The satirical news publication The Onion has bought Alex Jones’ Infowars at a bankruptcy auction with the backing of families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
I actually read that line as being in the spirit of an Onion article itself. Something like "Executives at The Onion admit entire contents of site to be patently absurd nonsense, according to exclusive investigative report by The Onion."
The Connecticut families of victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting that had sued Jones and Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems LLC, backed the bid by The Onion to purchase Infowars’ intellectual property, including its website, customer lists and inventory, certain social media accounts and the production equipment used to put Jones on the air. The Connecticut families agreed to forgo a portion of their recovery to increase the overall value of The Onion’s bid, “enabling its success,” according to lawyers for the families.
So like also some cameras, contact lists, trademarks etc.
The real thing they bought was assurance nobody else could buy it. Especially those customer lists. Lists like that built the modern Right.
they bought all the IP, immedatly after the sale he pireted all of the videos over to his new website and also called his show the same thing as the show name the Onion bought, so there is a decent chance a lawsuit will go up to stop that
Here is a press statement from The Onion. It says that the Onion plans to completely transition InfoWars into a new website by January 2025. I think this is a screenshot of an email maybe. Maxwell Tani is a journalist from semafor.com, so it's definitely a legit screenshot.
As a long time conspiracy theory "fan", following the absolute lowliest, worst of the worst pieces of shit on the planet, this feels a bit like a moment of respite. A relief to watch live as one of the largest peddlers of filth is shut down.
Debt and legal provisions, basically. Jones isn't a financially independent person anymore. He kept losing court cases to the Sandy Hook survivors to the point they decided to liquidate his company. He owes them an astounding amount of money for libel and damages, like in the billions.
Jones had said on his show that “good guys” had been trying to bid on Infowars to keep him in place, but that even if they fail, he’ll keep broadcasting on new platforms and new social media accounts.
I didn't know anything about the sale. A few minutes ago on Bluesky I saw hard to understand post with a screengrab of Jones doing his yelling shtick on Infowars and the text said "his Onion sale". It's weird when seemingly impossible rare events have a 50/50 chance of being true. But now in this Trump 2.0 era - such events might happen a few times a month. Yesterday it was Gaetz as Trump's AG pick. Today it's The Onion owning Infowars. Will tomorrow have crazy news too? Or will we have to wait a week or two?