Discussion (627 points, 2 days ago, 320 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47837611
When this all started, the Onion released a priceless 'press statement':
"Through it all, InfoWars has shown an unswerving commitment to manufacturing anger and radicalizing the most vulnerable members of society—values that resonate deeply with all of us at Global Tetrahedron.
No price would be too high for such a cornucopia of malleable assets and minds. And yet, in a stroke of good fortune, a formidable special interest group has outwitted the hapless owner of InfoWars (a forgettable man with an already-forgotten name) and forced him to sell it at a steep bargain: less than one trillion dollars..."
Full statement here https://theonion.com/heres-why-i-decided-to-buy-infowars/
Brilliant plans for the future:
> Such is the InfoWars I envision: An infinite virtual surface teeming with ads. Not just ads, but scams! Not just scams, but lies with no object, free radical misinformation, sentences and images so poorly thought out that they are unhealthy even to view for just a few seconds. The InfoWars of old was only the prototype for the hell I know we can build together: A digital platform where, every day, visitors sacrifice themselves at altars of delusion and misery, their minds fully disintegrating on contact.
It's like setting out to write "The King in Yellow"
I hadn't heard of this my entire life, but now three times in the past week I've seen it randomly pop up. Did I miss something, or is it just the frequency illusion at work?
edit - interesting, Google trends shows it spiking over the past few months: https://trends.google.com/explore?q=%2Fm%2F0m_7t&date=all&ge...
(also a huge spike in 2014, I wonder what that was about?)
The first season of True Detective on HBO would be responsible for the 2014 spike.
"...brought to you by Squarespace."
Makes me think of the old Monty Python joke so funny it kills everyone skit.
Which makes me think of a thread years ago I saw on the modern equivalent: a meme so offensive (to literally everyone at once) nobody can see it without having an anger induced aneurism.
The skit would be a comical updated take on the Python skit. A hardened memelord shitposter troll is found dead in his basement, surrounded by rotted pizza boxes, empty energy drink cans, and penis enlargement pills. He had been working for years to create a meme that would simultaneously offend everyone. Something is on his screen. The person who finds it immediately flies into a rage so extreme they have an immediate brain aneurism and die. "We showed the meme to the most hardened Nazi edgelord trolls we could find on the worst Discords, Chans, and Telegram channels. Most did not survive. Some were saved by medical intervention but sustained severe brain damage..."
it makes me think of The Entertainment from Infinite Jest, where the new Infowars just kills everyone who observes it by rendering them unable to do anything else, even make an agent for it
See also, the children’s book Fluffy McWhiskers Cuteness Explosion.
> A digital platform where, every day, visitors sacrifice themselves at altars of delusion and misery, their minds fully disintegrating on contact.
Zuckerberg already did it.
No joke, I use Facebook every year or so to access the marketplace and at the time my feed was roughly half rage-bait, and the other half being what I can only describe as AI-generated almost-pornography. Both had thousands of what looked like genuinely real interactions per post, mostly from developing country users.
I'm loathe to defend Facebook but most people's experience is not yours. The algorithm pushes content you're most likely to engage with, in your case it has nothing to go on so probably pushes whatever causes the most reaction in general.
> I'm loathe to defend Facebook but most people's experience is not yours. The algorithm pushes content you're most likely to engage with, in your case it has nothing to go on so probably pushes whatever causes the most reaction in general.
It think that's a contradiction: if your latter statement is correct, his experience is a peek at "most people's experience."
No, I don't think so. If Facebook has a dataset to work from, as it does with most people, it'll tailor your experience according to that. If it doesn't it has to just use everything.
No matter what you follow if FB thinks you are a man it's going to feed you those foreign near-porn shorts.
I'm not sure if it is just what escapes across national boundaries or if social media in other countries is just way more horny, but every time I see a post where the text has been auto-translated from a different language it is thirst trap content. This is true across multiple social media platforms. It's especially prevalent on X for example, especially as they seem to be trying to showcase their Grok translations or something.
> No matter what you follow if FB thinks you are a man it's going to feed you those foreign near-porn shorts.
Definitely not, FB knows I'm a man and I don't have anything remotely pornographic in my feed with any regularity because I don't interact with it when it does.
I've gotten the main feed under control, but the Reels have a mind of their own. It doesn't help that the reels don't have the "not interested" or even a thumbs down. The best you can do is a "hide reel" which seems to impart very little weight on the algorithm.
> No matter what you follow if FB thinks you are a man it's going to feed you those foreign near-porn shorts.
I don't know about FB as I quit it several years ago but I saw this happening on Instagram before I quit it too.
Not my experience at all. I have never seen anything remotely like you describe on my feed.
Then the algorithm is very broken for me. I post extremely benign and even somewhat boring things for my friends and family, scroll through the Marketplace scams occasionally, literally never watch Reels, and still--to this day--Facebook thinks I want to watch videos of teenage girls in loose-fitting bikinis jumping on trampolines.
My conclusion is not that the algorithm shows you things it THINKS you will engage with, but rather things they WANT you to engage with because it makes them money somehow.
It could just push his friends and family. Or nothing at all. But here we are.
This timeline sucks.
Just trying to imagine any other business run this way. Imagine asking a doctor for a recommendation and they give you heroin since everyone seems to really dig it.
Not sure that is defending.
It's really amazing how different people's experiences with Facebook are. I have been on Facebook since it started (I was at one of the original schools, I was in that famous first million users).
My feed is entirely photos of friends' kids, invitations to local events (things I actually attend), folk-dancing groups I'm involved with, and the like. I have literally never, not once, not ever, seen any rage-bait or political content (other than that directly written by friends - not reposted) in my feed.
Same, i don't see any problem with my facebook feed, it's all just friends and family postings and local events and some local news posts and things like that.
No political content or anything I would consider rage bait.
Huh, I wonder if there's a flag on the first million users (or some proxy for "Zuck's cohort") from the worst of the slop shoveling. It would sure save him some pointed remarks.
My wife's feed is very similar and she only got an account a few years ago.
It's probably like Youtube. Look up one WWII video there and suddenly you're getting spammed with "How to be a neo-Nazi" videos.
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What exactly is patronizing here? Or is it just calling them the most vulnerable?
The list you just thought up trying to argue about literal jokes from a literal joke making company tells us more about you and your opinions regarding others than it says about the joke the joke making company made
Hear hear, what does it tell you about my "options about others"? Mind you, I am a member of one of the groups I mentioned. So, go on, make a joke about vulnerability, you seem to be the right person for this.
The Onion is satire, so ... But Alex Jones is currently busy with Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and others to bitterly criticize Trump for the Iran war.
Trump retaliated by calling all of them "low IQ".
Given that Carlson's media company has an investment from the ubiquitous 1789 Capital (Thiel and Trump Jr.), we don't know if this is theater to keep the isolationist MAGA in the fold.
It could also be that they sacrifice Trump in order to accelerate Thiel's and Vance's technocracy.
Anyway, these influencers are still useful for their masters.
They’re just reading polls and reacting accordingly. There’s no principle involved.
And they aren’t being objective and rational about the polls, they are funding and cherry-picking poll data that tells them to do what they want to do.
There’s no principle, no strategy, no goal. We’re living in the political version of Cube, and just like the movie: it’s a headless blunder operating under the illusion of a master plan.
The only polls they care about is their sales numbers and their sponsor dollars.
It really doesn't matter how popular or unpopular a candidate is, what matters is if their listeners are still willing to overpay on snake oil. Or if their oil barrons are still giving them a few million dollars for whatever message they want to sell.
AJ is probably the worst in this space. One of the things leaked in his emails is if you give him $20k he'll gladly bring you on the show and talk about whatever it is you want to talk about and sell. You could probably get him to shill for a book about the benefits of communism.
Literally no principal involved.
