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Judge says he must still approve sale of Infowars to The Onion https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/judge-review-alex-jones-attempt-block-infowars-

Judge says he must still approve sale of Infowars to The Onion https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/judge-review-alex-jones-attempt-block-infowars-sale-onion-rcna181377 so... what is or is not actually happening with this??

anon373839 2y ago
The judge will either approve or reject the bankruptcy trustee's decision, and it will inevitably go up on appeal either way. The real question for me is: why does Elon Musk want to (further) sully his reputation by swooping in to save the guy who defamed a bunch of dead kids? I just don't see the upside for him, swimming in this particular sewer.
- bargainbot3k 2y ago
  I for one would like to see Alex Jones on the DOGE committee because of all the things he was up to in the decades past. Not a popular opinion I know, but there it is.
  - Zardoz89 2y ago
    Selling supplements to insecure men and dragging dead children through the mud?
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    It would atleast fit the meme theme. Don't you think there is someone that is anti-surveillance and anti-authoritarian (dunno if Jones is still?) that is more stable that would fit better?
    - devops99 2y ago
      Alex maintains 35 to 40 employees at any given time and has like a 99.99% uptime of running a 3-hour show plus at least two other shows (2-hour and 1-hour) every single day. He shouts a lot (tough shit I guess), and some people don't like that. Irrespective of opinions about his viewpoints no one can argue that he works like an Ox. I'm an SRE that other SREs consider reliable (lmao) and I don't have half that discipline.
  - Wytwwww 2y ago
    > DOGE committee They are planning to replace the US dollar with DOGE coin? Seems about on par...
- devops99 2y ago
  Alex Jones is, for better or worse, extremely popular. As in, he has more active daily listeners than Fox and CNN combined. Yeah, I know. Elon Musk is boosting his reputation by assisting Alex Jones, or at least that's what Elon Musk believes.
  - anon373839 2y ago
    Wow. I had absolutely no idea. I thought he was considered a radioactive fringe figure.
    - devops99 2y ago
      Yeah, there's that section of the population that is all "oh no, you can't tacitly approve of listening to [thing] or [some opinion] because that's a bad think". And then there's the rest of the population that just doesn't give a shit and won't hesitate to say "yeah, the government is not your fucking dad, maybe it's time to grow up".
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - anon373839 2y ago
      Replying to myself to correct the record: I fell for some low-effort propaganda here. A bit embarrassing. Anyway, no, there is no evidence to support this claim. Based just on internet traffic, CNN alone commands 1-2 orders of magnitude larger audience. Duh.
      - devops99 2y ago
        Where is that traffic sourced from? I am neutrally curious about it myself.
  - spacechild1 2y ago
    > As in, he has more active daily listeners than Fox and CNN combined. Yeah, I know. Wow, this is genuinely frightening.
- stuaxo 2y ago
  He seems stuck in the mind ofa 13 year old edgelord. If anything the weird upbringing he had has stunted his development.
Crosseye_Jack 2y ago
I'll address the twitter thing first, cause thats what the link is about, I'll get on to your question, but thats gonna be a WALL OF TEXT, and I can answer the twitter thing pretty quickly. Initially the trustee wanted to sell off the Twitter Handles associated with Alex Jones and Infowars. Judge ruled that Alex's own personal account handle was his name, and the court couldn't force him to sell off his own name (or something like that, trying to be brief) but the Inforwars handle was fair game. Twitter claim that handles on the platform are not actually the "property" of the account holder, and because of which they are not AJ's/Infowars's to sell, so should not be included in the sale. Judge is gonna take at up at a later time iirc. They don't really have any arguement against the onion buying inforwars, just the twitter handles. But Twitter point does make some sense, for an example, if account handles were to be considered property with value, it could make it a PITA to ever ban someone from the platform as the platform would be interfering in the value of that property by taking moderation actions on the account. - Would also make it a PITA if the platform wanted to repurpose an existing handle for something else. ----- Ok onto the wall of text that is answering your question. the TL;DR version of it is: We don't know yet! There seems to be the appearance of fuckery (thats what AJ/FSS/FUAC are claiming) and until the judge can be sure that no fuckery took place things are on hold. ----- Now for the WOT!!! During a