The auction included all of the InfoWars and several associated corporations' assets, including the studio and the supplements business. At one point the settlement administrator was trying to get Alex's Twitter handle.
I believe he's been doing some half-ass scheming to create essentially the same company but in his parents' name, and I doubt he has a problem getting listeners back.
| As for the vitamins and supplements, we are halting their sale immediately. Utilitarian logic dictates that if we can extend even one CEO’s life by 10 minutes, diluting these miracle elixirs for public consumption is an unethical waste. Instead, we plan to collect the entire stock of the InfoWars warehouses into a large vat and boil the contents down into a single candy bar–sized omnivitamin that one executive (I will not name names) may eat in order to increase his power and perhaps become immortal.
On the internet, telling people what they want to hear will always attract an audience. If the audience is larger than a thousand or so people, then you can make money by leveraging your audience's trust in you to sell them supplements, cash for gold schemes, boxed mattresses, meal delivery kits, or VPNs.
Some people wonder what the point is of flat-earthers arguing with everyone about their "alternative science". The answer is so they can identify the fools who they can scam with their various schemes...
Not dissimilar to Fox News or any other media company where the main purpose of the content is to get people to stay for the ads. Turns out rage-baiting works extremely well for driving engagement among certain groups.
The trick that Jones has perfected is the ad pivot. When you watch most media, the line between content and ad is generally pretty clear. With jones, it was often very blurry. Like, he does do regular ads, but he'll also be ranting about globalists for 10 minutes and then drop in something like "They want to destroy your mind which is why you need our deep earth iodine crystals and sea algae which is proven to stop globalist mind control."
He does it pretty much out of habit. He literally did an ad pivot while on the stand in his court cases.
Fox news is pushing an agenda first and foremost. The ad money was just a bonus. Rupert Murdoch didn't need the ad money. Just like with Sky News he was more interested in the "reasons of prestige and politics for keeping it" than the profits.
Oh man, you're in for a treat. Look up some videos on youtube, the classic being John Oliver's 2017 piece; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyGq6cjcc3Q . He's adjacent to the newly mainstream right, yes, but he's been around for a long time as a more radical+fringe actor, and has all the baggage that goes along with that. A good portion (most?) of his money was made from selling vaguely anti-GMO and pro-masculinity products sold with a heavy dose of "big pharma doesn't want you to know this one trick".
Most of these things are DTC operations and usually for supplements since they are relatively unregulated. Turning viewership into money is usually done through ads but these guys are fairly toxic to most advertisers.
Supplements are a good alternative for podcasters. They’re like merch is for musicians etc. but usually run as a recurring revenue stream.
Scratch the surface of any of these people and you’ll find they are like this: huberman, Bryan Johnson, they’ll all have a DTC business.
Of course, it's random nonsense peddling, how else would it fund itself other than via a obvious grift? If you're gullible enough to watch Alex Jones and believe him, you're gullible enough to buy snake oil to increase your penis.
Infowars was a supplements business. their business model was to brainwash people with conspiracy theories and sell supplements that solve the problems they made up
>... Infowars had a supplements business?
Yeah check out an advert for CAVEMAN. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-ZqD9-W1_8 . I used to like Infowars 10+ years ago (I'm from New Zealand) when the site was a news aggregate site so you could read the sources. Now that it is him just talking I don't visit the site that often. I remember walking around in a small township in Norway (just under 10,000 people) and seeing a Infowars sticker on a road light. So yeah he used to have massive reach, I don't know if he still does.
Perhaps The Onion should ask - who gets most promotion of this?
Well, we’re all talking about the onion. And I, personally, haven’t read onion content in a long, long while. So this kind of put them back on the radar for me.
But I could be one of only a few people who fell out of onion readership?
More likely is that they believe the next four years will provide them a lot of comedy fodder and they’re setting their pieces early. For them the election is likely to be pretty good for business.
>I, personally, haven’t read onion content in a long, long while
The onion was kind of dead for a while under various shitty owners, but was bought this year by Jeff Lawson of Twilio and is now being run by former NBC reporter Ben Collins. The new stuff since the acquisition has been a bit hit or miss, but at least they're trying again.
So far I've gotten two of those, and each time I've thought the lead headline on the front page was super clunky. It always tries to fit in a joke by being twice as long as it should be.
While their stuff is brilliant at times, I don't actively seek it out because it leaves me pretty depressed and anxious. The parodies are almost indistinguishable from real events these days.
I even felt that way reading The Onion's article about this and then listening to Alex Jones' rant on Xitter. They sounded like they came from the same writer.
I believe that the current state of play is that Jones has to pay $1.1bn damages even post bankruptcy so maybe any future successes will lead to money for the Sandyhook families. I certainly hope so.
Ironically he may live longer to earn more for them - he'll never be able to afford a cigar again.
That's what I guessed from the story - I suppose that there would be a lot of reticence about buying this site from a lot of corporate actors, but maybe there are a lot of crazy people who could have bought it if the price was right. So, this way it is for sure a "dead" property.
Hmm NBC seems to imply that they purchased "Free Speech Systems", which is the parent company for the entire operation. Of course, who knows what they'll actually get other than the domain and copyrights -- Jones will just move all the physical assets into a storage unit/another office and dare them to complain, Guliani-style. Also, who knows if any of these stands for long, anyway; the cases are in state court (Connecticut and Texas) but what's stopping the president from issuing an executive order clearing them? Laws?