Tucker will take any position for money see his entire career!
Plus the guy was advocating the administration should attack Iran for attempting to assassinate trump.
I dunno, he's pretty consistent as a white nationalist.
Having to take unscheduled vacations from Fox News over some of his more racist comments.
> I dunno, he's pretty consistent as a white nationalist.
> ... Fox News ...
Sure but can you link some white nationalist clips when he was the host of Crossfire [1] for 5 years?
Like he's just not principled. If he were to re-join Fox News and Fox were to pivot to being a competitor to BET [2] his comments would change immediately.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossfire_(American_TV_program...
No polls so much as views + likes. What gets a reaction? What makes good TV? This seems to be all that matters.
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Babylon Bee forces you to accept cookies to use their site. Worth avoiding.
> Babylon Bee forces you to accept cookies to use their site. Worth avoiding.
Use uBlock and block javascript by default with NoScript. I saw nothing about cookies and just got the article.
As with all silly internet block BS, simply reload the site and hit escape before the cookie banner loads.
> reload the site and hit escape
What exactly does that do? Which web browser?
I’m on mobile right now, so can’t test.
I'm on Firefox and it did nothing for me. The popup came up so fast between me refreshing and hitting escape.
Alternatively, you can disable JavaScript on the website. That lets me view it.
I would suppose it interrupts the page load after streaming the HTML and before loading and/or executing the cookie banner‘s javascript, meaning the content is there but the cookie banner will never open.
Or just inspect element + press delete. In some cases you also need to then delete an extra gray overlay and re-enable scroll on the base html tag, but takes 30s
Seems like a lot of work to browse a site that makes a good joke once every month or so.
I shut that site down as soon as I saw that. Gross.
Maybe I’m out of touch, but doesn’t a $1.4b dollar settlement for this seem rather… large?
The context is that Jones blew up the court process every chance he got, setting a new record for contempt fining. The most important piece was refusing to comply with discovery (his lawyer was so bad-behaved here he ended up with a disciplinary suspension). As a result Jones received a default judgement, i.e. the plaintiffs win by default and he doesn't get to argue his case. This also means the plaintiffs get everything they were asking for. And then for some reason he didn't even enter an argument during the damages calculation phase, so the jury just went with whatever the plaintiffs said.
Just a few (minor) corrections
> his lawyer was so bad-behaved here he ended up with a disciplinary suspension
Jones had multiple lawyers throughout the process. That was in fact a big part of the problem that ended up getting him defaulted. Free speech systems (his company) do a depo with one set of lawyers that didn't comply comply with the judges orders, they'd go in unprepared and give the "I'm so sorry I'm brand new on this case" and then he'd have a completely different set of lawyers in the next depo that would rinse and recycle the same rhetoric.
It was also 2 cases, one in Texas and the larger one in Connecticut. But he pulled the same shit in both and got defaulted in both.
> the plaintiffs win by default and he doesn't get to argue his case.
The plaintiffs do win by default but he did also get to argue his case still. The trial was focused on how much damage Jones did to the plaintiffs with Jones arguing he did nothing and the plaintiffs showing how crazy it was (Including Jones's fans shooting up his house, getting fired from jobs, having friends accuse them of lying about their kid's deaths).
> And then for some reason he didn't even enter an argument during the damages calculation phase, so the jury just went with whatever the plaintiffs said.
Not really true. He did put forth really bad arguments during the damages calculations. But in both Connecticut and Texas the amount of damage was left up to the Jury to decide. They could have put forward any number from 1 to 80M (I think the highest amount). And in Connecticut the amounts were broken down for each of the victims (including an officer that responded to the shooting). That's part of what's made it impossible for him to unwind because each of the victims got different amounts of damages. There was just like 20 of them which is why the damages went so high.
Re pt 3, says here he entirely declined to put on a defense during that part. https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/plaintiffs-attorne...
I guess I find that a bit misleading.
His lawyers in CT didn't call witnesses but they did cross examine the plaintiffs witnesses. In the TX case they did have AJ take the stand for his own defense, the "Perry Mason" moment was during the cross examination which I'm sure he didn't want to repeat in CT.
That said, his CT lawyer was REALLY bad, far worse than his TX lawyer who famously gave away a copy of his phone by mistake.
Do you have a good/entertaining source for this? I'd love to read (or watch/listen) more about it
I think you'll enjoy this brief clip (3 min) when it's revealed the defense lawyer accidentally provided the plaintiffs a copy of his entire phone
Knowledge Fight podcast is great. Look for their Formulaic Objection episodes to see the crazy show all of the court things were.
how's your 401k doin' bruh?
LegalEagle[0] covered this shitshow in great detail with solid commentary. Can recommend.
[0]: https://youtu.be/x-QcbOphxYs
This is when from when Jones' lawyer sent a copy of his phone to the opposition...
That was an impressively stupid and/or lazy fuck up, to a point where I think Jones could have a lawsuit against his attorneys there.
IANAL but it does seems like "sending an entire copy of your clients phone and making no effort to redact it" could be a thing that, you know, is bad counsel.
No, the lawyers can argue about the scope of what they show the jury during trial. There are plenty of rules against biasing or inflaming the jury with unrelated material.
Yes but they didn’t show anything irrelevant in the trial. It was idiotic to send a dump of the entire phone.
ALAB series covered it in amusing detail
Jones basically handled his defense like Donald Trump handles congressional subpoenas, but Jones doesn't have the Supreme Court covering for him so he got burned to a crisp. I think in his heart of hearts he thought he was going to get some kind of pardon that would make all of the problems go away. He doesn't think he's the kind of person that would ever have to face the consequences of his own actions.
It's even worse than that. Because despite his commitment to non-compliance and general contempt for the entire process he managed to comfound his own defense resulting in his legal team accidentally disclosing way too much including the smoking gun that proved his guilt beyond a doubt.
I don't think so. With how much money was made and direct attacks on individual members on the legal system, I think it's a breath of fresh air to see the rich and influential actually get punished. There's frustrating the legal system, and then there's lying under oath and executing smear campaigns against judges.
If Alex Jones wanted a smaller settlement, he could've chosen to destroy fewer lies, comply with legal orders, or simply not commit any number of his many other legal infractions.
He's desperately trying to weasel his way out of paying any of it back by doing things like moving assets around, leaving companies empty, and then declaring bankruptcy on them. His victims will probably spend the rest of their lives chasing after the compensation they're owed, but perhaps at least taking Jones' branding from him might be punishment for a man like him.
> rich and influential
This unidimensional analysis is so funny to me. When your lens forces you to group together Alex Jones, Bill Gates, and George Soros as part of the same “rich and influential” clique, maybe it’s time to reconsider your dimension.
Alex Jones is nothing. At best he can be described as a small business owner.
His influence is undeniable. Someone who owns multiple Rolexes is rich in my book. Richer and more influential people existing doesn't change that.
What is your threshold for rich and influential? You don't have to have Musk money to have sufficient pull to escape the consequences most people would face for action X. I don't think this is a difficult or controversial observation.
If you're net worth is above $15 million or so in the US, your in the 99th percentile. There are many orders of magnitude between you and Bezos, but you're rich. And if you have a media empire that is watched by millions, you're influential.
Besides Jones and his lawyer absolutely botching his defense and basically giving up the case (and pissing off the courts as I understand it, which is a bad fucking idea and usually also leads to larger fines), the $1.4 billion is just what Jones managed to rack it up to before entering bankruptcy proceedings, which froze his debt collectors out for a bit.
Alongside the class action, Jones was iirc also facing several separate lawsuits, so what you're seeing here is multiple lost lawsuits (I think he lost 4?) adding up.
The bankruptcy also doesn't wipe the slate clean for Jones afaiu, because he specifically was found to be malicious in his behavior. Court debts aren't wiped in that situation. He's still on the hook for that.
