[HN Gopher] Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion
___________________________________________________________________
Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion
Author : jbegley
Score : 490 points
Date : 2024-12-11 04:53 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| loeg wrote:
| https://archive.is/hPq1e
| orionblastar wrote:
| It only archived part of the article. They want a logged-in
| user to avoid the paywall.
| consumer451 wrote:
| From Bluesky's Gift Link feed: [0]
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/10/business/media/the-
| onion-...
|
| [0] https://bsky.app/profile/davidsacerdote.bsky.social/feed/
| aaa...
| notpushkin wrote:
| And just in case: apparently you can gift the articles even
| if you only have a free 48/72h subscription from a library,
| e.g. here: https://www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org/explore/el
| ibrary/new-y...
| alwa wrote:
| In case that one still cuts off halfway through, another
| snapshot is at https://archive.is/8q8m8
| seltzered_ wrote:
| Statement from The Onion (via CEO Ben Collins):
| https://bsky.app/profile/bencollins.bsky.social/post/3lcyypa...
| bsimpson wrote:
| I appreciate that the tweet actually had context about what
| happens next:
|
| "...continue to seek a path towards purchasing..."
|
| "...back to the drawing board..."
|
| The article could have used those details.
|
| -----
|
| [edit] They've updated the article.
| refulgentis wrote:
| It said that exact thing, but didn't need a number of tweets
| to say it. Advantage: article.
| weberer wrote:
| And here's the statement from Jones:
| https://x.com/realalexjones/status/1866752494317003142
| andruby wrote:
| To save you a click. Ben Collins (CEO The Onion):
|
| We are deeply disappointed in today's decision, but The Onion
| will continue to seek a resolution that helps the Sandy Hook
| families receive a positive outcome for the horror they
| endured.
|
| We will also continue to seek a path towards purchasing
| InfoWars in the coming weeks. It is part of our larger mission
| to make a better, funnier internet, regardless of the outcome
| of this case.
|
| We appreciate that the court repeatedly recognized The Onion
| acted in good faith, but are disappointed that everyone was
| sent back to the drawing board with no winner, and no clear
| path forward for any bidder.
|
| And for all of those as upset about this as we are, please know
| we will continue to seek moments of hope. We are undeterred in
| our mission to make a funnier world.
| polygot wrote:
| https://archive.is/8q8m8
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| This is probably the correct decision. Alex Jones's vitamin
| company offered 2x more cash, and in the case of a bankruptcy,
| cash completely trumps any notion of "giving up debt." Especially
| when the debt being settled is astronomically large and you are
| giving up a very small portion of it ($7 million out of $1.5
| billion). The other creditors are far better off getting more
| cash, and those $7 million of claims are worth way less than one
| cent per dollar.
|
| Additionally, the auction here was run farcically, and basically
| seemed designed to create an outcome where the onion gets to buy
| this website for no money.
| alwa wrote:
| Isn't it a little strange, though, that the system notionally
| decided that the families are owed an enormous amount of
| economic power as compensation for the nasty behavior of Alex
| Jones' media company, but at the same time it's obliging them
| not to use that economic power to prevent the sale of the media
| company to a "new owner" still affiliated with an unrepentant
| Alex Jones, who will undoubtedly continue the nasty behavior?
| Just in order to get cash to compensate them at pennies on the
| dollar for his previous round of nasty behavior?
|
| I have to say, just as a matter of gut instinct, it sure feels
| like when the court finds that Alex Jones damaged people--at a
| value orders of magnitude beyond that of his company--those
| people should be allowed to decide that, to them, there's value
| in snuffing out his ill-behaving company altogether.
|
| Is the issue that there are other creditors who are unhappy
| with this, who would get paid before the aggrieved families'
| damages would? The lawyers seem to be fine with it, as they're
| the ones advocating for this plan...
| acomjean wrote:
| Selling to a business involved with the individual that lost
| in court.. It seems like a Fraudulent Conveyance to my non
| lawyer self (but I could be wrong)
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraudulent_conveyance
| rfw300 wrote:
| It's not a good outcome, but it's also not fraudulent
| conveyance. Principally because the proceeds of the sale go
| to the victims.
| ipaddr wrote:
| They go to the creditors including his primary sponsor.
| This is not a bad outcome it's the only correct legal
| outcome.
|
| What you are saying is we should allow a creditor (of
| many) to sell an asset to whoever they choose at a lower
| market rate because it's the right political move in this
| one case. Why wouldn't those rules be applied in other
| cases.. you can sell any asset for a dollar to yourself
| and the bankrupt person will still be on the hook for the
| total debt minus a dollar. Letting a single creditor
| value assets below marketrate and direct a sale to
| someone they wanted would be a completely unfair process.
| redeux wrote:
| This isn't about politics, it's about justice. The only
| reason politics is even in the equation is because Jones
| has made his living as a political blatherskite.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Law is almost inherently poliical. Politics was in the
| equation the moment Jones decided to pretend a tragic
| school shooting was fake news.
| redeux wrote:
| So where is justice in this equation then?
| pyrale wrote:
| That is not what happened, though.
|
| One group of creditors said they were willing to abandon
| some of their claims, which means other creditors would
| have gotten a larger share of the smaller bid,
| effectively making these other creditors better off.
| avs733 wrote:
| >A transfer will be fraudulent if made with actual intent
| to hinder, delay, or defraud any creditor.
|
| If they get it less, later, or more chaotically, _or if
| that was the intent_ it is.
| munk-a wrote:
| The proceeds of the sale will not come close to the value
| of the judgement - and Jones has acted extremely
| dishonestly through the process and repeatedly tried to
| move value from his company to his parents and other
| affiliate companies. I don't believe it's a fraudulent
| conveyance but there's a lot of awful happening here.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The fraudulent conveyance may have been the move of the
| vitamin company itself, but the purchase in bankruptcy
| wouldn't be a fraudulent transation.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Letting Jones buy back his 'bankrupt' assets using money
| he fraudulently hid goes against the spirit of the law,
| even in the purchasing phase.
|
| This guy should be living in his parents basement and
| barred from publishing on any significant media
| platforms. He's proven willing to exploit victims for
| personal gain to the tune of the millions of dollars.
| ipaddr wrote:
| They have a debt judgement not economic power. They can sell
| that debit judgement to a company who collects. They can take
| the money from the result of the court process and try to buy
| infowars after this is all over.
|
| They don't have a judgement of ownership in infowars they
| have a debt and the court is forcing Alex to sell all assets
| to cover the debt. Then the rest is written off and he gets a
| black mark on his credit report.
|
| There are rules around this process for a reason. If you
| allowed someone who has a debt judgement to just take over a
| company what is it's true value. Alex could try to value
| infowars at a trillion. So they put it up for an auction to
| get the real value. That's the fairest way for all cases.
|
| Besides others are in line as well.
|
| And killing the infowars brand means little in the short/long
| run. The real brand is Alex's name. It's not like his
| audience will suddenly not follow him to a new show with a
| new name.
| Retric wrote:
| > So they put it up for an auction to get the real value.
|
| Except Onion's bid minimized Alex Jones debt and was the
| preferred outcome by his creditors. Offering more cash
| isn't the same as making a larger bid here.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| It was the preferred outcome by the _majority_ of his
| creditors, not by all his creditors (note that preferred
| != economically best). If the creditors were unanimous in
| their preferences, there would be no issue before the
| court.
| coding123 wrote:
| > And killing the infowars brand means little in the
| short/long run. The real brand is Alex's name. It's not
| like his audience will suddenly not follow him to a new
| show with a new name.
|
| This is absolutely true. Other media people that lost their
| job or channel, handle on various platforms, typically
| refresh to the same number of followers within a year or
| two.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > The real brand is Alex's name. It's not like his
| audience will suddenly not follow him to a new show with
| a new name.
|
| They get to garnish those profits, too.
| ipaddr wrote:
| No bankruptcy resolves the debt. Otherwise there would be
| no point in a bankruptcy process.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| No, not necessarily, and not in this case.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/legal/alex-jones-cant-avoid-
| sandy-ho...
|
| > Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones cannot use his personal
| bankruptcy to escape paying at least $1.1 billion in
| defamation damages stemming from his repeated lies about
| the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre, a U.S.
| bankruptcy judge ruled Thursday.
|
| > Bankruptcy can be used to wipe out debts and legal
| judgments, but not if they result from "willful or
| malicious injury" caused by the debtor, according to a
| decision by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez in
| Houston, Texas.
|
| Bankruptcies have all sorts of exceptions like this for
| fraud, student loans, child support, unpaid taxes, etc.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| The intent of bankruptcy law is to benefit the economy by
| allowing people and corporations to take risks and start
| over.
|
| It's not to let them get away with defamation.
|
| So there's a line between healthy economic risk-taking
| (bankruptcy discharges) and bad behavior (bankruptcy
| doesn't affect that).
| dumah wrote:
| FTX creditors would like to have a word with you.
| alwa wrote:
| It does seem likely to be true, although apparently,
| based on its bid, his affiliated company sees $3.5
| million worth of extra value in keeping the Infowars
| brand and structure as opposed to going that route.
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| > They don't have a judgement of ownership in infowars they
| have a debt and the court is forcing Alex to sell all
| assets to cover the debt.
|
| It's a chapter 7 bankruptcy, the bankruptcy estate already
| owns the infowars assets.
|
| > There are rules around this process for a reason. If you
| allowed someone who has a debt judgement to just take over
| a company what is it's true value. Alex could try to value
| infowars at a trillion. So they put it up for an auction to
| get the real value. That's the fairest way for all cases.
|
| Specifically, the reason is protecting minority and junior
| creditors (including the debtor when assets are in excess
| of debts). If nobody offered up enough cash to pay off the
| debts in full and there is only one creditor who would
| rather have the business than the best cash offer, I don't
| think there'd be any reason for the courts to object. The
| big issue is, again, minority creditors getting less than
| their "fair share" of the assets, along with over-
| compensating senior claims with junior ones outstanding.
|
| Neither are at issue here - The Onion's offer paid more
| cash to the minority creditors, the majority creditor opted
| into the deal, and the assets are _clearly_ worth less than
| the debts.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| "Cash to minority creditors" doesn't matter. "Cash to the
| estate" is all that matters. The Onion's offer carried
| $1.75 million in cash to the creditors. Alex Jones's
| vitamin company offered $3.5 million in cash.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >It's not like his audience will suddenly not follow him to
| a new show with a new name.
|
| you'd be surprised how many fall off from a migration. It's
| no different network effect from anything else. The
| hardcore will follow, the passive will fall off. Even a
| cult following like this isn't immune to this (simply more
| resilient).
