements: for refusing to cooperate at every step of the way, they lost the right to argue their case in front of a jury, so the juries would just decide how much Jones et al owed in restitution.

If the juries felt Jones et al had been wronged and there was no real merit to the case, they would have awarded the Sandy Hook families $1 judgements (look up nominal damages, there is lots of precedence for this), but in both cases, the juries felt Jones' conduct was so egregious that they gave large judgements to the Sandy Hook families.

In both trials, the judges went out of their way to go along with all the dumb arguments FSS's council was putting forth to ensure no appeal could ever succeed on the merits. All Jones had to do was give the appearance of cooperation and then he would have been allowed to argue to the jury that he was innocent, but he couldn't reign in his worst impulses, defaming the victims during the trial and chasing away every competent attorney he had, leaving him with Norm Pattis (CT trial) and Andino Reynal (TX trial), attorneys who have no qualms catering to a client in ways that might jeopardize their law licenses.

The real kicker is that defamation law is full of snakes, attorneys laser-focused on money with no morals who will happily do things like put rape victims on the stand to interrogate them on every detail and turn innocent misrecollections into wins for the rapist. That Alex couldn't even keep one of those around speaks volumes.

Alex sacrificed his right to a trial to determine his innocence. He and Free Speech Systems then declared bankruptcy because he knew paying for the consequences of his actions was impossible, and when you declare chapter 7 bankruptcy, everything is for sale, including the "news" outlet he ran.

Alex isn't being silenced (and even if he were it's not the government doing it so the constitution doesn't play a role here). He got Judge Lopez to rule his Twitter account was not an asset that can be auctioned off, and he's been working to shift his audience over there so he can continue his grift, with his merch now being peddled by The Alex Jones Store, a company owned by one of his friends (Bigly), which will likely be untouchable by the bankruptcy court, so he's not going to end up on the streets unable to spread his message.

> Reasonable by what metric? I've seen judgements that are tiny fractions of this for corporate crimes that affects hundreds or thousands of people.

I fully support greater penalties on corporations that break the law. That said, I still view Jones' judgements as well-earned and reasonable.

by tart-lemonade

4/20/2026 at 6:52:09 PM

[flagged]

by htx80nerd

4/20/2026 at 7:58:23 PM

But Jones did profit from the traffic and thus ad revenue that controversy stirred up, this case is about that* not about Jones right to have an opinion, but how Jones weilded it at the expense of others, no less*.

by jamesmiller5

4/20/2026 at 10:26:16 PM

Reanimating a corpse that was killed under suspicious circumstances, all while milking value out of a name someone else developed and cultivated for years. Frankenstein's monster wearing a skin-suit. I don't see the money in this outside of the freakshow factor. Everybody loves a freak show, but who wants to live there?

by roncinephile

4/20/2026 at 6:54:34 PM

A half decent Board of Directors at The Onion mothership would have asked the question: Is this what we should be spending time and money on?

by balozi

4/20/2026 at 7:11:29 PM

Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-the-onion-became-one-of-th... ( https://archive.is/hEJhg )

It is growing and containing its messaging that has been going on for over a decade about gun violence.

From the article:

> But on the topic of gun control and gun violence, it is a political issue that Onion staffers clearly, perhaps even deeply, care about.

> Joe Garden, a former Onion writer and features editor who started working at the publication in the ’90s and left in 2012, told The Daily Beast that while most of the editorial staff tended to lean reliably liberal, their political satire was governed by being “against things that we thought were stupid.”

> And as mass shootings increasingly became a tragic and appalling feature of the Obama era, it also became a subject that The Onion could not avoid covering all too routinely. “As more and more shootings happened, it became something that—as an organization that comments on the news—we couldn’t not write stories about…and it kept on growing and growing and growing to the point where [the problem of gun violence] just seemed overwhelming.”

> “Any mass shooting is horrible, but when they just start happening just a few months [apart], it’s mind-boggling,” Garden continued. “And it’s terrifying that so little has been done about it.”

This is very much in continuing that messaging and mission in the way that they know how.

by shagie

4/20/2026 at 7:49:03 PM

The Onion is owned by the billionaire founder of Twilio, there is no board of directors.

by noelsusman

4/21/2026 at 3:22:54 AM

So you admit they don't have a half-decent board of directors!

