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"Bernard Pettingill told the court that records indicate Jones withdrew $62m for himself from his company in 2021 as his legal troubles grew." "The trial heard
by lmeyerov 4y ago
"Bernard Pettingill told the court that records indicate Jones withdrew $62m for himself from his company in 2021 as his legal troubles grew."
"The trial heard that Jones' business had earned about $800,000 in a single day selling diet supplements, gun paraphernalia and survivalist equipment."
The court records here are great. I've never seen a good analysis on the economics of misinformation, especially the private industry disconnected from state/political actors. Think everyone from big social media platforms to small troll farms down to individual influencers.
One powerful part of security defenses is making attacks economically infeasible, so understanding this is huge. Seeing the finances of an apex misinformation influencer like Alex Jones revealed is fascinating!
- russellbeattie 4y agoI've been sort of flabbergasted at the amount of money involved. Evil pays quite well, apparently.
- paulcole 4y ago> Evil pays quite well, apparently Yes this is surprising considering … gestures broadly at all of human history..
- lmeyerov 4y agoMaybe? A troll farm might employ 50 people... But at low wages. Trump & has social media director parceled out a lot of money to bot controllers, but it didn't seem like a lot to any individual. We know some boring influencers go big (ex: Kardashians) is a data point, but to see that Alex Jones is in this league is surprising. When I looked at some bigger anti-vaxxers, they seemed to be shilling courses that required a lot of work, so I wouldn't have guessed 8 figured in this world.