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| There was no public auction of InfoWars. That alone is a
| stain on the whole process. The objective of a bankruptcy
| court is not to institute some arbitrary meta-ethical
| standard. It is to deliver maximum cash to the creditors in a
| fair manner.
|
| >Is the issue that there are other creditors who are unhappy
| with this, who would get paid before the aggrieved families'
| damages would? The lawyers seem to be fine with it, as
| they're the ones advocating for this plan...
|
| Based on discussions I've heard on this subject, a subset of
| the families was pledging money they didn't have in the non-
| competitive bidding. This is highly questionable. They may
| never receive the money they claim for the purchase. So by
| buying a real asset on the promise of money they aren't going
| to get, it is taking money away from other people who are
| rightfully owed money. If they wanted to do it the right way
| they could try to borrow the money from someone, but nobody
| in their right mind thinks Alex Jones has this money or ever
| did. The size of the judgement was calculated to lead to
| exactly this conclusion. As you said, the judgement was
| orders of magnitude more than the value of his company. So
| you should be satisfied with that. It is not necessary for
| the funniest possible outcome to manifest in order for
| justice to be served. Alex Jones will not go away because he
| has rights just like anyone else, and the legal process must
| conclude eventually.
| avs733 wrote:
| > There was no public auction of InfoWars. That alone is a
| stain on the whole process. The objective of a bankruptcy
| court is not to institute some arbitrary meta-ethical
| standard. It is to deliver maximum cash to the creditors in
| a fair manner.
|
| Again, maximimum value not cash.
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| I say cash loosely speaking. You at least cannot pledge
| income from debt that is presently being negotiated down
| or cancelled. That kind of thing isn't "value" because
| it's imaginary.
| avs733 wrote:
| but you can pledge the debt itself.
| freejazz wrote:
| > I say cash loosely speaking
|
| Is this a legal term or something? Not to be rude, but
| who cares what you mean by it? It's totally besides the
| point
| shkkmo wrote:
| This is completely false.
|
| Debt can absolutely be sold for whatever it is worth. In
| this case, the Jones' debt owned by the Sandy Hook
| families is fairly valuable to Jones' other debtors
| because it means they get a bigger slice of the
| bankruptcy estate. Thus the Sandy Hook families can offer
| enough of their Jones' debt in the sale to make it more
| valuable. (Edit: more complicated than how I explained it
| because both sets of debtors include Sandy Hook families)
|
| This isn't any more "imaginary" than money itself.
| cthalupa wrote:
| > There was no public auction of InfoWars. That alone is a
| stain on the whole process.
|
| Sealed bid auctions are not some absurd rarity in this sort
| of situation and I have no idea why you believe they are.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > There was no public auction of InfoWars
|
| The auction was indeed very public. The bids were not.
|
| The only requirement to participate was you had to show the
| Trustee that you were serious and had the means to
| participate. Only 2 parties did that.
|
| The auction dates were published in newspapers and various
| news outlets announced that it was going to happen.
| avianlyric wrote:
| > Is the issue that there are other creditors who are unhappy
| with this, who would get paid before the aggrieved families'
| damages would? The lawyers seem to be fine with it, as
| they're the ones advocating for this plan...
|
| Nope. Under the rejected deal, other creditors would have
| seen a _larger_ payout, because aggrieved families are actual
| two separate groups. One with a claim near a billion dollars,
| and other with a claim of only a few million (I think, it may
| be less).
|
| As a result the aggrieved families with the larger claim were
| set to basically hoover up all the cash from the bankruptcy,
| and the deal with the Onion was to create a _better_ deal for
| the other families by having the larger claim reduced to
| allow a fair split of the total cash raised.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Also of note, the other creditors agreed to this bid.
| fennecfoxy wrote:
| Nah it's just typical rich people getting away with
| everything stuff & we'll continue to let it happen because we
| are hapless.
| StefanBatory wrote:
| It does really appear that America's getting her own,
| homegrown oligarchs.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| We've had them for a long time; basically the only time
| we've tried to reduce their power was the Great
| Depression and post-WWII era, but since the 70s we've
| been letting them off the leash.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Correct. 10/10 summary
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller... we've had them.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| They've mostly kept a low profile since the Great
| Depression though. And plenty would be oligarchs were
| taxed out of the upper class by the WW2 tax brackets.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > I have to say, just as a matter of gut instinct, it sure
| feels like when the court finds that Alex Jones damaged
| people--at a value orders of magnitude beyond that of his
| company--those people should be allowed to decide that, to
| them, there's value in snuffing out his ill-behaving company
| altogether.
|
| It seems like there's an easy way for them to do that though:
| Just bid on it themselves and dispose of it however they
| want. They can bid arbitrarily high because they're the ones
| who get the money, if they want to dismantle the company or
| sell it to The Onion more than they want the money from what
| would otherwise be the highest bidder.
| freejazz wrote:
| Not if they have to put up actual cash...
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Do they though? Put up that portion of the debt owed to
| them by the estate, which should be valued in at least
| that amount.
| freejazz wrote:
| Did you read the article? That's exactly what they did.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Did you read the article? Jones was arguing that the
| families shouldn't be able to do that but the article
| doesn't say anything about whether he won that argument
| and the only reason it specifies for why the judge
| rejected the sale is this:
|
| > Judge Lopez said that the bankruptcy auction failed to
| maximize the amount of money that the sale of Infowars
| should provide to Mr. Jones's creditors, including the
| Sandy Hook families, in part because the bids were
| submitted in secret.
|
| Which implies they might just be able to redo the auction
| without secret bids and get the same result.
| freejazz wrote:
| Hence the _if_
| alwa wrote:
| That's what they did, and that's what was rejected here,
| right?
|
| Although it sounds like maybe this was more of a procedural
| rejection than a dispositive one...
| logifail wrote:
| > That's what they did, and that's what was rejected
| here, right?
|
| Except they weren't the highest bidder?
| alwa wrote:
| They were if you count the amount they claimed to be
| putting in from their award:
|
| "The total value of The Onion's bid was $7 million,
| including $1.75 million in cash put up by Global
| Tetrahedron, with the rest coming from the families of
| the Sandy Hook shooting victims, who essentially opted to
| put a portion of their potential earnings from a
| defamation judgment against Mr. Jones toward The Onion's
| bid."
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Their bid was essentially "something that economically
| feels like $100k more than the next highest bidder to
| people who aren't us" which is a clever contractual
| construction but not an auction bid.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >Isn't it a little strange, though, that the system
| notionally decided that the families are owed an enormous
| amount of economic power as compensation for the nasty
| behavior of Alex Jones' media company, but at the same time
| it's obliging them not to use that economic power to prevent
| the sale of the media company to a "new owner" still
| affiliated with an unrepentant Alex Jones, who will
| undoubtedly continue the nasty behavior? Just in order to get
| cash to compensate them at pennies on the dollar for his
| previous round of nasty behavior?
|
| This is regrettable, but I don't think the court system
| offers a remedy sufficient for the grief Jones caused. This
| is why the court awarded what is frankly an absurd sum...
| truly, what is the point of awarding numbers that large?
| They're never paid out.
|
| There this a strict defamation case, where the plaintiff's
| reputations were actually damaged in a way that harmed their
| income/worth, then we'd likely have seen a more rational
| award. Whatever it was that Jones did to these people, it's
| not the same tort as defamation. In that, he calls them
| embezzlers or pedos or something, they lose their jobs... and
| we can put a number to the damage he inflicted. Instead, he
| claimed they were actors, they never had any children, and
| this was some sort of hoax. Had crazy people coming out of
| the woodwork to harass them and stalk them. But the only sort
| of court order that could remediate that would be one that
| muzzles Jones from saying this shit... prior restraint.
| Something the Constitution wouldn't allow for.
|
| I actually wonder if what he did shouldn't be characterized
| as a crime instead of a tort. Were he prosecuted and
| imprisoned (or even just put on probation), then the
| government would have the authority/leverage to (temporarily)
| prohibit this speech. Even then, he'd be made a martyr by his
| fans and it would continue as soon as the sentence was
| served.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > Alex Jones's vitamin company offered 2x more cash
|
| Wait, isn't Alex Jone's essentially bankrupted by the ruling
| for the Sandy Hook parents? If he has that much cash to offer
| wouldn't that have been given to the parents who won the suit?
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| I believe officially the vitamin company is owned by his
| parents and isn't included in the judgement against Alex
| Jones.
| bawolff wrote:
| How is that not fraud?