bankruptcy, a bankruptcy court main role is to make sure that the maximum is extracted from the assets in a public manner. This is good for the public at large and the creditors of what ever entity is going though the bankruptcy. It wouldn't be very beneficial to those evolved if a $1 million property was sold for $1 in a closed and opaque way (Well apart from the buyer, who just got a steal). The judge in this case decided that a number of assets would be sold off in an auction, initially the terms of that auction would be what a avg person would think what an auction is. Parties would get to place bids, and other parties would be able to put in counter bids, rinse and repeat until the price stops going up. This is seen as a fair way to extract the maximum value out of the sale, if someone thinks the current bid is undervalued they are free to place a higher bid. Now with this sale, there were some caveats, for example having to place deposits down on their bids, allowing the trustee of the bankruptcy to "have a peek at a buyers funds" to make sure they are available and the bidding party isn't just fucking around - nothing wrong there, all this was laid out in the terms of the auction, terms approved by the judge overseeing the case. The problem is that those terms were changed at the last minute without the judges approval to change the auction style to a closed bid system. Parties would submit their best and final offer for the assets they wanted and the trustee would decide which of those bids were the best bid. (problem is, that some parties only wanted some of the assets if others were included, so if asset A wasn't included in a lot (because party b out bid them on that asset) party A no long wanted the rest of the lot, or valued the lot at a much lower price. aka its fucking complicated. this is the "defence" the trustee gave too the judge as to why they thought that doing closed bids was the best way forward, however they never got that pre-approved by the judge (This didn't make the judge happy). FUAC lawyers argued that because they were not aware of value of The onions bid, they were not able to offer a counter bid. The Onion were declared the winner (in a news report before the fillings were made) but the "issue" with the onion's bid is that there is a LOT of credit being used in the bid. After the bids became public, it turned out that FUAC's bid was for $3.5million. The Onion's bid was for $1.75million, however some of the creditors for the assets said they would forgo any of their claim on the auction proceeds due to them to give other creditors a total of $100,000 more than they would receive under other bids (and with the pending judgement they have, which is going to be very hard to collect on fully anyway because its so large - this could be used to "inflate" the sale price, but still only leave $1.75million in cash for the other creditors - it should also be noted that that judgement being used to back this offer is still under appeal and not yet final). The problem is the judge also didn't approve of this style of credit before hand either. Now, the judge does have the final say in who won any auction, but normally there isn't any issues with the process, so its just a matter of "rubber stamping" the order after the sale. With this believe in mind The Onion, now declared winners of the assets started taking control of the assets before the order had been signed by off by the Judge, The Onion claim this was done to prevent any value loss/damage to be done, which you know isn't the worse idea in the world, esp if the party currently "owning" the assets is pretty hostile to the sale, but a protective order could have been filed with the court before the close of the auction requiring this, IIRC this wasn't done. Instead they went in and just started shutting everything down. The judge was not happy about any of this. The judge ended the hearing saying no body should be happy with the result of this and demanded a halt (well more a pause) to the sale and to have a hearing into what actually went down. After which the judge has the option to say "Do the auction again, and here are the hard line rules of said auction", disqualify The Onions bid and allow it to go to the 2nd best bid by FUAC, or allow the sale to the Onion to proceed. But until then the Onion can't just close everything down and Infowars regained control of the assets until the Judge can have a closer look at what really went down. The problem is, it feels like its a case of "Bad facts trying to make bad law". Sure I found it very funny to hear that the Onion were buy Infowars, I mean its a pretty expensive joke imo because the value of Infowars in Jones he is the sales man that makes the company money, without him the value of the company quickly goes to zero after the notivey wears off, but turning a blind eye "allegedly fucking around with the process" to fuck over AJ because he is a bad man doesn't sit right with me.