Jones lawyers were so bad that part of me believes they intentionally sabotaged him. His lawyers (or an assistant on the team) sent an image of his cell phone data to the prosecuting attorneys on accident, which means 2 years of his text messages were used against him. His lawyers could have taken it back but failed. It's insane how this trial went down.
Surely he just waits for the Trump pardon in 2028? Or is this something he can't be pardoned for?
I don't the president can pardon away a lawsuit. He could pardon away a crime, and sometimes the crime can be a basis for a civil lawsuit, but in this case I don't think anyone has seriously considered criminally charging Jones for anything here.
> I don't [think] the president can pardon away a lawsuit.
Never underestimate Trump's ability in decreeing something and hoping for it to stick long enough to cause real damage before the courts eventually strike it down - it took almost a year until the Supreme Court struck down the tariffs, by the time the first large corporations get their refunds it will be over a year, and honestly I'd be surprised if the first consumers get refunds by the end of 2026.
Trump's ability to do that is solely caused by a lot of people across all branches and levels of government too afraid to say "no" to him and getting on the receiving end of "you're fired".
He can always do what he is doing for himself with the IRS. Let Jones sue a federal agency then order that agency to settle.
It's a civil lawsuit.
What is the last thing Trump said about Alex Jones?
I actually made a timeline of his harassment towards the Sandy Hook families, and then his denials of it in court.
We're not going to have a rehash of the McDonald's coffee settlement argument here, are we?
She deserved way more than that for the way they tried to smear her afterward!
Seriously, the reporting on that was so terribly biased that many people still think it was a frivolous lawsuit.
It's honestly kind of chilling just how effective smear campaigns can be.
I don't think there's any reasonable person who could read the full medical description of the injuries sustained and think "yeah 2.7 mill was too much".
The result was wrong. And yes, I read the contra arguments put on and they were not convincing.
Your entire opinion is based on an expensive propaganda campaign. Is that who you want to be?
Stella Liebeck was awarded 2.7 million in punitive damages, that seems like a much more reasonable number than 1.4 billion.
It was considerably less on appeal and the mcdonalds lawyers didn't anatagonize the court every chance they got and it was literally 30 years ago and there was only one victim.
Just with inflation (6.4m) and number of victims (22?) you get a much larger number real quick.
6.4m * 22 = 140.8m, an entire order of magnitude less.
It is absurdly large and deliberately so. First of all this was a class action suit representing 22 plaintiffs. Secondly, the number was large to punish the defendant for continuously disrespecting the count with bad repeated behavior. Third, there was no defense because the defendant failed to work with the court resulting in a summary judgment.
>deliberately so
I’m not entertained that the court is playing an unrealistic and hyberbolic game.
I know, I’m a weirdo that wants to see realism and pragmatism in the court systems even if the defendant is a real asshole.
> I’m not entertained that the court is playing an unrealistic and hyberbolic game.
They did not. Jones was given years and dozens of opportunities to comply. He defaulted in 2 cases because he failed to comply in both cases. He was also defaulted after being warned he'd be defaulted. The cases literally started in 2018 and resolved in 2022. The reason they dragged out for so long is primarily due to Jones not complying with court orders. Constantly having to retake depositions where the same incomplete and non-compliant answers were given.
And he appealed (and lost) the appeal for the default.
Multiple judges saw his default and concluded "This was a reasonable way to handle an unreasonable litigant".
His lawyers were terrible. Nobody arguing otherwise on that point. Jones wasn't personally directing the legal strategy, he was doing the same thing you'd do.
> Jones wasn't personally directing the legal strategy, he was doing the same thing you'd do.
Yes he was. Jones didn't have 1 set of lawyers from start to finish on the cases. He went through about 20 different lawyers in both cases.
That doesn't happen if a client isn't personally directing the lawyers.
His strategy was very clearly to bring in new lawyers at each depo that didn't comply with the court order. When challenged, the lawyers would say "Oh, sorry, it's my first day on this case. We'll be sure to bring it next time".
He did the same thing with the corporate representatives. He had at least 3 different people show up as the corporate representative that were supposed to bring the finances. None of them complied.
His lawyers were objectively bad. You'd bring in a new team and fire them also.
Example: they sent a copy of his cell phone to the prosecuting attorney on accident and didn't request it back in time, so 2 years of his text messages were used against him.
That was literally the last lawyer he had which ran the trial (Reynolds).
And the reason his lawyers were so objectively bad was because they all had about 1 month working on the case before getting fired and replaced by a new lawyer.
Meanwhile, the plaintiffs had exactly 1 set of lawyers representing them (1 in TX and one in CT).
I'm not joking when I say that Jones went through about 20 different sets of lawyers throughout the cases. You can listen to his various depositions and there's not a repeat defense lawyer in any one of the depos. I highly doubt they were all just uniquely terrible, especially given how much money Jones has. A few were really terrible (Norm, Barnes). Reynolds was actually one of Jones's better lawyers, he just messed up. Unsurprising given how little time he was on the case.
IIRC, the reason for the phone copy getting shared was because of the case hand-off between reynolds and the previous lawyers. The TX lawyers were CCed when they shouldn't have been. And in the process of getting ready for trial, reynolds missed the email informing him of the mistake.
>His lawyers were objectively bad.
No, his lawyers were deliberately bad. There is a massive difference.
While no direct evidence, it's almost certain that Jones when to a good lawyer at first who told him that "He was most utterly and unanimously fucked" in which Jones did the you better call Saul and got himself lawyers that would try anything at all to muck up the system. While your first response may be "No bar lawyer would do something that could lose their license", after many years doing computer work in the Texas legal system and seeing myriads of interactions, my response is "Yes they fucking would".
Jones chose poor lawyers because good ones ran away screaming after he told them what he wanted to do.
This is a pragmatic result. The defendant had every opportunity to raise a valid defense. Instead they ignored the court and were a continual harassing ass to the plaintiffs. One way to punish bad behavior is to increase the level of punishment proportional to the harm inflicted.
This punishment reflects not just the conduct at question by the law suit, but also the conduct during the law suit.
What do you feel would be an outcome to this situation that aligns to the realism and pragmatism you believe the court system should have?
All of the threads related to this topic have had a pile of folks going "the amount was too much!" but hardly any of them say what they think an appropriate punishment would look like...
I can only speak for myself, but punitive damages of 1-2 million per complainant (22 I think) seems entirely reasonable and in line with previous rulings? But let me also flip the on it's head, if 1.4 billion dollars is an appropriate punishment to you then is there any amount of money that would be too much?
I don't think your values are sufficient deterrent for the kind of behavior Alex Jones and InfoWars exhibited and substantially profited from. They made more than the 22-44 million you're suggesting. They would still have profited from their actions.
I think it needs to be large enough to be a real deterrent. So it needs to be large enough that there is a real risk of turning substantial profit into substantial loss. "What if we get sued for $existentiallyLargeAmount?" needs to be part of the business math when deciding whether to tell lies for profit.
"More money than exists in the world" would clearly be too much. But I'm absolutely fine with a company and its chief officers being left penniless for such behavior. So I'm definitely fine with taking everything the company has, taking everything the chief officers have, and possibly adding a bit of debt on top of that.
So that kinda sums it up then, people who disagree with you (including me) think that the punitive damages should be rooted in punishing Alex Jones et al, not in destroying him forever.
>think that the punitive damages should be rooted in punishing Alex Jones
Correct. This is what happens when you go to court and play by the rules and stop doing things when you get an injunction against said behaviors.
When you tell the court to fuck off and you can do whatever you want, repeatedly, this is when you get the deserved massive punitive smack down for being an anti-social dick.
The problem you have is the complete and total lack of ability to put yourself in the shoes of any of the victims here that had got injunctions from the court many times only to have them be ignored and for have the abuse to then scale up even further. Millions in fines does not solve the behavior, he was making more than that in scamming people. A fine that is lower than profits is just a cost of doing business.