Couldn't resist.

by cosmicgadget

4/20/2026 at 7:03:14 PM

Yes, it is!

by LastTrain

4/20/2026 at 6:06:31 PM

Maybe it's just me but I don't see much humor in this. His brand and assets may have been liquidated, but he's still doing his show and it remains popular. The only people who really won in this saga are, as usual, the lawyers.

by luke727

4/20/2026 at 6:55:30 PM

The reason InfoWars is being sold is because of the bankruptcy proceedings. This is money owed to Sandy Hook families [1], who were the target of the harmful conspiracy theories that caused them further pain and suffering.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_s...

by tomstockmail

4/21/2026 at 4:32:49 AM

> “The goal for the families we represent has always been to prevent Alex Jones from being able to cause harm at scale, the way he did against them,” said Chris Mattei, the lawyer who argued the Connecticut families’ case in court. The deal with The Onion promises “to significantly degrade his power to do that.”

But the deal doesn't do that. Alex Jones has other websites where he's spewing his nonsense and hawking his merch. Maybe it feels good to get his major brand name, but it is largely inconsequential in limiting his reach.

by luke727

4/20/2026 at 6:18:03 PM

[flagged]

by owlcompliance

4/20/2026 at 5:41:42 PM

You want to be associated with toxic waste IP?

Why? You're not going to attract any of the audience. You likely could have just chose a new name and built whatever you want to do with this.

by incomingpain

4/20/2026 at 5:51:41 PM

It may be helpful context to understand that The Onion is a satirical publication, and that them taking over InfoWars may itself be part of the joke.

by nimih

4/20/2026 at 6:04:42 PM

Stopping the current owner of infowars from continuing is a valid "why". What happens after doesn't matter.

by nilamo

4/20/2026 at 5:47:20 PM

The Onion and Mr Beast are the highbrow and lowbrow versions of the same niche: absurdism, spectacle and indifference without staying power. Since there's such low retention, the content must be weighted to constant new conversions and new reconversions.

Edit: if you have the time, watch their youtube series Sex House, Helcomb County Municipal Lake Dredge Appraisals and Dr. Good (approx 75 minutes each). There's no nudity, gore or cursing, just some very clever themes about the parallels between television and hell that are still relevant right now, if not more so.

by OgsyedIE

4/20/2026 at 6:01:30 PM

The Onion has been around since 1988, so...decent staying power.

by mattkrause

4/20/2026 at 6:04:41 PM

And hasn't had any cultural relevance aside from this stunt for just about the last decade.

It's like saying that National Lampoon is still relevant.

by busterarm

4/20/2026 at 6:19:05 PM

This is likely because The Onion was purchased by Univision in 2016 and then bounced around in a couple more acquisitions over the next decade. Ben Collins got the helm in 2024 and has been doing, in my opinion, a fantastic job with the brand.

by CobrastanJorji

4/20/2026 at 6:35:44 PM

> And hasn't had any cultural relevance aside from this stunt for just about the last decade.

You're right! Their own claim is that it's insane they're still around, because they find it hard to match the absurdity of the last 10 years.

by esseph

4/20/2026 at 6:08:24 PM

do you have a rubric to share for qualifying for cultural relevance?

by gegtik

4/20/2026 at 6:16:35 PM

65,000 print subscribers (on par with the Boston Globe!) and 300% revenue growth last year suggests they're doing okay.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91502944/the-onion-most-innovati...

by mattkrause

4/20/2026 at 6:24:21 PM

When I worked at an ISP we had a lot of landline phone customers too and I'm sure they will continue to for a long time.

At least as long as their current customers keep breathing.

You can run a business off inertia/nostalgia for quite a long time.

People are confused about what I said. Success and Relevance are not the same thing. National Lampoon still has a business too, but I doubt that any of you have seen a new movie of theirs since Van Wilder/Repli-Kate came out in 2002.

A million dollars a year for a domain name is quite a lot. And I know what was paid for the sales of some big (in the keyword marketing/leadgen space) domain names...Sale, not lease.

by busterarm

4/20/2026 at 7:08:43 PM

> You can run a business off inertia/nostalgia for quite a long time.