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| It is. IIRC he started shuffling assets only after the
| legal consequences got real. But the legal system is
| moving slowly. And the victims may get tired of chasing
| his assets
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >But the legal system is moving slowly.
|
| FFS, it's _actively working in his favor_ right now!
| morkalork wrote:
| It's certainly mafia type of behavior. Now Jones has
| learned the lesson that as long as _he_ doesn 't directly
| own anything, he is effectively defamation proof. It's
| almost like an inverse RICO case, he does all the crime
| whole holding none of the money vs a mob boss rolling in
| dough while never directly committing the crimes.
| baggachipz wrote:
| Since when has that mattered? He'll get a pardon in 1
| month anyway.
| sophacles wrote:
| Pardons are for crimes. This is a civil suit, not a
| criminal one.
| baggachipz wrote:
| Fraud is a crime.
| sophacles wrote:
| There's no fraud conviction, there can't be a pardon.
| There's not even fraud charges, so what would the pardon
| be for... I find your rebuttal confusing.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Only federal crimes can be pardoned by the president.
|
| Everything here is state-level. The next president can't
| touch any of it.
| baggachipz wrote:
| They've already suspended his sentencing indefinitely due
| to the election win.
| freejazz wrote:
| Who? Trump? What does that have to do with anything?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Well supposedly federal govt can't intervene in state
| cases but the conviction against trump is at the state
| level, so why isn't he being sentenced? Because power
| isn't about rules.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| As others said above, the president has certain
| immunities to prevent constitutional crises. But that's
| only for the president, and it's not part of his
| pardoning powers (which wouldn't work here anyway).
| freejazz wrote:
| His conviction wasn't overturned, they are just delaying
| his sentencing _because he 's now going to be the
| president again_. He's not doing it by any power of the
| federal gov't.
| crazygringo wrote:
| That's a non-sequitur.
|
| Justice departments don't go after presidents or
| president-elects in order to prevent a constitutional
| crisis. Impeachment is the remedy in that case.
|
| This policy is entirely unrelated to presidential pardon
| power.
| throw16180339 wrote:
| I wouldn't bet on this. Trump can use a punitive
| executive order to pressure the state until the governor
| pardons Alex Jones.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Likely different legal entities. Johnson & Johnson tried to
| get out of the talc powder settlement by creating a different
| legal entity to contain responsibility and damages. A court
| ruled that invalid but this type of corporate entity
| manipulation happens all the time. With the vitamin company,
| it might be that Jones is not majority owner of it but the
| other owners are sympathetic to him. Giving Jones' ownership
| stake to the Infowars creditors wouldn't change anything if
| Jones is not the controlling owner. This is all supposition
| on my part and perhaps he is the controlling owner but the
| court for some reason decided not to include it in his
| bankruptcy assets. It's a weird world when we allow
| artificial people to exist in the form of corporations.
| UltraSane wrote:
| How can any entity related to Alex Jones be allowed to buy the
| InfoWars assets?
| anon291 wrote:
| In the same way non-corporate 'entities' related to Alex
| Jones don't owe his debts.
|
| If there's a company of which he's a minority owner, they
| could decide to buy it, and it would be like his brother
| buying it.
| UltraSane wrote:
| It is pure bullshit is what it is.
| anon291 wrote:
| What is pure bullshit? How exactly is Alex Jones supposed
| to pay $1 billion dollars to anyone? What is the purpose
| of this entire spectacle?
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| To bankrupt someone who exploited the families of a
| horrific crime to enrich himself. Not a pretend
| bankruptcy after most of the real assets have been
| shuffled off the board ahead of sentencing.
| triceratops wrote:
| > How exactly is Alex Jones supposed to pay $1 billion
| dollars to anyone?
|
| One dollar after another.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Alex Jones shuffles assets moments before a legal
| proceeding (or perhaps during it), goes bankrupt, and his
| shuffled assets can buy the assets he "lost". I don't
| have enough legal knowledge to call it fraud, but it sure
| sounds like what I'd call as a layman "pure bullshit".
|
| >How exactly is Alex Jones supposed to pay $1 billion
| dollars to anyone?
|
| That sounds like the job of a bankruptcy court now,
| doesn't it?
|
| Pure bullshit #2: all creditors and debtors agreed on
| something and suddenly Jones himself says "no not that
| way!" Why does the debtor get to decide where and how he
| sells the assets he no longer owns?
|
| >What is the purpose of this entire spectacle?
|
| in case you forgot, a "major news network" tried to play
| off a tragic school shooting that isn't even 15 years old
| as a hoax. The family sued and he lost a defamation case
| over it. In the US (it's REALLY hard to claim defamation
| in the US, so you really screw up if you lose here).
|
| On top of all of that all, Jones did all his darndest to
| drag out and overall disrespect the legal system though a
| mix of shuffling assets, missing court dates, and so many
| other pieces of foul play that would get any normal
| citizen charged with perjury (he may have been charged
| that). That is surely why his ruling costs ran so high.
|
| So the purpose of this entire spectacle runs on 2 major
| points:
|
| 1. don't try to play off a modern, highly televised and
| recorded event in modern history as a "hoax", especially
| on a topic as serious as school shootings
|
| 2. Don't be a legal asshole and piss off judges in a
| court case.
|
| That latter one shouldn't even need to be said, but
| between this and the Gawker trial we clearly have a lot
| of children who treat the judicial system like it's some
| casual date on Tinder. Judges don't like being ghosted.
| jeltz wrote:
| It is fraud and that bid should be disqualified.
| geor9e wrote:
| Are there practically any other creditors? I would think the
| creditor owed $1.5B would cause all other creditors to become
| irrelevant rounding errors as a fraction of a percent. So if
| the families were to bid $X, then they'd be paying it right
| back into their other pocket. Seems like just a technicality or
| theatrics to require them to temporarily come up with cash just
| to give it right back to themselves. But lawyers love arguing
| technicalities.
| habinero wrote:
| Yes, the set of Sandy Hook parents who won $1.5B would
| normally get essentially everything, but the Onion agreement
| had the minority creditors get a lot more money.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| All debt is not equal in seniority (seniority != amount), and
| yes, there are other creditors. Many people have credit
| cards, get bank loans, and have a mortgage, and I assume he
| has also borrowed money from several other sources. Those are
| creditors.
|
| The next thing to do is think about the order these people
| get to take money in. Debt isn't one pool, it's a set of
| multiple priority queues. Asset-backed lines of credit
| typically have a senior claim to that asset but a junior
| claim to the general pool of money - Alex Jones, if forced to
| sell a hypothetical car with a hypothetical $1000 loan, will
| be paying back that loan in its entirety (if covered by the
| sale of the car) before the proceeds of that sale go to the
| $1.5 billion debt. Your general accounts are similarly
| ordered.
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| >The other creditors are far better off getting more cash
|
| The other creditors get more cash from The Onion's offer. It
| was specifically structured to give better-than-next-offer
| remuneration to minority creditors.
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| The Onion didn't have the cash. It was basically an IOU from
| one of the families, which is like saying "the very same guy
| going bankrupt is going to pay us money to buy this business
| from him" and that makes zero sense. There was also no
| transparency in the bidding. It should have been a simple
| auction, to get the maximum amount of money.
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| > The Onion didn't have the cash.
|
| Correct, it was given up by the majority creditors in
| exchange for non-monetary considerations (specifically, the
| moral victory of having The Onion own Infowars).
|
| > It was basically an IOU from one of the families
|
| This is fine, people are allowed to act against their own
| financial interests. That's one thing that having ownership
| _means_ is that you can ruin the thing you own for any or
| no reason. The court has _zero_ reason to intervene if a
| majority creditor is giving up their own share of the
| proceeds for any or no reason.
|
| > There was also no transparency in the bidding. It should
| have been a simple auction, to get the maximum amount of
| money.
|
| This is a non-issue, the trustee was given _wide_ latitude
| to dispose of the assets in any way he deems fit.
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| >This is fine, people are allowed to act against their
| own financial interests. That's one thing that having
| ownership means is that you can ruin the thing you own
| for any or no reason. The court has zero reason to
| intervene if a majority creditor is giving up their own
| share of the proceeds for any or no reason.
|
| You're oversimplifying this. If someone owes you $1B and
| they owe me $2B, and they've got an asset worth $500M, I
| can't just pledge $2B of bad debt to buy the asset. The
| only fair way is to sell it for $500M in actual cash.
| Then it gets divied up accordingly.
|
| >This is a non-issue, the trustee was given wide latitude
| to dispose of the assets in any way he deems fit.
|
| Isn't it telling that the same judge said it was done
| improperly? Trustees have an obligation to follow
| standard practices which maximize cash flow or at least
| don't give the appearance of impropriety.
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| > You're oversimplifying this. If someone owes you $1B
| and they owe me $2B, and they've got an asset worth
| $500M, I can't just pledge $2B of bad debt to buy the
| asset.
|
| You actually can, so long as it's the best offer for the
| other creditors. So long as you can come up with
| sufficient cash for the minority creditors you're
| entitled to dispose of the asset in any way you see fit.
| The Pennsylvania families came up with the cash (via The
| Onion's cash offer and structuring the payout).
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| My point is going over your head. Pledging money that you
| will never receive to get over the finish line is not the
| best offer. You could not consider such debt in any other
| purchase. Going back to that example, if the guy owed $2B
| pledged to buy the asset for $500M and the other one
| didn't even know about the auction, or instead pledged
| $501M, then the one who was owed less would be stealing
| from the one who was owed more. The fact that neither of
| them has any actual money is another very troublesome
| point on its own, as is the fact that the bidding was
| completely private. There might have been someone willing
| to pay 10x the winning bid for InfoWars in actual cash
| and been out of the loop.
|
| Put it in any other context. Do you think a bank would
| issue a loan whose repayment was contingent on income
| from an individual who was seeking relief in bankruptcy?
| Obviously they would not. The court has an obligation to
| not accept fugazi money to buy real assets.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| My understanding is that the other (minor) creditors
| would get more cash in the Onion offer because the Sandy
| hook reps weren't going to take their huge cut in the
| event their preferred bid was accepted. That means in any
| other deal, the other creditors would be strictly worse
| off. The families would be financially worse off but they
| were the ones driving the decision, so they clearly felt
| holistically better off.
|
| I don't see how they shouldn't be able to take less money
| themselves as long as the other creditors also got more
| money.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| In your theoretical framework you can. In real-life
| bankruptcy court, you almost certainly can't.
| vizzier wrote:
| Honestly I don't see how this theoretical framework is
| much different from corporate leveraged buyouts.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| This isn't a leveraged buyout. Also this structure is not
| at all like a leveraged buyout.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Says who? It was clearly going to work like that until
| more lawyer nitpicking intervened about the auction (not
| the sale itself).
| munk-a wrote:
| > Isn't it telling that the same judge said it was done
| improperly? Trustees have an obligation to follow
| standard practices which maximize cash flow or at least
| don't give the appearance of impropriety.
|
| This is incorrect - trustees have an obligation to
| maximize the benefit to debtors. You'll see common
| examples of non-monetary benefit when it comes to wills -
| a cabinet that may be valued at 150$ but has immense
| sentimental value may be given to inheritors even if
| there is a 200k bid on it if that is what the
| beneficiaries all agree to.
|
| You are treating debt discharging too literally like a
| numbers game - there are other important factors and in
| this case all the debtors were aligned and would have
| clearly preferred the deal with the lower monetary value.