The punishment was made to be a deterrent for all who might consider doing the same as Alex Jones. You have made a straw man about destroying him forever.
Notably, what he did probably does deserve him being destroyed forever.
If he still profits from the behavior, has he really been punished?
It has to be bigger than what the business can accept as "just a cost of doing business" or it isn't actually a deterrent.
The way you leave a company penniless is to fine them and everyone else involved for ‘more money than there is in the world’?
The "punishment" keeps appearing in this thread and I think that is what explains the eye popping settlement.
Not the person you asked, but the sensible thing is of course that the court decides the amount - not the plaintiffs. That's how it works in other places.
In criminal cases, I've seen victims getting anywhere between 50% to 10% of what they've demanded, or even nothing even when the judgement has been in their favour.
The court does decide, but the plaintiffs are allowed to present their opinion on what it should be and if you manage to screw up your defense enough then the jury gets told to agree with the plaintiff.
This is also the result of multiple lost lawsuits as well as additional penalties from not complying with court directives during the cases.
You're aware a judge was still involved in the process and agreed to it, right? It's not just the plaintiffs.
Yes, I'm aware and I didn't think I had to spell it out: the court should decide the amount according to their own opinion of what is fair, rather than accept a demand from one side.
I mean, typically you have the defense and plaintiffs go back and forth on this. Turns out it doesn't pay to be a criminal loser and try to ignore the court.
TL:DR this is never going to be a problem you have, because you'll get a decent lawyer and not be a wildly massive prick about getting your own way.
Imagine if you tried to antagonize court at every possible point. Now imagine someone did it worse.
It was shit like him saying "noooo I didn't enrich myself, I actually lost money and popularity on site because of it", then court going "okay, could we see your financial records and site visits?"
And him just not delivering. Or not showing up at all, multiple times. Also asking for someone to deliver the head of the opposition's lawyer on a pike for a reward(that's not even exaggerating his words).
The resulting amount is basically "fuck you", and mostly coz he didn't even showed to defend himself so it wasn't challenged by court
The settlement needed to be large enough to stop the behavior. Based on Jones' past behavior, I think it's reasonable to believe that only such a massive settlement would do so. Otherwise, the lawsuit just becomes a cost of doing business.
IIRC, the judge specifically said the amount was not about harm but specifically about shutting down InfoWars. So, give them such a heavy fine that would be impossible to pay.
For what he did, it seems appropriate, just imagine grieving the death of your children and asshole says it was a hoax and profits from it
Yes, at first. If it was a typical defamation case based on a single incident or short pattern of conduct, and if Jones behaved like a typical defendant, hiring a competent lawyer and mostly complying with court orders, the judgment would have been a few million dollars. That's not what happened.
Instead, Jones repeatedly failed to comply with court orders and attempted to delay the trial. He lied under oath, broadcast lies about the plaintiffs, and mocked the plaintiffs on his show after losing a case. He additionally broadcast his intent to continue spreading disinformation about the Sandy Hook shooting.
The long-term pattern of treating the court with contempt and clear intent to continue his illegal behavior are an extreme level of noncompliance for a defendant in a lawsuit, and they added up to an extreme penalty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones#Sandy_Hook_Elementa...
If he did something criminal then there's a code of law that provides a remedy to that. As far as I know that's not what happened here.
Because what he did wasn't criminal, many people wanted a maximal civil settlement in substitution.
What he did is lose his civil lawsuits about as hard as it's possible to lose, which is easily explained by his behavior during those lawsuits.
No, it doesn't seem rather large.
The man made a fortune destroying the reputations of some people, and he did so by (provably) intentionally lying about them, without their consent and with nothing paid to them. They deserve every peny of that - he stole their reputations and as with all theft, reparations are logical.
In addition he grew his following with those lies, and that following will continue to give him money. This is the interest and dividends of those lies.... it's the result of him investing the reputatoins he destroyed. Since you can't sell a following, but it's still a profit generating asset, it's fair to make Jones turn over those dividends. This ensures that he'll be turning over those dividends for a long time.
Finally there's a punative component - making sure he doesn't continue to maliciously destroy reputations for profit. It's a good idea to make sure such a pile of shit thinks twice about he tells more lies to the morons and trash that follow him.
I don't understand. Nothing stopping him from lying publicly about anybody or anything. It's not like he loses his 1st amendment card or something.
The only lesson he's learned is to hire a better legal team in the future for civil (not criminal) suits.
> hire a better legal team
Is there any real reason to believe that the problem was his legal teams? You know there were a lot of them, right? Aside from the singular example late in the case, it is plausible that most/all of his legal teams were quite competent.
>Nothing stopping him from lying publicly about anybody or anything
It's a bit messier than that. For example if he's going to set up a new media empire things like banks will give a pretty big fuck you to loans and such if they think all your assets will be captured by the court and they'll be left holding the bag.
This doesn't stop him from putting together money in other ways, but massively increases the difficulty on his part as every time he does he'll find a suit showing up to collect it from him.
And as others have said, this has nothing to do with good/bad lawyers. The good lawyers came in at first and told him he was totally screwed, and because he's such a pompous ass he could not handle that.
You're right. I should have said discouraging him rather than making sure.
However the notion that Jones has learned something is so utterly preposterous that not even his fans are stupid enough to believe it
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I’m just not sure you can make the claim that this is an issue between the outlet and the establishment. It’s had hosts like Roger Stone doing 5 episodes a week. He’s the former campaign advisor for the sitting president of the United States, and advisor to Dole, Bush (both), and Reagan.
It doesn’t get more establishment than that. So the “down and out anti-establishment underdog” narrative doesn’t apply in my opinion.
To people like that, random college students are "establishment" because they are lefty, and the literal President of the United States is "anti-establishment" because he uses slurs on social media.
If people want to get their "hard truths" out, they shouldn't contaminate them with 9/10 parts of lies, and they certainly shouldn't run a harassment campaign against the parents of murdered children.
> Infowars delenda est.
Yes.
He hurt innocent people with his voice without regrets. He wanted to die on that hill and if so he can be lucky that only his voice might die.
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He had every possible chance to argue his case, both against culpability and then against the specific damages, but both he and the lawyers he hired refused to do so. This 1.4b dollars was not a particularly harsh judgment coming down from the establishment (note that the establishment is the president Jones was a paid campaign member for), it was the result of his implicit acceptance of every claim the Snady Hook parents made.
What would instead have been a reasonable punishment?
Either he truly believed that the kids at Sandy Hook were actors, or he was using it as part of his grift and making money of it.
As far as I can tell he has not reversed his stance on it
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You should read how this particularly huge settlement was achieved. It’s on Alex Jones for refusing to participate in the legal debate, contemning the court, refusing discovery, et cetera.
With better legal defence he may have to pay much and much less.
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As a drive by reader that votes, I can guess why you copped a few whacks;
The tone is off and it appears to carry the implication that you might believe that none of the above (Jones, Piker, Owens) should be landed with fines despite on the face of it saying the opposite.
A cleaner comment would be better; just explain what it is that Piker has done that is equivilant to Jones' multi decade harrassment of the Sandi Hook parents, ditto Owens.
( for record, I'm non-USAian and unfamiliar with either Piker or Owens )
It would have been far more interesting to read your reasoning instead of having you click that down-vote button. I don't agree with your reasoning but that is the point: we could discuss it, I could explain who Piker (a left-wing icon being pushed as a 'bro' by the party while he spouts utter tripe and nonsense, calling for murder of political opponents) and Owens (a right-wing podcaster who used to be part of the right-wing establishment until she went fully anti-Semite and general conspiracy theorist). I'm not American either but whatever happens there affects us directly or indirectly so I do keep check on the news from the west.