They only reintroduced print editions in 2024 after an 11 year break. Those 65,000 print subscribers are all people who decided they wanted to start paying money for The Onion in the last 2 years.

by floren

4/20/2026 at 6:54:44 PM

If "people are confused" I think it's because you are rejecting empirical evidence that The Onion is relevant without offering any counter-evidence of your own. Is it possible it's just no longer relevant to you personally? (I myself am a proud print subscriber...)

by dougb5

4/20/2026 at 7:06:25 PM

Yeah some people do like feet.

by busterarm

4/20/2026 at 7:17:43 PM

The context for those print subscribers is that this isn't a "had the subscription since the 2010s" They discontinued their print edition in 2013.

Those 65,000 subscriptions are all people who subscribed since 2024 when it was relaunched.

It may be nostalgia, but it is not people who forgot that they had a subscription. It's people who signed up to pay money in the last two years.

by shagie

4/20/2026 at 7:11:55 PM

Inertia doesn't really seem like it would lead to 300% YoY growth...

OTOH, National Lampoon hasn't put out a magazine since 1998 or a film since 2015 (and that was a retrospective on the magazine).

I guess I'd agree that, in absolute terms, The Onion might be less of a cultural force than it was in 2005 (say), but part of that has to be that culture is a lot more long-tailed: music, movies, and TV aren't dominated by a handful of works either.

by mattkrause

4/20/2026 at 7:13:07 PM

> People are confused about what I said.

Because you're saying very confusing things. What does National Lampoon have to do with anything?

by evan_

4/20/2026 at 6:07:30 PM

You say "without staying power" but I still remember and frequently cite these ancient Onion article headlines:

   - Drugs now legal if user is gainfully employed
   - Top 10 Genocides of the 20th Century (Infographic)
   - Cycle of Abuse Running Smoothly
I mean sure, it's a satirical news site and it's got a constant stream of new content, much of which is forgettable. But that's true of every other news site too. The gems make it stick.

by saulpw

4/22/2026 at 11:03:09 PM 

  - Terrorist Bomb Pierces Bob Dole's Outer Hull
  - Are Your Cats Old Enough To Learn About Jesus?
  - Deadly Super Rainbow Tears Through West Coast
  - Clinton Deploys Vowels To Bosnia
  - Rescue Chip Sent In To Save Broken Tostito Submerged In 7 Layer Dip
That last one in particular was absolutely epic.

by jsrcout

4/20/2026 at 6:24:18 PM

Don’t forget the perennial article about gun violence they use after every mass shooting.

by 0cf8612b2e1e

4/20/2026 at 9:19:49 PM

"America's Long Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity Finally Over"

by saalweachter

4/20/2026 at 6:30:32 PM

[dead]

by shagie

4/20/2026 at 5:43:14 PM

That's the joke.

by minimaxir

4/20/2026 at 5:52:43 PM

No offense, but the humor of it has gone right over your head. Building an InfoWars clone isn't nearly as funny as acquiring the real one just to mock it.

by ravenstine

4/20/2026 at 6:07:39 PM

I guess.. But renting a 4th reich site seems far darker than they might be used to and likely to make them the butt of the joke when Hitler's testtube clone gets elected from it in 35 years.

by occamofsandwich

4/20/2026 at 6:34:28 PM

If thats true, seems like it is 10000x more critical they purchase right to the infowars hiltler cloning facilities and features

by ashtonshears

4/20/2026 at 6:41:52 PM

Exactly. Buying would at least mean you aren't revamping the value of the site for some next renter in a deeply cynical age where making fun of the orange pedo at a press club ball could cause WWIII.

by occamofsandwich

4/20/2026 at 6:57:45 PM

The money goes to Jones's judgment creditors from Sandy Hook. If not The Onion, it would be some actual right wing media organization...

by anon84873628

4/20/2026 at 6:04:56 PM

they should make a clone with a cooler theme and call it KnowledgeBattles.org

by mrhottakes

4/20/2026 at 5:52:23 PM

They’re taking advantage of the name recognition to raise money for the families victimized by the horrible people who used to own and run the site.

by skywhopper