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| >This is incorrect - trustees have an obligation to
| maximize the benefit to debtors. You'll see common
| examples of non-monetary benefit when it comes to wills -
| a cabinet that may be valued at 150$ but has immense
| sentimental value may be given to inheritors even if
| there is a 200k bid on it if that is what the
| beneficiaries all agree to.
|
| Probate court is different from bankruptcy court. You can
| only do something nonstandard if all creditors agree.
| Some of these creditors are almost certainly banks that
| are owed money by AJ.
|
| >You are treating debt discharging too literally like a
| numbers game - there are other important factors and in
| this case all the debtors were aligned and would have
| clearly preferred the deal with the lower monetary value.
|
| There are very few sentimental factors in bankruptcy. The
| few that do apply (such as protections of property with
| little value) exist to benefit the debtor and not the
| creditors.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >You can only do something nonstandard if all creditors
| agree.
|
| As far as this NYT story goes, they all did agree. It's
| AJ's lawyer who intervened.
| timmaxw wrote:
| > If someone owes you $1B and they owe me $2B, and
| they've got an asset worth $500M, I can't just pledge $2B
| of bad debt to buy the asset. The only fair way is to
| sell it for $500M in actual cash
|
| No, that's not the _only_ fair way. Suppose the $2B
| creditor bids $200M in cash and also agrees to forfeit
| their share of the proceeds from the sale. Then the $1B
| creditor would receive the entire $200M, which is more
| than the $167M they would have received from a $500M cash
| sale. The bid is effectively equivalent to $600M.
|
| Isn't that what happened in the InfoWars case? The
| bankruptcy judge agreed that the structure of the Onion's
| bid was valid; he just said the auction would have
| continued for more rounds.
| patmcc wrote:
| >>You're oversimplifying this. If someone owes you $1B
| and they owe me $2B, and they've got an asset worth
| $500M, I can't just pledge $2B of bad debt to buy the
| asset. The only fair way is to sell it for $500M in
| actual cash. Then it gets divied up accordingly.
|
| Except what if all the creditors prefer that outcome to
| the "more cash" outcome? If the way it would get divvied
| up is $499m to you and $1m to me, vs $350m to you and
| $50m to me (but you get some other benefit that you
| prefer), why shouldn't that be accepted?
| norlygfyd wrote:
| > It was specifically structured to give better-than-next-
| offer
|
| That is the most farcical bit. When you strip away all the
| legalese, the offer was literally formulated as "next best
| offer + $". That is not a valid sealed-bid offer.
| habinero wrote:
| No, Legal Eagle covered the sale, and the agreement giving it
| to the Onion maximized the proceeds to _both_ of the Sandy Hook
| groups that have won judgement against Alex Jones. With the
| sale to Alex Jones 's set of straw buyers, that wasn't true.
| jeltz wrote:
| The sale to Alex Jones would have given the creditors
| basically nothing since the assets used to buy should already
| be theirs.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| There's a deep irony in your post that you say it's the correct
| decision when it's Alex Jones attempting to strongarm his
| Infowars rights back after losing them in court because he
| failed to pay his outstanding debts.
|
| Like you do see the obvious corruption here, right?
| archagon wrote:
| > _Additionally, the auction here was run farcically, and
| basically seemed designed to create an outcome where the onion
| gets to buy this website for no money._
|
| You have been lied to.
|
| As I see it, the situation couldn't be any simpler: the
| oligarchs will take what they want, justice be damned. It was a
| done deal as soon as Musk entered the scene.
| avianlyric wrote:
| > Especially when the debt being settled is astronomically
| large and you are giving up a very small portion of it ($7
| million out of $1.5 billion). The other creditors are far
| better off getting more cash, and those $7 million of claims
| are worth way less than one cent per dollar.
|
| The whole purpose of the deal was to give everyone, except the
| largest creditor, more cash. Sure the other deal offered 2x
| more cash, but the largest creditor is so disproportionately
| large compared to all the other creditors, they would have
| basically taken all the cash and left little to nothing for the
| other creditors. The rejected deal involved the largest
| creditor voluntarily giving up part of their claim, resulting
| in a much larger (I.e. something like 10x larger) payout for
| other creditors, despite the lower dollar value on the entire
| deal.
|
| So yeah, the other creditors are far better off getting more
| cash. But to do that InfoWars would need to sell for many
| multiples more than highest bid seen so far.
| benj111 wrote:
| >Alex Jones's vitamin company offered 2x more cash
|
| Yes, but shouldn't that already be due to the victims?
|
| This is worse for the victims, because rather than getting that
| money, and future revenue, they just get that money.
|
| And this all ignores the harm to the victims, of giving Jones
| control of Infowars again.
|
| They aren't ever going to see all of this $1.5B. I doubt most
| even want all that money, what they probably want is for Jones
| not to be able to keep his mouth piece.
| reedf1 wrote:
| I read the details of the auction out of interest. I think it
| is valid, and in the best interests of the creditors as it
| currently stands. Interested to see how others have read into
| it that they offered "more". It was a blind auction and the
| result is clearly in the best interests of the creditors to
| take the onion deal.
| sarchertech wrote:
| >2x more cash
|
| But because the largest creditor has a claim that is so much
| larger, the minority creditors will actually get less cash with
| the vitamin company offer.
|
| The deal was structured so that the minority creditors would
| get more cash than from any other offer.
|
| The only creditor that would get less cash from this offer is
| the sandy hook families and they are fine with that.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| it's fraud, Jones' parents own the vitamin company
| snowwrestler wrote:
| How is it the correct decision that Alex Jones has a judgment
| against him for more money than he claims to have, but also
| Alex Jones has enough money to enter a bid to satisfy the
| judgement? It's a farce.
| avs733 wrote:
| but if we launder it through law talking then it cannot be
| questioned.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| My comment has nothing to do with moral righteousness, merely
| legal correctness.
|
| However, the idea that the InfoWars brand is worth less than
| $10 million is a bit silly to me given its reach among crazy
| (and highly manipulable) people, and the low size of both
| bids (and the fact that only people intimately involved in
| bankruptcy procedures knew when and how to put in bids)
| suggests that the auction process was probably not run
| correctly.
| pythonaut_16 wrote:
| So where were all the other bidders offering $10 million
| plus?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Not there because the auction was run in a terrible way -
| it was very hard to submit a bid and the due date got
| moved forward at the last minute.
|
| There were rumblings that Elon Musk was going to put in a
| big bid.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| No but honestly who has any use for the Infowars brand
| besides Alex Jones and the Onion? What would anyone do
| with it to get a return on their investment?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I don't really know, but Elon Musk has been known to buy
| media companies that don't give him a good ROI, and he
| was making noise about putting a bid together on this
| one.
| pyrale wrote:
| > and he was making noise about putting a bid together on
| this one.
|
| The list of things Musk makes noise about but does not do
| gets a little longer.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| If all parties were happy with a bid, why does it need to
| be run "fairly"? This isn't house auction offereing up an
| artifact, this is a man guilty in the court of law going
| bankrupt and divvying off his assets. If the people in
| charge of said divvying and the ones owed money are
| happy, who really cares?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| All parties were not happy with the bid, which is why
| this went to a judge.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Will hold judgement until I read the judge's opinion, but this
| bit:
|
| "'It seemed doomed almost from the moment they decided to go to
| a sealed bid,' Judge Lopez said."
|
| is nonsense from an auction theoretical perspective.
|
| First-price sealed-bid auctions are a vetted auction system
| [1]--almost all real estate and corporate mergers, for example,
| are sold like this, as are government tenders [2]. (They're not
| as efficient as Vickrey auctions [3], but nobody actually does
| that.)
|
| The bankruptcy estate is selling the asset. Not Alex Jones. The
| creditors should be deciding who buys their stuff. Not a judge.
| (The judge is there to coordinate the creditors, not substitute
| his judgement for theirs.)
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-price_sealed-
| bid_aucti...
|
| [2] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sealed-bid-auction.asp
|
| [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_auction
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Like other commenters, you have posited a theoretical
| framework for how a bankruptcy court theoretically should
| work. None of this is how bankruptcy court actually works.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _you have posited a theoretical framework for how a
| bankruptcy court theoretically should work. None of this is
| how bankruptcy court actually works_
|
| Literally started by saying I'm holding judgement until
| reading the opinion.
|
| My point is simply that if the reason the judge raised for
| re-starting the process is solely around the bids being
| sealed, they're wrong in a provable way.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Oh, it's not that at all. The problem with auction
| procedures in this case wasn't the actual auction
| methodology, but the lack of notice and the difficulty of
| submitting a bid. In any case, a judge does make the
| decisions in a bankruptcy court when the parties disagree
| about things. In this case, the creditors are not in
| agreement that this was okay.
|
| A sealed-bid auction is a bit non-standard in a
| bankruptcy, but there should be no problem if all the
| bids get revealed post-facto. I wouldn't be surprised if
| this was mentioned in the opinion because it doesn't help
| you say that the auction was fair in light of everything
| else (if you're going to do non-standard stiff, do it in
| a very clean-looking way).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _roblem with auction procedures in this case wasn 't
| the actual auction methodology, but the lack of notice
| and the difficulty of submitting a bid_
|
| Which would make sense. That's not what the article
| quotes as the judge's reason (nor what you've said).
|
| The quote in the article criticises sealed bids. That's
| mind-blowingly wrong to the point of having substance on
| appeal. It's so wrong I expressed scepticism it's
| actually the case, scepticism based on experience
| evaluating bankruptcy claims.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Yeah, the article is incorrect about that (like I said,
| sealed bids are very unusual in bankruptcy auctions, but
| the actual opinion cites the other stuff), and when I
| said that the auction procedure was farcical, I did not
| mean that the _underlying algorithm_ of the auction was
| wrong, but that the procedures run by the auctioneer were
| awful.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _They're not as efficient as Vickrey auctions [3], but
| nobody actually does that._
|
| I've always been curious -- do you know why?
|
| It's certainly not for lack of familiarity, considering that
| paying the second-highest bid is basically how eBay works.