> It would have been far more interesting to read your reasoning instead of having you click that down-vote button.
Ahhh, I read https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments feed and saw your "Can the down-voters for once let go of their pacifiers" which prompted me to look at context.
As a general rule I prefer to engage with things I disagree with rather than simply downvote or flag.
I note now (I'm GMT +8 and have been asleep since last here) that both your comments above are [flagged] and [dead].
The HN mods, dang and tomhow, really do like to push content, engagement, curious discussion, etc. over snark, partisan whiplash, cranky shit, etc.
Re: Piker .. the name came up again in some other context (some speculation about a recent interview in or with the NYT) and so I watched a recent (last 14 days IIRC) interview with him with someone from Mother Jones .. on the bases of that single exposure I personally wouldn't dot point summarise him as "spouting utter tripe and nonsense" - he is capable of debating his opinions, has a good grasp of the political landscape, and is clearly a devisive figure in the US political landscape that would get a lot of hot takes and slanting.
Again, I've only a 20 minute exposure, but he does have a good point that he has literally thousands of hours of live twitch streaming, discussion, and in the moment rambling through hypotheticals before landing on a position - ie. he's someone that anyone can build a rolltape of short clips of and easily misrepresent and take out of context.
Addendum: from your peer comment:
> just like Hasan Piker ('the Jews are behind all it all'),
uhh, my take from a 20 minute discussion is that he's strongly against Israel "the aparthied state", the zionist attitude, the current holders of power in Israel.
In that he's aligned with, say, the Jewish Council of Australia: https://www.jewishcouncil.com.au/
Your comment was bad because you don't know the context of Jones' case and how the penalty was arrived at, and are thus extrapolating without any merit to other people.
Neither Hassan Piker nor Candace Owens, nor any other of the many inflammatory voices on the left or right of the new media ecosystem, have done anything remotely close to the type of harassment that Alex Jones exposed the Sandy Hook victims to. Directly accusing grieving parents and children of being completely fake paid "crisis actors", again and again, with images and "analysis" and so on, is beyond anything another media personality has had the poor taste and temerity to try - perhaps in history, certainly in America.
Even then, the only reason the judgement ended up at such a gigantic number is that Alex Jones and his lawyers refused to argue their case to any extent, and in fact directly attacked and antagonized the court and the judge. They lost the case through summary judgement after repeated refusals to follow the normal procedural rules or even to show up in court. Then, they repeated the same refusal to participate or argue their case during the damages settlement, again forcing the court to simply award the amount requested by the plaintiffs, which is always set to a huge number as a negotiating tactic.
So no, the fact that someone argues that Alex Jones deserved this punishment fully is not in any way in conflict with believing that Hassan or Candace Owens or any other new media personality deserves anything similar.
Not interesting
Adds nothing, inflammatory in tone, missing the point of discussion. If you weren't grayed out something would be serious wrong with this site.
> If you weren't grayed out something would be serious wrong with this site.
If [a questioning or dissenting voice] is not suppressed something would be serious (sic) wrong with this site
Not where I come from. I prefer to discuss these issues, even with ideologues and their followers even though it often seems pointless.
To put this in perspective: Ales Jones is a conspiracy theorist just like Hasan Piker ('the Jews are behind all it all'), Candace Owens (same as Piker, now also 'Erika Kirk is behind the murder of her husband'), Tucker Carlson (same as Piker), Nick Fuentes (...same as...) and many others.
> 5 will be crazy cucko insane shit, 4 will be common sense american conservative talking points
If you ask me, it's getting harder and harder to draw a line between those two categories...
For anyone curious about the events that led to this decision, I made a timeline that shows how it happened: https://alexjoneslies.com/
just a heads up, this is pretty dark (as any mass shooting discussion would be, but particularly this one), and doesn’t include anything about the sale of infowars or the onion.
the AI-generated imagery is a non-starter for me
That AI-generated imagery isn't bringing any less value to the conversation than comments like these where something is rejected for having a whiff of AI. Employing a graphic designer to create different decorative images is outside the scope/resources of that personal project if I had to guess.
So as he is quoted at the top "Something I talked about like 15 times, six, seven, eight years ago." This appears to be true when he said it, judging from the rest of the site's content. He offered consistent reasons for his (wrong) opinion. And when he said, "I mean, how do I get a fair trial with stuff like this?", pretty valid given the article he's referencing. Sorry, but I don't see defamation here. And the un-doctored video of the dad is ODD enough to say so on the radio. Don't take this as defending him (because I do believe he's wrong) but I find everything he said to be allowable in an open, free society. And sorry, I don't find the parents to be harmed to the tune of a $B. That all said, however, as a Tim Heidecker fan, I'm pretty happy at the outcome. Here I'll say what neither side will say: Alex is the frontman for the "cabal" (he admits his dad was in DARPA and Intelligence). His job is to say their deeds out loud (which is part of their belief system) in such a way that few people trust. I may be wrong, so sue me for a billion dollars why don't you.
> I find everything he said to be allowable in an open, free society.
Indeed, the government is not prosecuting him or trying to suppress his first amendment rights. But that doesn't mean he can say anything he wants about anyone he wants and not have any civil liability, so it seems like the system is working.
The billion dollar verdict is his own fault. He got sued by a bunch of people, and it is pretty normal to shoot for a high amount and settle for less. If he had not noped out of the entire process he would have been liable for a whole lot less (or even nothing, depending on the jury). No sympathy from me.
He knowingly made up lies about the Sandy Hook parents for personal gain, and continued to do so on a regular basis for over a decade.
The case didn’t even make it to trial because he refused to turn over documents, likely because they would prove guilt.
Free speech protects your right to say your opinion, but it does not protect you from willingly causing harm to others for personal gain.
Jones is currently crashing out over the deal with The Onion and has just today repeated his claim that the shooting was staged: https://bsky.app/profile/bencollins.bsky.social/post/3mk6rah...
> Alex is the frontman for the "cabal" (he admits his dad was in DARPA and Intelligence).
Alex Jones is a severely damaged man and a known liar. His story about his father has changed radically over the years and within days of his telling, each time mythologizing his Dad by way of making Jones himself special, or from special people. Was Jones’ grandmother psychic? Is he himself? Does God give him downloads of information over chicken sandwiches and in the middle of the night with clock time ‘proofs’? Why did Jones receive the download to go rescue Gene Hackman and then just not do so, if the battle against the Actual Devil is so important?
> So as he is quoted at the top "Something I talked about like 15 times, six, seven, eight years ago." This appears to be true when he said it, judging from the rest of the site's content.
I haven’t reviewed the site but Jones was the head of a whole media operation that knowingly defamed these people in a bitter time, and to sell dick pills. The depositions for these things are public and you can watch them yourself. Jones himself admits in these depositions his role behind the scenes, sending Halbig on his mad journey and what not.
The $1B judgement is startling but it’s based entirely on Jones’ own statement of impact in the depositions. If you’re being sued for the profit you made from lies, maybe don’t claim the majority of humanity tunes into your show and website every day.
If he doesn't like the reality of the tort system he can just invent a new reality and say everything he dislikes is fake.
He wasn't just expressing an opinion though. He was willfully lying. The burden for proving defamation is pretty high to avoid infringing on free speech and the burden was easily met. They proved that he not only lied, he knowingly lied and continued to knowingly lie after seeing proof his lies were materially hurting people.
Also he is not a frontman for shit. He's a narcissistic rage baiter who has never exposed any true story. Your nonsensical belief however is nowhere near the standard for defamation.
Alex Jones is an utterly depraved lunatic who will tell any lie as long as it makes him money and he doesn't care at all about the damage his lies cause. This directly led to him getting sued and losing because his lies causes enormous harm to the parents of the Sandy Hook victims.