anon373839 2y ago

The judge will either approve or reject the bankruptcy trustee's decision, and it will inevitably go up on appeal either way. The real question for me is: why does Elon Musk want to (further) sully his reputation by swooping in to save the guy who defamed a bunch of dead kids? I just don't see the upside for him, swimming in this particular sewer.

bargainbot3k 2y ago
I for one would like to see Alex Jones on the DOGE committee because of all the things he was up to in the decades past. Not a popular opinion I know, but there it is.
- Zardoz89 2y ago
  Selling supplements to insecure men and dragging dead children through the mud?
- rightbyte 2y ago
  It would atleast fit the meme theme. Don't you think there is someone that is anti-surveillance and anti-authoritarian (dunno if Jones is still?) that is more stable that would fit better?
  - devops99 2y ago
    Alex maintains 35 to 40 employees at any given time and has like a 99.99% uptime of running a 3-hour show plus at least two other shows (2-hour and 1-hour) every single day. He shouts a lot (tough shit I guess), and some people don't like that. Irrespective of opinions about his viewpoints no one can argue that he works like an Ox. I'm an SRE that other SREs consider reliable (lmao) and I don't have half that discipline.
- Wytwwww 2y ago
  > DOGE committee They are planning to replace the US dollar with DOGE coin? Seems about on par...
devops99 2y ago
Alex Jones is, for better or worse, extremely popular. As in, he has more active daily listeners than Fox and CNN combined. Yeah, I know. Elon Musk is boosting his reputation by assisting Alex Jones, or at least that's what Elon Musk believes.
- anon373839 2y ago
  Wow. I had absolutely no idea. I thought he was considered a radioactive fringe figure.
  - devops99 2y ago
    Yeah, there's that section of the population that is all "oh no, you can't tacitly approve of listening to [thing] or [some opinion] because that's a bad think". And then there's the rest of the population that just doesn't give a shit and won't hesitate to say "yeah, the government is not your fucking dad, maybe it's time to grow up".
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - anon373839 2y ago
    Replying to myself to correct the record: I fell for some low-effort propaganda here. A bit embarrassing. Anyway, no, there is no evidence to support this claim. Based just on internet traffic, CNN alone commands 1-2 orders of magnitude larger audience. Duh.
    - devops99 2y ago
      Where is that traffic sourced from? I am neutrally curious about it myself.
- spacechild1 2y ago
  > As in, he has more active daily listeners than Fox and CNN combined. Yeah, I know. Wow, this is genuinely frightening.
stuaxo 2y ago
He seems stuck in the mind ofa 13 year old edgelord. If anything the weird upbringing he had has stunted his development.