|
| And eBay doesn't reveal people's maximum bids either. And so
| between that and the prevalence of last-second sniping, it
| essentially operates as sealed for all practical purposes.
| norlygfyd wrote:
| The "winning" offer was formulated such that its cash value
| depended upon the next best offer. I.e., when you strip away
| the complexity it was of the form "next best offer + $". That
| this bid "won" indicates the "auction" was not a sealed-bid
| auction of the kind you are thinking of.
| Spivak wrote:
| Wait no none of this is right, it doesn't make it an
| unsealed auction just because one or more of the bids has
| terms and conditions. This is how every real-estate
| transaction is conducted.
|
| What makes it fine in the end is that once you collect all
| the bids and resolve the legal paperwork you can assign
| values to the individual bids and compare them which is how
| people who sell their homes choose what offer to go with.
| And home sellers do consider intangibles and go with lower-
| cash offers all the time.
|
| I don't really understand what all the legal kerfuffle is
| about. Is the court really going to force the families into
| a sale they don't want when the sale is for their benefit
| however they choose to define it?
| rtkwe wrote:
| Nothing in the order says the accounting of the bid value was
| wrong it was mostly the form of the auction taking place as a
| single sealed bid round that the judge seems to quibble with.
| Counting debt as part of the bid is also not that unusual or
| weird, banks will bid their outstanding debt on foreclosure
| auctions all the time to get control of the house and sell it
| normally.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > This is probably the correct decision.
|
| It is 100% not. It makes fewer creditors whole. Simple as that.
| It's worse for all creditors involved, as per the creditors.
| Any suggestion that this is "correct" or better is out of
| ignorance or deceit.
|
| > The other creditors are far better off getting more cash
|
| The nature of the original deal guaranteed the other creditors
| got more money than they would from the other offer by $100,000
| more. Suggesting that they were getting less is ignorant.
|
| > the onion gets to buy this website for no money.
|
| Again, the Onion was spending real cash.
|
| At best your are completely ignorant of the deal.
| shkkmo wrote:
| It's correct if there's a new, open auction that does even
| better than the current Onion offer.
| pyrale wrote:
| ...But then, why not cancel that new auction too, in hopes
| that a third auction will yield even more?
| _djo_ wrote:
| The judge ruled out holding a new auction.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > cash completely trumps any notion of "giving up debt."
|
| Not true. The entire point of bankruptcy proceedings is to
| resolve debt to the creditors.
|
| And in fact, that wasn't the issue that the Judge took here.
| The judge didn't like the amount, not the creditors bid.
|
| > The other creditors are far better off getting more cash, and
| those $7 million of claims are worth way less than one cent per
| dollar.
|
| The other creditors signed off on the deal which is why the
| Trustee took the bid. Alex Jones would have $3.5 million
| dollars less debt than if he took the FAUC bid. Which is
| exactly what the Trustee should prioritize, cutting back on
| Jone's debt.
| bastawhiz wrote:
| > First United American Companies
|
| The second-highest bidder was....an insurance company? Am I
| misunderstanding?
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| It's a shell company made to have an acronym that sounds like
| "eff you AC".
| refulgentis wrote:
| AC?
| willvarfar wrote:
| American Companies?
| habinero wrote:
| No, it's a set of straw buyers for Alex Jones.
| avs733 wrote:
| The second highest bidder was Alex Jones
| gklitz wrote:
| Who importantly, supposedly doesn't have any money, because
| he doesn't want to pay the families of the victims what he
| owns them.
| avs733 wrote:
| and is arguing that the problem with the sale is that the
| people he owes money don't have any money because he hasn't
| paid them.
| jmward01 wrote:
| It is clear that Jones and his relatives have moved money and
| assets around in order to shield them from the verdict. Now,
| money that should have been already given to the victims is being
| used to steal back the megaphone that caused harmed in the first
| place. The end effect will probably be even more subscribers and
| money for Jones which he will use with even less restraint since
| he knows there are no consequences. There are no words for the
| evil going on here. What recourse is left when the legal system
| is this broken?
| logicchains wrote:
| >money for Jones which he will use with even less restraint
| since he knows there are no consequences
|
| He was fined over a billion dollars, in what world is losing a
| billion dollars no consequences?
| sophacles wrote:
| He wasn't fined. He had a judgement for damages against him.
| They are different things with a similar outcome (he's out a
| billion dollars) - accuracy is important.
|
| Also - until he actually pays any of that billion dollars,
| there have been no consequences.
| munk-a wrote:
| Additionally, it's important to highlight that he refused
| to properly comply with the legal process - so it was a
| default judgement. This is essentially unheard of due to
| how unwise it is.
| rbanffy wrote:
| We can consider his non-compliance an investment in his
| audience. By refusing to comply, he signals his
| supporters that the lawsuit is unfair persecution. And
| they believe him.
|
| His lawyer already stated "Finally, a judge followed the
| law.".
| SkeuomorphicBee wrote:
| He was fined a billion dollars, but it will never be
| collected, he never lost a billion dollars. With this
| decision all his debts are pardoned and he gets to keep his
| megaphone, that is very "no consequences".
| pookha wrote:
| America was founded with a constitution that guarantee's
| citizens a megaphone as part of a list of inalienable
| rights (God given per words in the constitution).
| Bankrupting Jones won't remove his ability speak or muzzle
| him and it's more than likely only going to give him more
| of an audience. He'll still be able to voice his
| performance art about growing babies-in-cows-for-25-years
| and gay-frogs. He'll more than likely struggle to sell his
| seeds and end-of-times nonsense and he's probably been
| debanked. But megaphone wise he'll be louder than ever.
| im3w1l wrote:
| Chemicals in the water turning the frogs gay is an actual
| thing though. E.g.
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3280221/
|
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1501065112
|
| https://news.berkeley.edu/2010/03/01/frogs/
|
| However
|
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/frogs-
| rev...
|
| but, > The findings in no way exonerate pollutants like
| the widely used herbicide atrazine, scientists caution.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I don't see anything in those articles about gay frogs.
|
| Trans frogs, sure, but sex and sexual orientation are
| different.
| pookha wrote:
| OK. Going on an alex jones rant here...
|
| I was always under the impression that the performance
| art he did with the frogs was in reference to
| Chlorpyrifos. And I am in concert with Alex Jones here. I
| agree with him. This crap is not good, is banned
| throughout the world, and is a mammalian neurotoxin.
|
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1203396109
|
| https://www.salon.com/2020/12/08/chlorpyrifos-neurotoxic-
| pes...
|
| But you and I both know he crosses the line (and enjoys
| doing so) from authentic to clown. He'll bedazzle a
| libertarian and country boy with quirky strange
| perspectives that have a kernel of truth and then drag
| them down into the dark ass netherworld he's living his
| life in. He spins people up and inflames their amygdala's
| and connects the dots to some dark metaphysical Ba'al.
| But then he still comes back around and sells you some
| seeds and some product to stock your nuclear fall out
| shelter. He's one part performance artist one part
| grifter. But he crossed a third rail when he tried
| pulling the parents of a school shooting into his bi-
| polarish world. Bottom line with a guy like Alex Jones is
| that he's always going to connect the natural failure-
| state of a system (FDA regulatory capture) to some fever
| dream Ba'al conspiracy vs acknowledging that humans and
| their systems are flawed and that the natural state of a
| government is one in which it is picking winners and
| losers (cronyism) and it's been that way in his country
| since Washington's soldiers and officers mutinied over
| pensions. https://www.mountvernon.org/education/primary-
| source-collect.... That didn't need the illuminati
| becuase, like the FDA, it's the natural mode of humanity
| and a system to fail.
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| >He was fined over a billion dollars, in what world is losing
| a billion dollars no consequences?
|
| Parent's point is that the amount of the fine doesn't matter
| if he is able to avoid paying it. It could have been a
| quadrillion. A fine only matters if you actually have to pay
| it.
|
| On an average-person-level, some municipalities nearby me
| have decided to not basically not do anything about parking
| fines. As a result, there are vehicles that over ten thousand
| dollars of fine. But they are still allowed to renew their
| registration and drive their vehicle. So it's just a made up
| demerit.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Reminds me of that Russian court that recently fined Google
| $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Funnily
| enough this was along similar lines to the Alex Jones case
| but in reverse.
| stavros wrote:
| Huh, I wonder why they stopped at 20.
| munk-a wrote:
| They didn't - it was a more modest amount that they put
| daily compounding interest on. The number keeps growing
| larger and larger by the day.
| stavros wrote:
| Well, that makes sense, at least.
| ajb wrote:
| That's not what this judgement says. It actually says the sale
| did not generate enough money for the creditors and the process
| should be run again. I think the Judge maybe naive in thinking
| that re-running an auction will generate more money (normally
| it will generate less, as the losing bidders will drop out) but
| he did not agree with Jones' claims.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Will he keep running do overs until he gets the outcome he
| wants?
| goodluckchuck wrote:
| From what the internet says, it didn't go to the highest
| bidder.
| munk-a wrote:
| It's complicated - it went to the bidder that would
| result in the two largest debtors being the happiest with
| the outcome but that bidder didn't bid the most money in
| a regular manner.
|
| The structure of the bid was quite complex but
| essentially the largest debtor agreed to enlarge the
| share the second largest debtor would receive by
| supplementing it from their own share due to the awards
| in the two court cases being so drastically different
| (basically the largest debtor decided to decrease their
| own share in that specific bid to supplement the second
| largest debtor) - this bid was the one that the primary
| debtor prefers and would award a lot more value to the
| secondary debtor than the bid that was, on paper, larger.
|
| There are some good detailed analyses of the arrangement
| out there that would give you a much better understanding
| than I can communicate second-hand - I'd suggest the
| overview by LegalEagle[1], personally.
|
| 1. https://youtu.be/GmDNz7irGgw
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _went to the bidder that would result in the two
| largest debtors being the happiest with the outcome but
| that bidder didn 't bid the most money in a regular
| manner_
|
| The creditors own the asset. If every dollar the
| creditors are owed voted, which bid would they choose?