I hope Dan and Jordan can get the desk like they've always wanted.
I'm concerned they won't know what to do without Alex. Already going back over shows from 2006...
The likeness of Alex Jones was an asset of Infowars - according to Alex Jones. So Alex Jones gave up his likeness to The Onion and doesn't own it himself any more. The Onion can still have Alex Jones on the show - played by an actor - and Alex Jones will have to play a character other than himself if he ever does another show.
That's one of the most absurd things I've ever heard. I love it.
They’ve bounced around in time — and across InfoWars adjacent shows — for a good chunk of their run so far. I suspect they’ll be okay. Worst case the world suddenly becomes much kinder and gentler and there’s no new content being made in their wheelhouse, which seems like a win still.
Also, Jones has already set up a new media company he totally doesn’t own, no sir. He’ll move his operation when he finally loses InfoWars.
They've been pretty creative in setting their sights on the likes of Tucker Carlson and others. There truly is no one like Alex, and so I think there is a very real possibility that the show as we know it could fundamentally change if Alex stops producing content.
But I think Dan and Jordan are interesting enough as personalities and bring really good analysis and there are plenty of other worthy targets. So I do think things would change in a significant way if they ever had to veer away from Alex Jones stuff, but I would believe in their ability to reinvent themselves and train their fire on new targets.
Turning into an odd form of a take over. Basically renting it for 3 months to let Tim Heidecker do a few shows??
Archive.is link is hanging, and NYT is paywall.
This one seems to have some info:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/04/21/the-on...
Tldr; it isn't a done deal
"The deal is not for The Onion to own Infowars, but rather to have a temporary license to the intellectual property of Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems.
Papers filed in state court indicate that the deal entails The Onion paying $81,000 a month to license the Infowars.com domain and brand name, as reported by KOUW,"
https://www.kuow.org/stories/the-onion-has-agreed-to-a-new-d...
"The deal calls for The Onion to pay $81,000 a month to license the Infowars.com domain and brand name, which the receiver says will "cover carrying costs to preserve and protect the assets of the receivership estate" until an appeal filed by Jones is decided and the path is cleared for a sale."
Next Onion article: "InfoWars to Take over The Onion"
Editorialized title. It has a plan to take over that will need approval. Lots of non-paywalled coverage that would be better links, eg:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/20/the-onion-al...
See previous discussion linked in sibling as well.
This is a really good point, especially since a similar plan was attempted once before and failed.
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This all feels so archaic. Does anyone actually care about either of these sites anymore?
A million dollars a year for... what? A gag that fans of infowars won't watch, and there aren't enough anti-fans to appreciate? It feels personal at this point.
Tim heidecker summarised their thinking wonderfully.
"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”.
> It feels personal at this point.
Of course it's personal. Alex Jones is an arsehole manufacturing outrage for profit. Being made fun of is the least of his problems
Not to mention Alex Jones is still up and running elsewhere spreading his nonsense and hawking his merch. So it's a cute gag, I guess, and gets the Sandy Hook families some money, but doesn't really change the status quo.
I disagree. It's a lot better than if it were bought by simply a different far-right media outlet.
This keeps it out of that ecosystem, which I think is a really good thing.
It's just a domain name. The Onion taking it over does virtually nothing to impact Alex Jone's reach.
Because it's funny that The Onion will be taking over InfoWars.
And I'm _still_ laughing. LOL
Think of it as a million dollar ad buy.
Or a charitable gift to Sandy Hook families
> It feels personal at this point.
Yeah, it seems hard to believe that anyone would take Alex Jones' behaviour so personally. He only suggested that the murder of 20 young children and 6 adults in a school shooting was faked for political reasons.
(Are you serious?!)
It's funny
> It feels personal at this point.
Fucking hell that's a funny line.
> It feels personal at this point.
It is openly and proudly personal. It is also political, also openly.
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So, amongst all the things that happened and happening right now, you think "someone is incredibly petty against Alex Jones" is worth spending your time complaining about. Alex Jones, the one who harassed mass shooting survivors.
Seems appropriate for satirists to do a petty attack on a bad man. That’s kind of the whole thing, isn’t it?
I’d rather it be collective action that produces real change, but humor is cathartic so I’ll take it.
Pause for a moment. Do you have young kids? Imagine for a moment that they were slaughtered in a mass shooting and a bunch of people made money by launching a harassment campaign targeting you as a liar who probably never had kids, or alternatively used them as paid actors. Imagine this campaign went on for years.
And someone repurpose one of the instigator’s web sites as a humour outlet is the issue that leaves a bad taste in your mouth?
As opposed to the Alex Jones show, a Two Minute Hate for rightwingers? These people love to dish it out but can't take it when someone else uses their tactics against them.
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Oh, that so sad, can someone please think of the fascist grifters?
It is personal. He intentionally lied about the parents of dead children. Thats as personal of an attack as it gets. Of course those parents are going to take it personally and go after the sick pile of shit who lied about them.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the judge's ruling that led to the current situation seems particularly dystopian. Infowars demonstrated value, and The Onion turning it into a parody would undermine that value, so whoever buys it has to continue delivering on the original value proposition (i.e. continue spewing racist paranoid propaganda) so creditors can get their expected value out of it? What the fuck is wrong with the USA?
Once every infowars article and video is on the onion, they will instantly make sense. How long does it take to retrain foundational models and SEO to understand that those articles are absolutely trash?
brb. Turning my gold into piss
The person who downvoted this clearly does not read the new InfoWars...
"@elonmusk please help" - Alex Jones
It seems strange to me that our laws allow someone to declare personal bankruptcy to avoid paying on liabilities, while somehow maintaining interests in other companies… resulting in that weird situation where another of his companies tries to buy the “bankrupt” company? (If you didn’t read the article, the only other bidder against the Onion was one of Alex’s own companies)
Jones is a grifter, but I almost admire his brazen attempts here. If he is successful in any way, he is doing a service to point out the flaws in the systems.
Maybe we should repeal the first amendment?
One of the things I love about this is while Alex Jones was definitely negligent in his case, this pretty much does exactly what he wanted.
One of the things I've discovered in my long career of people being wrong about everything is how strong the team sports dynamic of social politics really is. I was high school friends with a writer for the Daily Show and the thing I realized is how humor and dismissal was a way of creating social superiority and evasion of legitimate arguments.
Right now, the world is changing greatly. Lots of people are retreating into a shell of humor in order to avoid it. Mass cognitive dissonance about the nature of reality. But reality and life goes on.
I'm not seeing it mentioned, but wasn't there some form of ponzi scheme against Jones' debt passed through the winner of the suits as part of the onion taking control that didn't actually account for the full value, or potential value or something.
I just recall seeing this story over a year ago... not sure at this point. and not having read the paywalled article.
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Who are "they" and what have they blamed Jones for more than the murderer?
Because I'm fairly sure no-one is claiming that Jones is a murderer or that the Sandy Hook killer was defaming people
[flagged]
Alex Jones knowing lied about the parents.
This destroyed their reputation.
Alex Jones made a lot of money from his lies.
The parents made no money from those lies.
The parents' reputation was sold for dollars, and they got no dollars.
That is theft. Alex Jones stole the reputations.
He should pay for what he did.
As for the rest of your nonsens:
* the families are and have gone after the murder and the family.
* defamation/slander is incredibly hard to prove. Jones' actions were so blatantly awful they met that high bar. Parroting talking points on bluesky does not even come close.
* Perhaps, you should ask "if helping Trump win was all that's necessary for a giant settlement, why hasn't joe rogan been punished too?"
Mostly your reading comprehension.
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i don’t understand how this is not a 1st amendment violation
can someone explain the difference between what alex jones said about sandy hook and what other people say about 9/11 being an inside job, hologram planes, fake this fake that etc
First amendment prevents the federal government from preventing speech or punishing for speech (subject to a few exceptions).