Crosseye_Jack 2y ago

I'll address the twitter thing first, cause thats what the link is about, I'll get on to your question, but thats gonna be a WALL OF TEXT, and I can answer the twitter thing pretty quickly. Initially the trustee wanted to sell off the Twitter Handles associated with Alex Jones and Infowars. Judge ruled that Alex's own personal account handle was his name, and the court couldn't force him to sell off his own name (or something like that, trying to be brief) but the Inforwars handle was fair game. Twitter claim that handles on the platform are not actually the "property" of the account holder, and because of which they are not AJ's/Infowars's to sell, so should not be included in the sale. Judge is gonna take at up at a later time iirc. They don't really have any arguement against the onion buying inforwars, just the twitter handles. But Twitter point does make some sense, for an example, if account handles were to be considered property with value, it could make it a PITA to ever ban someone from the platform as the platform would be interfering in the value of that property by taking moderation actions on the account. - Would also make it a PITA if the platform wanted to repurpose an existing handle for something else. ----- Ok onto the wall of text that is answering your question. the TL;DR version of it is: We don't know yet! There seems to be the appearance of fuckery (thats what AJ/FSS/FUAC are claiming) and until the judge can be sure that no fuckery took place things are on hold. ----- Now for the WOT!!! During a bankruptcy, a bankruptcy court main role is to make sure that the maximum is extracted from the assets in a public manner. This is good for the public at large and the creditors of what ever entity is going though the bankruptcy. It wouldn't be very beneficial to those evolved if a $1 million property was sold for $1 in a closed and opaque way (Well apart from the buyer, who just got a steal). The judge in this case decided that a number of assets would be sold off in an auction, initially the terms of that auction would be what a avg person would think what an auction is. Parties would get to place bids, and other parties would be able to put in counter bids, rinse and repeat until the price stops going up. This is seen as a fair way to extract the maximum value out of the sale, if someone thinks the current bid is undervalued they are free to place a higher bid. Now with this sale, there were some caveats, for example having to place deposits down on their bids, allowing the trustee of the bankruptcy to "have a peek at a buyers funds" to make sure they are available and the bidding party isn't just fucking around - nothing wrong there, all this was laid out in the terms of the auction, terms approved by the judge overseeing the case. The problem is that those terms were changed at the last minute without the judges approval to change the auction style to a closed bid system. Parties would submit their best and final offer for the assets they wanted and the trustee would decide which of those bids were the best bid. (problem is, that some parties only wanted some of the assets if others were included, so if asset A wasn't included in a lot (because party b out bid them on that asset) party A no long wanted the rest of the lot, or valued the lot at a much lower price. aka its fucking complicated. this is the "defence" the trustee gave too the judge as to why they thought that doing closed bids was the best way forward, however they never got that pre-approved by the judge (This didn't make the judge happy). FUAC lawyers argued that because they were not aware of value of The onions bid, they were not able to offer a counter bid. The Onion were declared the winner (in a news report before the fillings were made) but the "issue" with the onion's bid is that there is a LOT of credit being used in the bid. After the bids became public, it turned out that FUAC's bid was for $3.5million. The Onion's bid was for $1.75million, however some of the creditors for the assets said they would forgo any of their claim on the auction proceeds due to them to give other creditors a total of $100,000 more than they would receive under other bids (and with the pending judgement they have, which is going to be very hard to collect on fully anyway because its so large - this could be used to "inflate" the sale price, but still only leave $1.75million in cash for the other creditors - it should also be noted that that judgement being used to back this offer is still under appeal and not yet final). The problem is the judge also didn't approve of this style of credit before hand either. Now, the judge does have the final say in who won any auction, but normally there isn't any issues with the process, so its just a matter of "rubber stamping" the order after the sale. With this believe in mind The Onion, now declared winners of the assets started taking control of the assets before the order had been signed by off by the Judge, The Onion claim this was done to prevent any value loss/damage to be done, which you know isn't the worse idea in the world, esp if the party currently "owning" the assets is pretty hostile to the sale, but a protective order could have been filed with the court before the close of the auction requiring this, IIRC this wasn't done. Instead they went in and just started shutting everything down. The judge was not happy about any of this. The judge ended the hearing saying no body should be happy with the result of this and demanded a halt (well more a pause) to the sale and to have a hearing into what actually went down. After which the judge has the option to say "Do the auction again, and here are the hard line rules of said auction", disqualify The Onions bid and allow it to go to the 2nd best bid by FUAC, or allow the sale to the Onion to proceed. But until then the Onion can't just close everything down and Infowars regained control of the assets until the Judge can have a closer look at what really went down. The problem is, it feels like its a case of "Bad facts trying to make bad law". Sure I found it very funny to hear that the Onion were buy Infowars, I mean its a pretty expensive joke imo because the value of Infowars in Jones he is the sales man that makes the company money, without him the value of the company quickly goes to zero after the notivey wears off, but turning a blind eye "allegedly fucking around with the process" to fuck over AJ because he is a bad man doesn't sit right with me.