Re: "who gets the most promotion", IDK I think it's definitely the new owner of the Onion. Personally speaking, I think we're past the "don't give them attention" stage of fascism, and "they were bought by a satire company" isn't exactly a better rallying cry than Jones has already been spouting during the entire litigation. Plus, I trust them;
The anti-violence organization Everytown for Gun Safety said it will be the exclusive advertiser in The Onion’s new venture as part of a multiyear agreement. John Feinblatt, the group’s president, said in a statement that he hopes to “reach new audiences ready to hold the gun industry accountable for contributing to our nation’s gun violence epidemic.”
They are almost certainly going to sue for illegal enrichment. I'm certain that Jones will try and move assets and I'm sure he'll get caught doing that.
It means Onion sues Jones will likely be in the headlines a fair bit.
> Alex Jones is such a big name and has other channels (x.com, Joe Rogan etc.) that he can easily build a similar site/business under a new domain name.
Maybe but the judgement was for 1B USD. So any profits would probably be garnished away.
Basically, lawfare was used to censor Alex Jones. I wonder if this is a case for the Supreme Court and First Amendment rights?
If someone said on the Internet said that rs999gti was a "tax-evading, pyramid-scheming, mullet-wearing, karaoke-ruining, ferret-hoarding, snake-oil-selling, cereal-with-water-eating, grammar-mangling, table-manner-less, engagement-ring-pawning, salad-dodging, traffic-cone-stealing, apology-dodger," and it wasn’t true, I think you’d probably like to sue them and take their money too.
Yes the court's judgment is so high, 1B USD, that he cannot make money without it being garnished. How does he get back to work? I personally do not think anyone should lose their livelihood over speech, NOTE: I did not say free speech. What he did is reprehensible but not enough that he is basically black balled from making a living. Penalties yes, loss of livelihood no.
Having your wages garnished doesn't mean you starve to death. He's perfectly capable of making a living, supporting himself and his dependents, if any, but his ability to build wealth will be restricted. I don't know the particulars of this case, but generally:
"The garnishment amount is limited to 25% of your disposable earnings for that week (what's left after mandatory deductions) or the amount by which your disposable earnings for that week exceed 30 times the federal minimum hourly wage, whichever is less."
> Yes the court's judgment is so high, 1B USD, that he cannot make money without it being garnished. How does he get back to work? I personally do not think anyone should lose their livelihood over speech
He was harassing parents of dead children in order to personally enrich himself. Why do you think he shouldn't have to forgo his ill begotten gains? It's only 1B USD, because he refused to stop doing it. And then he decided not to really show up for court and accept the summary judgement of 1B USD.
Most of his penalty has nothing to do with speech. He can keep on speaking all he wants. He might suffer consequences, but he is free to say whatever he wants to.
The judgment was not for an off-the-cuff remark or writing a few paragraphs online. He ran a smear campaign against people whose kids were shot, for almost a decade, even though he knew what he was saying was untrue. Jones's "speech" had severe real-world consequences for his targets, and there's no reason to assume he has repented. It would be no injustice if he was never allowed near a microphone again.
"Lawfare" is when people break the law and are actually prosecuted for it even though they are rich and right wing and think they laws don't apply to them.
Alex Jones wasn't even subtle about it. He was getting judgements telling him to stop spouting blatant lies about victims of a mass shooting and he just doubled down on the lies. Repeatedly. The courts kept giving him more rope and he kept tying more nooses.
Was it? The constitution lays out slander and libel as types of speech that can be censored. The trashy Jones then knowingly and maliciously lied about people for profit - aka libel and slander. Seems reasonable to take the money he made as well as punitive damages.
How does he make future money, you know for living?
The judgement basically means the courts get to garnish his wages until the judgement is paid.
Jones is a goof to me and I like seeing him rant and rave and wear foil hats. But I don't think anyone should have their livelihood taken from them by censorship of the courts. EDIT: remember all judgments and penalties cut both ways. Today Jones tomorrow someone you follow in the media.
Lower the judgement to 1M USD (EDIT: or something reasonable) and let's move on.
Not sure how it works in the US, but e.g. in germany only a certain portion of your wages go towards debts, they let you have a certain portion for yourself since you need it to live.
His livelihood wasn't taken. His assets were taken because he did damages and has to pay for those damages.
He can go get all sorts of jobs. Yeah his wages will be garnished, but that doesn't mean his whole paycheck - just the lesser of 25% of the paycheck or 30x minimum wage. He can make money and a living with that just fine. Same as I'd expect for anyone intentionally lying and hurting people for money - whether I "follow" them or not.
Perhaps you should find some reputable sources for information, instead of relying on the proven liar to tell the truth about his situation?
You dont like cancel culture, but support Jones - a person who is literally being discussed for encouraging his followers to shut down the people saying their kids were killed.
I mean the statements about crisis actors and whatnot were maliciously false, and pure slander. But to those who beleived them, Jones was advocating for them to be cancelled - that is they should be stopped from spreading lies and that they should be locked up and sent away.
Alex Jones is such a big name and has other channels (x.com, Joe Rogan etc.) that he can easily build a similar site/business under a new domain name.
Perhaps The Onion should ask - who gets most promotion of this?