| munk-a wrote:
| The onion bid - by far. If the bid was chosen by
| creditors weighted by owed value the Connecticut families
| would solely dictate the terms as they are owed more than
| 90% of the value resulting from this auction.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > The creditors own the asset
|
| If this is the case, dollars voted are less important
| than outcome value to the creditors. It is their asset,
| no? They are assigning value and signaling accordingly.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _dollars voted are less important than outcome value to
| the creditors. It is their asset, no?_
|
| Sure. I'm trying to approximate a metric that gives their
| weighted interest. My point is the owners of the asset
| are selling it, and it seems their interests are
| _obviously_ maximised by one bid.
| amyames wrote:
| Just navel gazing here maybe there is case precedent or
| law here.
|
| The debtor generally deserves their case to be discharged
| resolved liquidated closed and done forever.
|
| Paying ongoing reparations in royalties or whatever the
| onion proposes doesn't accomplish this. Alex Jones
| himself could convert his case to a chapter 13 and set up
| a "repayment" plan based on his own anticipated/potential
| earnings from his own business. It would possibly even be
| higher, infowars intended audience is probably more
| profitable than people laughing at infowars on Ben
| Collins bluesky feed.
|
| The people who got a personal judgment aren't made whole
| by a promise of future restitution by someone purchasing
| his business assets.
|
| What if the onion went bankrupt next year and said oh
| we're not going to pay that anymore?
|
| That would be an interesting case to test: a person being
| relieved from a fraud or criminal tort, as it's handed
| off to a third party buying their business, who
| themselves didn't commit fraud or a criminal tort and
| merely became insolvent which is dischargeable.
|
| In the case where the "creditors" own the asset to settle
| their claim, that's another story, whether they make $1
| or a billion dollars disposing of it is no longer the
| debtors problem
|
| In the same way that returning my smashed up uninsured
| car to a secured lender doesn't make them whole for my
| discharged loan either.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >Paying ongoing reparations in royalties or whatever the
| onion proposes doesn't accomplish this.
|
| Sure it does, the Onion would be paying the royalties,
| Alex Jones already doesn't own it, it's essentially owned
| by an estate that is selling it off to cover Alex Jones'
| debts.
| adolph wrote:
| That's a lot of text to say "yes, it didn't go to the
| highest bidder."
| munk-a wrote:
| That's incorrect - it's a lot of text to say it went to
| the second highest bidder. The onion bid was the one that
| provided more value to the creditors.
| Supermancho wrote:
| From what I've read, it's not incorrect. Orthogonal
| valuations are not part of the bid value. This is why The
| Onion was second (the winner). It was not the highest bid
| (the considered part). The end.
|
| The Judge has decided that's unfair, likely due to some
| bias (intellectual, political, etc.)
| pdpi wrote:
| Put simply, the internet is wrong.
|
| FUAC's offer was all cash. The Onion offered less cash,
| but offered other incentives (AIUI, a share of whatever
| revenue they make from Infowars in the future). Saying
| that The Onion's bid was lower requires you to put a
| dollar value on those other incentives. The fact that the
| two creditors (read: victims' families) that would
| benefit from those incentives were willing to sacrifice
| some of the debt they were owed so they could benefit
| from those incentives suggests that at least _they_ think
| those incentives were worth more than the cash upfront,
| and the amount of debt they were willing to sacrifice
| gives you an implicit baseline for that dollar value.
|
| Given the site we're on: it's like saying that an offer
| with a lower base salary but higher equity is
| automatically a worse offer than a bigger salary with no
| stock.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| The idea that Global Tetrahedron would generate revenue
| from InfoWars is a farce. Jones is InfoWars. Any market
| value assigned to InfoWars without Jones explicitly
| involvement is a farce. Even a non bankruptcy sale of
| InfoWars would require him to participate in the business
| for an extended period of time. Even then, it'd just be
| some investor bankrolling Jones.
| pdpi wrote:
| That might or might not be true. If Infowars is _that_
| worthless without Jones, then _any_ offer is a farce and
| the whole auction is pointless.
| lupusreal wrote:
| > _If Infowars is _that_ worthless without Jones, then
| _any_ offer is a farce_
|
| That doesn't make sense. A genuine offer for an
| unprofitable thing could be made. That's not farcical,
| just a bad investment.
| pdpi wrote:
| Yes, that's precisely what I mean. It might or might not
| be a bad bet, but the Sandy Hook families are just as
| entitled to take that bet as anybody else. The idea that
| it's farcical to entertain any offer that doesn't involve
| putting Jones back in charge leads you down a really
| weird road.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Now that you say it that way, it does make some kind of
| sense.
| dllthomas wrote:
| That seems true for any attempt to continue using the IP
| for the same thing. Turning it into a parody of that
| thing might have an audience (and therefore produce ad
| revenue), would not seem to need Jones involved, and be
| something for which Global Tetrahedron seems well
| resourced.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I thought that too, but Global Tetrahedron could just
| found 'InfooWars' as a satire site without Jones estate
| involvement at all.
| vasco wrote:
| > a share of whatever revenue they make from Infowars in
| the future
|
| What is that realistically? They said they will turn it
| into gun safety information. How does a gun safety
| information site make money out of an audience of people
| expecting a guy shouting about conspiracy theories?
| pdpi wrote:
| I don't know what it is. It's an investment, it carries
| risks with it. That said, if I were one of the Sandy Hook
| families, turning Infowars into a gun safety site would
| hold more value than any money you could pay me. Classic
| case of "maximising shareholder value" not being the same
| as "maximising revenue".
| vidarh wrote:
| What that is realistically is irrelevant to the value to
| the bankruptcy estate - the value to the estate is the
| amount of debt those creditors are willing to forgive in
| return for those risks.
| a12k wrote:
| The creditors agreed to and supported the Global Tetrahedron
| plan to purchase Infowars and settle the bankruptcy. Seems
| like the judge is overstepping given Delaware law on this
| matter.
| JackFr wrote:
| Talk to Elon about Delaware judges overstepping...
| floydnoel wrote:
| Delaware judges seem to have a penchant for that lately.
| Certainly not a good look.
| hedora wrote:
| Also, as a Trump appointee, and given the relationship
| between Trump and Jones, the judge should recuse
| themselves.
|
| If this case were an article in The Onion, it'd seem too
| unrealistic to be funny. Well done, Global Tetrahedron!
| rtkwe wrote:
| The main reasoning by the judge seemed to be that a single
| round sealed bid process is unlikely to maximize the sale
| price which on it's surface seems pretty accurate.
|
| So long as the families forgoing parts of their judgements
| is allowed to be part of the bids though any competing bids
| seem doomed, it's a big war chest they can throw around
| that's essentially meaningless because they'll never be
| able to collect it anyways.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _main reasoning by the judge seemed to be that a single
| round sealed bid process is unlikely to maximize the sale
| price which on it 's surface seems pretty accurate_
|
| Did the judge argue against the single round or the
| sealed price?
|
| Criticising sealed bids is nonsense. The gold-standard
| auction (Vickrey, or more accurately, VCG) features
| sealed bids. If the judge is criticising sealed bids _at
| all_ , The Onion should appeal.
|
| Criticising a single-round auction, particularly with two
| bidders, on the other hand, is valid.
|
| > _as the families forgoing parts of their judgements is
| allowed to be part of the bids though any competing bids
| seem doomed, it 's a big war chest they can throw around
| that's essentially meaningless because they'll never be
| able to collect it anyways_
|
| Isn't it also meaningless if the person whose estate
| they're collecting is bidding against them?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| multi-round or not, they should still be equivalent in
| expected revenue to VCG - no?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _multi-round or not, they should still be equivalent in
| expected revenue to VCG - no_
|
| VCG is second price, so we're already in a sub-optimal
| regime with a first-price format. (All while illustrating
| why Vickrey auctions don't work with unsophisictated
| observers. Could you imagine the shitshow if The Onion
| won and then didn't have to pay their bid, but Jones's?)
|
| Given first price, I don't think the number of rounds is
| revenue equivalent.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i agree that if we are doing first price it is suboptimal
| auction
| rtkwe wrote:
| The exact form of the auction is really really important
| though. A Vickery auction is single round and sealed but
| is critically a second price auction so bidder are
| incentivized to bid their maximum because they will get
| the second price which wasn't the case in this auction.
| Without the second price you're trying to bid just enough
| to outbid the other party/parties which won't maximize
| bid size.
|
| > Isn't it also meaningless if the person whose estate
| they're collecting is bidding against them?
|
| The blatant attempts to move assets out of InfoWars
| during the bankruptcy is an entirely different story but
| that money may technically come legally from outside the
| estate.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _exact form of the auction is really really important
| though_
|
| Sure. But nobody uses Vickrey because it's impossible to
| explain to the public why the highest bid wasn't
| accepted.
|
| > _Without the second price you 're trying to bid just
| enough to outbid the other party/parties which won't
| maximize bid size_
|
| Which is exactly what happens in any single-round first-
| price format. The only thing an open auction does is
| facilitate collusion. Let me repeat: for a single-round
| first-price auction, sealed bids are the only way to go.
|
| > _that money may technically come legally from outside
| the estate_
|
| It may but it doesn't. Jones saying the judge "ruled in
| _our_ favour " (emphasis mine) sort of gives away the
| game.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> nobody uses Vickrey because it 's impossible to
| explain to the public why the highest bid wasn't
| accepted_
|
| Google used to use second-price for all their ads, though
| I think they've stopped:
| https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/10858748
|
| (Which I think, sadly, supports your claim around them
| being confusing)
| rtkwe wrote:
| There's a huge one people use all the time without
| knowing it, eBay is a second price auction too most
| people just don't use it like one. You can place a huge
| maximum bid and will only pay the second highest bid plus
| an increment. It just automatically semi-unseals bids as
| new bids come in so it looks a lot more like a live
| outcry auction.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> eBay is a second price auction too most people just
| don 't use it like one. You can place a huge maximum bid
| and will only pay the second highest bid plus an
| increment. It just automatically semi-unseals bids as new
| bids come in so it looks a lot more like a live outcry
| auction._
|
| This sounds small, but it's a huge difference. Let's I
| know that some widget is actually extremely valuable, and
| would be willing to pay up to $1,000. You don't know
| this, and are willing to pay $80. In a true second-price
| auction I put in $1000, you put in $80, the bids are
| unsealed and I pay $80.