This was not that.
This was a civil defamation case; the parents bought a case of actual material harm and harrassment of epic proportions before two seperate judges in two seperate states and both courts made the finding that Jones had indeed caused harm and harrassment .. and continued to do so over years.
With regards to defamation law, the first amendment does result in the USA having a higher bar for prosecution than most countries- GP still has a valid question.
The word "prosecution" implies criminal case brought by the government. This was a civil case brought by the victims.
If you mean higher bar for litigation, then maybe this lawsuit and its outcome shows that the bar isn't as high as you think when it comes to defamation?
Yes I did mean litigation (didn't know that that term was a distinction learned something today).
To my understanding the case outcome is pretty much what I would expect, even considering the first amendment raising the bar. It's also interesting that there's been so many legal shenanigans in the case that it's hard to even keep track of them all.
The principal legal shenanigan came from Jones and his team - stubbornly refusing to engage with either court via a kind of sovereign citizen "I know my first amendment rights, F- you" vibe.
That sealed the case outcome as, IIRC, at least one of the judges just ruled against them for not mounting any defence.
This seems like a good faith question to me, Jones clearly operated thinking he was protected under the first amendment, and it was not obvious to me he was going to lose his court case despite morally finding his actions repugnant.
What does the first amendment have to do with slander, libel, and defamation?
The first amendment protects you from the government prosecuting you for the content of your speech.
The first amendment does not protect you from the results of your speech, like someone deciding they don't like you because of what you said. That person is free to dislike you for what you said and the first amendment has nothing to do with it.
Similarly, if you say things that are untrue and cause damage to others, you may be held civilly liable for the damage if they sue you and convince a jury that you lied with knowledge and intent to lie. The first amendment has nothing to do with this.
This is not a case about Sandy Hook the event - it is a defamation case by the victims of that event, that Alex Jones directly attacked.
This is the biggest difference - no one is claiming that all of the people who lost their loved ones in the 9/11 attacks were actually actors paid to pretend that they were grieving for their parents and children and friends. No one was encouraged to personally attack said victims and survivors to "expose their lies" because of 9/11 conspiracy theories.
Furthermore, defamation law works very differently for claims against public personalities ("Bush did 9/11!") compared to claims against private persons ("this random child shown crying in news reports after her classmates were supposedly killed is actually pretending!"). Also, vague accusations of orchestrating a criminal conspiracy / cover up are far harder to litigate than very clear claims of massive fraud. Finally, the Sandy Hook victims were generally able to show specific damages they suffered, attacks against them by people in their community, because of Jones' actions; Dick Cheney may have been more generally hated because of claims about 9/11 conspiracies, but was not directly harasses in the same way.
That’s sounds like a first amendment violation with more steps.
Suppose I decide to do some target shooting in my yard and set up a target. One of my shots misses and goes past the target and hits your house where it causes a surprising amount of damage and you sue me.
Would you say that if a court allows that and awards you damages it is a violation of my 2nd Amendment rights with more steps?
The first amendment has never been held to give immunity for libel or slander. So if you think it's a first amendment violation, you need to learn that the first amendment does not give blanket immunity for speech that harms others.
It isn't because there's no government prosecution.
That's not really the reason. Even in a civil case, the first amendment certainly would apply to whatever laws allow the civil case to happen.
However, the first amendment is not absolute. Defamation is still a thing in the US. The first amendment creates a higher bar than many other countries (especially for public figures, but the victims in this case aren't public figures), but it is still possible.
How is a ruling in a civil court not a form of government prosecution? It would be more correct to say that your first amendment rights stop at defaming others.
The government didn't bring this civil suit. Ruling on civil disputes is the government's role. That's not what prosecution means.
The word prosecution aside. Who rules on the outcome and enforces it? The state.
The state enforces property rights too. Let's say someone won't let me build a place of worship on their land. Is that a "first amendment violation but with more steps"?
You could make any instance of "government upholds the law" into "constitutional violation" that way.
A ruling in a civil court is very obviously not a prosecution. Because prosecutors can't, by definition, make rulings.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47876627 this argument is far more persuasive to me btw.
Laws that force the government to violate the constitution are unconstitutional. So yes, a violation but with more steps.
A ruling in a civil court that is enforced by a government is the same thing as the government ruling it, but through transitive properties. It can't be not enforced and enforced at the same time (the argument that civil is somehow not judicial).
In reality we are just griping that our government is too pussy to amend the constitution, and we've already written laws that subvert it, and those are being upheld by a corrupt/politicized supreme court and bullshit case law.
> our government is too pussy to amend the constitution
The federal government can't amend the constitution.
> we've already written laws that subvert it
If you want to see an actual violation of the First Amendment by the government here's one that Thomas Jefferson himself encouraged: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_v._Croswell
Not even all the Founding Fathers believed in complete freedom of speech.
This is an absurd line, and plainly wrong.
If I were to bring a civil suit against you because the comment above offended my sensibilities, it would be quickly thrown out of court because it is your first amendment right to say anything you like, with certain exceptions that the government recognizes as limitations of this right.
Even though this is a civil matter, it is still a judgement on government law. This is not some contract dispute where the parties are simply seeking arbitration, with no government involvement except as a "service provider" for this arbitration.
Alex Jones will not have a criminal record as a result of this. He has not been declared as committing a crime.
He did take actions that, by civil law, created civil liabilities. He was sued over those liabilities. He failed to participate in the civil litigation process and lost badly as a result.
Civil and criminal law are not the same thing and your insistence otherwise doesn't change the reality.
Civil and criminal law are separate things, absolutely. But the first ammendment applies to both civil and criminal law - it is a limitation on the government's ability to create laws, not just a limitation on the government's ability to pursue criminal penalties.
Alex Jones is only liable because there exists a law that the government created that says that defamation is illegal. Since this is a law, it could have been in conflict with the first ammendment - and, in fact, there have been legal challenges on this very line that reached the SC. But the Supreme Court has found that this is an acceptable limitation on the first amendment rights, with the specific limitations.
But, for example, if the US government wanted to adopt the English law on defamation, it would not be constitutional in the USA, it would run foul of the first ammendment.
> But the Supreme Court has found that this is an acceptable limitation on the first amendment rights, with the specific limitations.
Right, and I think this example is more about maintaining a civil society than it is strictly about freedom of speech. I think it's pretty clear to say that "freedom of speech" has limitations, making the word "freedom" contextually debatable.
What happens if you don't pay your civil liabilities? Civil vs criminal is a silly distinction when it comes to discussing right suppression. Jail time is not the only way to suppress a right.
You go to jail for failure to abide by a court order. Which is still distinct from going to jail for your speech.
Alex Jones can continue to say whatever he wants, from a criminal perspective. He may be somewhat more aware of the potential costs of being a professional liar now, which might cause him to make different decisions as he analyzes the cost/benefit ratio for something he wants to say.
The government won't stop him from saying whatever he chooses to say. The government might enforce costs, should he be sued for what he says and is found liable.
This is not how freedom of speech works. The civil or criminal nature of any law limiting speech is irrelevant. What is relevant is if a law limiting speech is narrow enough and if it serves a purpose that is aligned with the constitution. Anti-defamation laws clearly do serve such a prupsoe (they limit only specific types of speech that is not of public interest, and they exist to protect the victim's constitutional rights where they conflict with the a user's free speech right), so they are compatible with the first amendment, and would have still been if they added criminal penalties and not just civil effects.
The government/congress/states can't make a law or regulation that says "you have a right to never hear anyone signing in the rain". Even if such a law somehow passes, when you bring a civil suit against someone singing in the rain because you claim they violated your right (enshrined in this law) to not hear such singing, you will lose your case, as the law you based it on infringes on the first amendment rights of the singer.