|
| But with the e-bay system, if I put in $1,000 at the
| beginning I've partially tipped my hand by bidding it up
| to $80. You started with some uncertainty about the value
| of the object, but knowing that I agree it's worth at
| least $80 pushes you in the direction of thinking it's
| worth more. This is a major advantage of sniping: by
| putting your bid in only at the last minute you keep
| others from reacting to your bid by changing theirs, and
| so convert the auction into something much closer to a
| true second-price auction.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Yes it different but it does work to increase the bid
| which is the goal of an auction, discover the best price
| an item can be sold for in a reasonably constrained time.
| The fact that it's worse of you as a bidder hoping to get
| a deal is actually good for it as an auction design.
|
| There's also some assumptions built into these analyses
| that there's at least two people who have a reasonable
| perception of the value of an item. Things get massively
| more difficult to analyze when you start including
| changes in perceived value.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _fact that it 's worse of you as a bidder hoping to get
| a deal is actually good for it as an auction design_
|
| The point is, in the above example, you wouldn't bid
| $1,000. So I will bid $50. Then $60. Then $70. Then $80.
| Then $90. And then, seeing the price has changed, I will
| stop. And wait. I am willing to pay $1,000. But it
| doesn't ever make sense for me to bid that.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Even in the eBay example you're betting against their
| being a third party that will attempt to come in with a
| late bid so the auction closes before you can respond. If
| you want the item it's still optimal to bid your maximum
| and allow the second price mechanism to function, if you
| bid $1000 and there's only one other bid of $80 (and the
| price increment is $10 or 12.5%) you get the item for $90
| either way no matter if you bid that manually or if you
| placed a maximum bid. That's how a semi-sealed second
| price auction works (at least as eBay implements it) the
| next minimum bid is revealed as new bids come in that are
| responding like it's a live cry out auction. If there are
| multiple max bids it's just set to the highest second
| price plus the bid increment and the max bid is still
| hidden.
|
| That's the beauty of the eBay system it works for people
| to interact in two ways, as a more boring sealed second
| bid system and as a live cry auction. The biggest point
| it falls apart is you need a certain number of people to
| understand the system to act rationally about it. If you
| only have people treat it like a live cry auction then it
| defaults to acting like one.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _you 're betting against their being a third party that
| will attempt to come in with a late bid so the auction
| closes before you can respond_
|
| Yes. It's why people use bots, _e.g._ [1].
|
| For low-value products, particularly amidst repeat
| auctions, the incentive to do so is small enough that one
| can mostly ignore it. For a high-stakes auction, you're
| just devolving the game into a high-frequency race.
|
| > _If you only have people treat it like a live cry
| auction then it defaults to acting like one_
|
| The point is it really only works as an English auction.
| The "sealed" bid is for convenience. (It's not really a
| sealed or even semi-sealed bid, it's just a dumb auto-
| bidding bot.) Run a major auction with this format and
| you'd have zero activity until the millisecond before
| bids were due followed by a mountain of lawsuits.
|
| [1] https://www.gixen.com/main/index.php
| rtkwe wrote:
| You can use bots or you can bid your true maximum and
| receive the best price available below it. You can't
| snipe a true higher still sealed bid not matter how good
| your bot is. If all the sniping bidder are above the
| sealed bidders then the auction still functions to
| discover higher prices just not as efficiently.
|
| > this format and you'd have zero activity until the
| millisecond before bids were due followed by a mountain
| of lawsuits.
|
| Sure but no one does, the eBay model is a compromise to
| make the bidding structure more familiar to people who
| don't understand the second price mechanism. Major
| auctions don't need to make that accommodation, the
| audience can be relied on to read and think about the
| auction structure which is unfortunately not an option
| you can really take for a mass market tool.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _can 't snipe a true higher still sealed bid not matter
| how good your bot is_
|
| Of course you can. You repeatedly enter marginally-higher
| bids until you crest their limit. The only case where the
| auction is efficient is if the automatic bidder is the
| highest _and_ someone else bids up to their maximum.
|
| > _can 't snipe a true higher still sealed bid not matter
| how good your bot is_
|
| Correct. But eBay doesn't have sealed bids. You can
| absolutely snipe an auto-bidder; this is like the first
| high-speed algorithm that was ever developed in the real
| markets.
|
| > _no one does_
|
| Literally pointed you to an eBay bidding bot.
|
| > _the eBay model is a compromise to make the bidding
| structure more familiar to people who don 't understand
| the second price mechanism_
|
| ...yes. The eBay model is a compromise that works for
| unsophisticated bidders and low-value auctions. eBay's
| model is a known-flawed model that does not "discover the
| best price an item can be sold for in a reasonably
| constrained time" [1].
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42389361
| rtkwe wrote:
| > You repeatedly enter marginally-higher bids until you
| crest their limit.
|
| That's not sniping. Inherent to last second sniping is
| you get a limited amount of chances to boost your bids,
| in the best case you're taking one shot at the bid to
| place it at the last millisecond eBay will accept your
| bid. You're trying to get the last bid in on an auction
| so no one has a chance to respond. Incrementally bidding
| up to find the ceiling is directly opposed to the goal of
| having a sniping bot.
|
| > Literally pointed you to an eBay bidding bot.
|
| That was talking about other auction runners using the
| eBay model for extremely high value items because of the
| complexity of execution, not about people using bots. I
| know people use bots it's just that to win they have to
| beat the bid placed by people using the second price
| functionality. I'm not denying their existence just
| questioning how effectively they actually distort the
| auction structure.
|
| If a lot of different people (using different bots to
| avoid GIXEN's automatic mini auction) all place their
| maximum bids at the last second the winner is still the
| person with the max bid be that a bot user or a pre
| bidder.
|
| The winning strategy to win that bidding war is still to
| place your maximum bid in the bot and if everyone does
| that it's just a normal sealed second price auction. The
| bot strategy just relies on there not being enough
| interest in every item and finding one where you can bid
| less than your maximum and still win which is also true
| of a pure sealed second price auction. I'm just not
| seeing where the strategy and outcome differ by including
| bots if there are second price bidders in the mix bidding
| their true max.
| chongli wrote:
| _most people just don 't use ... place a huge maximum bid
| and will only pay the second highest bid plus an
| increment_
|
| The reason people don't do this on eBay is because
| sellers can have a friend bid on the item to raise the
| second-place bid more than you're willing to pay (shill
| bidding). The Nash equilibrium for second price auctions
| is to only bid the maximum you're willing to pay. Bidding
| a higher amount leaves you vulnerable to these shill
| bidding tactics.
| rtkwe wrote:
| > The Nash equilibrium for second price auctions is to
| only bid the maximum you're willing to pay.
|
| Of course... why would you ever bid more than you're
| willing to pay? Huge doesn't mean more than your maximum.
|
| Also those shill bids are also betting on being able to
| perfectly find the point where they are juuuust below
| your max bid without knowing the actual max bids on the
| item at any given moment. If they fail they can not pay
| out but the seller is out their time and any listing fees
| (depending on the eBay era we're talking about).
| Conceivably you're still willing to pay your maximum bid
| the second time an item is available in most
| circumstances.
|
| Even shill bidding aligns with the goal of auctions to
| find the maximum price for an item. The goal of the
| auction is to benefit the seller not the buyer's ability
| to get a deal. It would probably be fixable by making the
| bid more binding but that's a separate issue you're still
| paying at max your nominal maximum price if you win.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _those shill bids are also betting on being able to
| perfectly find the point where they are juuuust below
| your max bid without knowing the actual max bids on the
| item at any given moment_
|
| Yes. That or you use one shill to uncloak the max and
| then another to bid just below it. Worst case, as you
| said, you're only out your listing fee.
|
| > _shill bidding aligns with the goal of auctions to find
| the maximum price for an item_
|
| Which is why for high-value items in a system subject to
| shill bids, _bona fide_ bidders don 't put their actual
| maximum price into an unsealed (or semi-sealed) system.
| Which lowers the auction price.
|
| Klemperer wrote an approachable intro to auction theory.
| Taek wrote:
| I have real world experience with a lot of different
| auction designs being deployed, including many variations
| of the VCG auction.
|
| The VCG auction is only good in theory. In practice, most
| people don't know how much they actually value a thing,
| and when they are trying to play the VCG game they
| typically underbid and later have deep remorse. That's
| the most common mistake, but I've seen plenty of other
| mistakes as well.
|
| In other words, VCG auctions tend not to work well
| because the bidders often don't have a strong enough
| grasp over game theory nor a deep enough understanding of
| how valuable an asset is to them, and therefore the VCG
| usually generates suboptimal outcomes.
|
| In my experience, the auction that seems to work the best
| is the Ebay auction, where you get immediate feedback if
| you underbid, but you aren't allowed to see how high the
| other person is willing to go. Instead, you have to talk
| yourself into taking a risk on being left holding the bag
| if you choose to push the price up.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _VCG auctions tend not to work well because the bidders
| often don 't have a strong enough grasp over game theory
| nor a deep enough understanding of how valuable an asset
| is to them, and therefore the VCG usually generates
| suboptimal outcomes_
|
| May I hazard a guess that you worked on low-value
| recurring auctions? You're describing unsophisticated
| bidders unwilling to expend search costs. For them, yes,
| "the seller has an interest in providing participants
| with as much information as possible about the object's
| value" both before bidding starts and during it, the
| latter due to the impact to bids being less than the
| overcoming of search costs.
|
| > _the auction that seems to work the best is the Ebay
| auction, where you get immediate feedback if you
| underbid, but you aren 't allowed to see how high the
| other person is willing to go_
|
| Another comment highlights why this doesn't work for
| high-value items [2]. (They also assume _bona fide_ bids,
| which isn 't a problem if you can filter out shill bids.)
|
| [1] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-
| sciences/2020/pop...