Note that things would be very different if, instead of a law, you had a HOA which enacted a rule saying "singing in the rain is not allowed on the premises; violators will be fined 1000$". Assuming any signage about this is clear enough and so on, you could be forced in court to pay such a fine to the HOA, and may even end up doing jail time if you refuse even after losing a lawsuit with the HOA. The first amendment is a limitation of the state's ability to create laws, it doesn't limit private entities from limiting speech, nor the government's ability to enforce property rights behind such an ability.
> The government won't stop him from saying whatever he chooses to say. The government might enforce costs, should he be sued for what he says and is found liable.
This is just a shell game of limiting speech.
Enjoy your libertarian hellhole. I prefer to live in a society.
The ignorance on this website is both astonishing and incredibly obnoxious
IANAL but I think of a civil suit as a substitute for the injured party extracting justice by less civilized methods. If you wreck my fence, I can come wreck your fence in retaliation. Or I can sue you. The government is only providing the venue for resolving the dispute.
Now in reality there are political and other influences on court behavior. But the government is neither a plaintiff nor a defendant.
This is only part of civil law. Civil law also governs numerous government regulations as well. If you're fined for illegal parking, that happens in a civil court too - but it's still a suit between you and the state. Even in your example of a destroyed fence, the reason you can bring such a suit in court is that there are state or federal laws that I broke by destroying your fence. If such laws didn't exist, a judge would not help you.
What you're thinking more of is contract law - where two parties go before a judge simply to adjudicate a matter that is entirely of their own invention. If we had signed a contract that said I can touch your fence but in touching it I left a hand print on it, I might think the contract allowed me to do so, while you may think that the hand print constitutes wrecking your fence, and we can go before a judge to decide and enforce said decision. The judge then won't look at any state/federal laws, they will look only at the terms of our contract (assuming the contract itself doesn't violate any laws, of course).
> The government is only providing the venue for resolving the dispute.
The government provides the venue, the decider, the rules of engagement, and enforces the decision. The government stands on the side of the plaintiff, ready to turn the resolution (that the government decided) into the same result as if it were law.
The distinction is nonsense to me.
The judicial branch - which decides - is independent of the executive branch - which enforces.
> The government stands on the side of the plaintiff
The executive stands on the side of whoever the judiciary ruled in favor of. It's an important distinction.
> can someone explain the difference between what alex jones said about sandy hook and what other people say about 9/11 being an inside job, hologram planes, fake this fake that etc
Those "other people" were also Alex Jones.
if you're truly interested, please check out the podcast 'Knowledge Fight' which covers alex jones and infowars in stunningly minute detail, including the defamation cases in texas and connecticut. the main host was even called as an expert witness in one of the trials to give testimony about alex jones' involvement and denial in harassing and inciting his listeners to harass the parents and survivors of the shooting.
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Not the direct point of this thread, but this being a nytimes link... I still can't believe the way those reporters giggled their way through the Hasan Piker interview the other day. That is guy is poison, but since he align with their views, it's all just rosy and silly to promote killing people on the other side of the political spectrum.
Which Hasan Piker interview was this? The only one I saw was about shoplifting.
That one. They asked if the murder of the United CEO was justified because he committed "social murder".
Piker is the left equivalent of Charlie Kirk - saying outrageous things for attention, but he has constantly called for violence, while Kirk never did.
Do you think charlie kirk would be proud of you for lying about what he said?
you people really are sick, it's mainstream to defend murder on the left.
I'm sorry but which Hassan Piker views align with the NYTimes? Why are people so obsessed about this guy??
Yeah I don't get it.
No way, i can't believe it actually happened! I would have though alex would though alex and his goons would have managed to stop it
Not sure if it even matters since Alex Jones is just going to keep doing what he's doing.
Judgements demanding he pay billions keep coming out and he just says he's not paying, and nobody has forced him to either. Even if infowars' brand changes hands, that's the extent of it.
Organizations love to run controlled opposition. Just came out that the Southern poverty law center has been funding the KKK of all things.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdal/pr/federal-grand-jury-char...
Are you not aware that that the credibility of the US DOJ under the present administration has been completely destroyed and you should not trust anything they say simply because they said it in a press release (perhaps especially because they said it in a press release)? Federal judges have repeatedly declined to give the DOJ the benefit of the doubt (called "presumption of regularity") and all but called them liars. [1]
In this case, experts are unanimous that this is a hit job by Director Patel (see his poor record here [2]) who had a political vendetta against this civil rights organization. SPLC's actions were all related to investigations to EXPOSE the KKK using undercover informants. They were paying investigators, not the organization. They were absolutely in no way "funding the KKK."
“SPLC is a leading authority on organized hate groups and undertakes the complex and often dangerous work of investigating and exposing these networks. Its outstanding record of tracking and addressing hate belies the misguided premise of the indictment — that SPLC was somehow supporting the very hate groups it has long helped to discredit and dismantle.
“The DOJ’s actions are wrong and part of a broader effort to intimidate organizations working to advance civil rights, strengthen our democracy, and hold bad actors accountable.[3]
[1] https://www.justsecurity.org/120547/presumption-regularity-t...
[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/04/kash-patel-fbi-...
[3] https://www.lawyerscommittee.org/statement-from-the-lawyers-...
I'm definitely not aware that the credibility of the US DOJ has been destroyed.
And I question why a 501c3 charity would need "field informants" and to launder money through shell corporations. Especially to leaders of these organizations who were (1) coordinating some of these rallies and (2) due to the materially dishonest treatment of the "fine people hoax" for years.
Is the SPLC an intelligence organization? Am I missing something?
What fine people hoax? Trump has been and is right now openly racist.
Given some of the other claims that have come out of the "Justice" Department under this administration, I'd be curious whether there are any more reputable sources on the matter. They've already been making a habit of trying to target people Trump dislikes with flimsy prosecutions (e.g. Don Lemon for covering a protest at a church).
Even beyond that, there's pretty clear evidence of the level of professional conduct of the department being pretty low, like their lawyers literally informing a judge that they lied about the basis of their arguments[0], cases getting dismissed because they were filed by someone who wasn't even a valid US Attorney[1] but who continued to claim to be one for another couple of months until a court order threatening her with contempt charges (by a Trump-appointed judge, for what it's worth)[2], and in one instance a lawyer literally requesting that a judge hold them in contempt because their job "sucks"[3].
[0]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/immigration-court-arrests-ice-j... [1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/24/halligan-dismissed-... [2]: https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-orders-lindsey-halligan... [3]: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/attorney...
It has just been alleged.
There is very compelling evidence. Bank transfers.
Paying someone to report on what the kkk is doing is not, in fact, the same thing as funding the kkk.
What a weird lie to parrot.
source?
If that's your level of compelling evidence, Trump, his family and all of his entourage should be arrested right now.
A sucker is born every minute, and the Trump admin will make sure to con them all.
It's sort of tragic the onion takeover came on the heels of him being right about SPLC. There's something morally questionable about the largest civil fine in history being against a guy who accused a shooting of being a false flag and then apologized a few weeks later when better information came to light. I'm not saying he shouldn't have been sued, but rather it feels like the wrong amount for how apologetic he was even long before the lawsuit, especially given his show has a strong comedy aspect to it.
I don't see anywhere he was apologetic enough to fix any of the damages that he caused, and plenty of places where he was documented as doubling down on lies he knew were lies at the time.
The man was making money off of lying about dead children. Where's the comedy in that?
> against a guy who accused a shooting of being a false flag and then apologized a few weeks later when better information came
This is a blatant lie.
Alex Jones makes dozens of patently false claims per episode. Yet every once in a while, he will accidentally say something that can be associated with reality. People will latch onto those once-in-ten-thousand statements and say, "look! Alex Jones was actually right about x all along," while completely ignoring the veritable sea of misinformation he spouted along the way.