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42389681
| Taek wrote:
| > May I hazard a guess that you worked on low-value
| recurring auctions?
|
| It varies. In all cases, the value was below $20,000, in
| many cases the auction was non-recurring and >$1,000 (for
| example, specific web domains). I've seen enough smart
| people fumble a $1,000+ VCG auction that I'd be nervous
| to assume bidding would be any better at $100 million.
| I've also seen enough investors fumble $10m+ investment
| deals (not auctions though) to feel comfortable asserting
| that a higher value auction does not necessarily imply
| that the participants will be better at auction theory.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > "It seemed doomed almost from the moment they decided
| to go to a sealed bid," Judge Lopez said. "Nobody knows
| what anybody else is bidding," he added.
|
| So it sounds like the judge specifically had issues with
| the use of sealed bids.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I thought the other reason was that some creditors were
| trying to use their debt forgiveness as a credit to
| purchase inforwars. Which obviously doesn't make sense in
| a bankruptcy, since the whole point is the creditors are
| not going to get paid back 100%.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Certain creditors giving up some of their claim can shift
| more money to other creditors effectively increasing the
| amount paid out by the estate, thereby satisfying more
| creditors so it's completely kosher just slightly odd.
| It's unusual because most companies are just companies
| and the creditors have less/no emotional investment in
| anything other than receiving the maximum amount of money
| from the bankruptcy.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I don't see what emotions have to do with it. If a
| business has a claim for $28 million in debt against a
| bankrupt company with near zero cash, I could easily see
| them saying "we'll bid the full $28 million for the asset
| X". Presumably the asset X has some non-zero value. Even
| if comically low (like a single small office building),
| collecting the value of that asset is much better than
| $0.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Emotions come into it where some creditors are willing to
| forgo their portion of the sale proceeds for a particular
| outcome. That counts as the bid satisfying some portion
| of the debt and now other creditors potentially get more
| money from the bankruptcy. The law allows for this, banks
| do it all the time on foreclosure auctions splashing the
| bids with their outstanding loan amount making it
| unprofitable for others to bid and winning the house they
| can then sell in a regular manner.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Which obviously doesn 't make sense in a bankruptcy,
| since the whole point is the creditors are not going to
| get paid back 100%_
|
| The creditors already own the asset. The estate is
| selling, not Alex Jones.
|
| If you asked every creditor which bid they preferred,
| which do you think they'd choose? The creditors forgoing
| their claims obviously prefer one. As for the rest,
| they'll choose the one that pays them more: The Onion's
| bid.
|
| This isn't how bankruptcy works in practice, but it's a
| good shorthand for what the correct answer should be.
| adolph wrote:
| > The creditors already own the asset.
|
| The parent comment, quoted above is misinformation.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _The parent comment, quoted above is misinformation_
|
| What?
| jpk2f2 wrote:
| They quoted the relevant portion. The creditors do not
| own infowars already. A court appointed trustee is
| liquidating it, the owner has not changed (and will not
| until it officially sells).
| tomrod wrote:
| A lot of economic and legal theory beg to differ!
| rtkwe wrote:
| Beg to differ about what and how?
| jillyboel wrote:
| Why does the judge care about maximizing the value for a
| convicted criminal?
| rtkwe wrote:
| It's the value that goes to the creditors in the
| bankruptcy and is the legal requirement for the
| bankruptcy process. Jones gets none of this money he
| doesn't own InfoWars since he entered the bankruptcy
| process.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| Bankruptcy law is federal law, Delaware law has nothing to
| do with it.
| a12k wrote:
| They typically file in the United States Court for the
| District of Delaware, a federal court located in
| Delaware. Delaware law plays a significant part in these
| cases even though they're in Fed court. Corporate
| charters, filings, fiduciary duties, property rights,
| choice of laws, etc etc etc are all determined by
| Delaware law and used in the federal court.
|
| Federal Bankruptcy Law provides the procedural framework.
|
| So, Delaware law does in fact have nearly everything to
| do with it.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Federal Bankruptcy Law provides the procedural
| framework.
|
| Federal bankruptcy law sets the substantive as well as
| procedural rules for bankruptcy, and its substantive
| provisions trump any state law, but, OTOH, state law has
| some role both in determining what the set of claims
| going in to bankruptcy are and, to the extent permitted
| in federal bankruptcy law, setting things like allowable
| personal exemptions, etc.
| a12k wrote:
| Yep! This is all correct. The point remains, however,
| that Delaware law does have a substantial amount to do
| with bankruptcy proceedings in Delaware, which is really
| the point I was responding to.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| I may have been wrong to say "nothing" but from what I
| understand Delaware law has very little to do with it and
| I don't see how it would be relevant to this particular
| ruling, but I am always open to learning more as I find
| the topic of law quite interesting.
| maxlybbert wrote:
| This bankruptcy was filed in Texas.
|
| How would the corporate charter affect the fairness of
| how the auction was conducted?
| a12k wrote:
| I don't know in this case specifically. In the typical
| case though I've seen corporate charters enhance
| fiduciary duties, I've seen them specify auction
| procedures, I've seen them give certain classes certain
| rights, and most importantly for this case I've seen them
| define corporate governance during the auction sale.
|
| So potentially has massive implications for the auction
| and its fairness.
| bandrami wrote:
| There are (AFAIK) no Federally-incorporated firms though
| adolph wrote:
| > Seems like the judge is overstepping given Delaware law
| on this matter.
|
| What does Delaware have to do with it? If DE had any
| jurisdiction, what law would have been broken?
|
| https://www.dailydac.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2024/10/0859-Win...
| bluGill wrote:
| Will the losing bidders drop out, or not? In a sealed bid you
| have to guess what others will bid - you want to bid $1 more
| than your competitors (or if you will lose the bid make your
| competitor pay as much as possible). The judge is saying
| because the bids were seals losing bidders had no clue what
| their correct bid is and some are likely to have bid less
| than they would have in open bidding.
|
| Who is right I don't know.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _judge is saying because the bids were seals losing
| bidders had no clue what their correct bid is and some are
| likely to have bid less than they would have in open
| bidding. Who is right I don 't know._
|
| Sealed-bid auctions are incredibly common across markets
| [1]. Real estate. Corporate mergers.
|
| Note, too, that an English auction is revenue equivalent to
| a second-price sealed-bid auction [2], and here we had a
| first-price sealed-bid auction with two bidders.
|
| There may be valid reasons to challenge this auction.
| Sealed bids is absolutely, definitively not one.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-price_sealed-
| bid_aucti...
|
| [2] https://www.sfu.ca/~idudnyk/Auctions_Part2_Revenue_Equi
| valen...
| iav wrote:
| you need a lot more than 2 bidders for the theory to
| hold. Repeating the auction just seems pointless, but
| another avenue could be for the assets to not be sold,
| and the claimants to receive 100% of the equity of the
| business. Then over time they can potentially see a
| better recovery than what they are getting from a sale.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _you need a lot more than 2 bidders for the theory to
| hold_
|
| Wrong. Vickrey auctions are well studied in single-item
| auctions even with two bidders [1]. (They perform between
| 4/3 and 2 compared to an optimal omniscient auction. Not
| solved. But not unstudied.)
|
| > _claimants to receive 100% of the equity of the
| business_
|
| This is Chapter 7. The bankruptcy estate already legally
| owns the asset, not Jones.
|
| [1] https://www.timroughgarden.org/papers/bk.pdf
| _Examples 4.6 and 5.2_
| amyames wrote:
| The trustee gets something like 3% over $1million in
| liquidated assets.
|
| Call it 52,000 from the onion sale.
|
| well now someone says I could have bought it for 10
| million.
|
| trustee now gets $300,000. They're not going to get in
| the way.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Why do you think this is relevant? (Everyone is
| ostensibly trying to maximise the price.)
| bluGill wrote:
| I am not disagreeing with anything you have said here.
| Sealed-bid is common. Sometimes it works well, sometimes
| it doesn't. It is debatable if it is better or not.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It is debatable if it is better or not_
|
| No, it really isn't. Not with two bidders. The moment the
| first party announces their bid you have perfect
| collusion (if the second party, rationally, runs out the
| clock) or a stalled auction (if running out the clock is
| impossible, thereby always allowing someone to always
| claim they'll bid better).
| hibikir wrote:
| You can test this in boardgames about auctioning: See
| Modern Art, a game about profiting from art, where you have
| multiple forma of bidding. Part of the game is to figure
| out when each auction will provide the most money.
|
| Blind bidding doesn't let people improve their bid, but it
| also lets someone bid much higher than the second best bid,
| so it can be extremely profitable in some situations.
| Compare to a version of said auction where you bid only
| once, but where the winner will only pay the second best
| bid plus one.
| usrusr wrote:
| Uncertainty makes bids go up. Introducing the possibility
| that perhaps there might be a second round after a bid
| turned out to be too low reduces uncertainty.
|
| Imagine game theory dynamics in poker if an unhappy player
| could say "well, come to think of it, I guess I did not
| really want to see, I'd rather fold"
| jameshart wrote:
| In a single round sealed bid auction, it's equally likely
| that a winner will have bid more than they would have in
| open bidding since they only get one shot to name a price.
| bluGill wrote:
| Maybe. Some will do this. Some will try for a deal in
| hopes that nobody else is bidding.
| avs733 wrote:
| Taking the judges decision at face value here is
| fundamentally the problem - because it relies largely on Alex
| Jones as an arbiter of reality.
|
| The judge seems to take Jones, the guy who lost the auction,
| as the arbiter of what happened. That is a problem and not
| just because of the strong potential for bias, and not just
| because the trustee would be a more obvious source of truth -
| because he ran the auction. Its a problem at a deeper level
| because the judge seems set on taking Alex Jones as a good
| faith actor. Every step in the court process has shown that
| not to be true. We aren't here randomly and this bankruptcy
| doesn't exist in a vacuum.
|
| Even setting aside that nonsense. THe judge seems confused on
| the difference between money and value. Thats the type of
| thing an undergrad gets wrong.
| mountainriver wrote:
| Yep so that Elon can step in and buy it
| flatline wrote:
| This is the comment I was looking for. He said he was going
| to intervene and something to the effect of "fix it." This
| seems like a logical outcome of that statement.
| dylan604 wrote:
| You know, if Elon buys it at the same levels of inflated
| values he did for Twitter so that the creditors get paid,
| I'm kind of okay with that. Just kind of. His fix will
| not go to Jones. Jones is not going away however this
| ends. Just the brand. He can create a new brand.
| paulpauper wrote:
| without jones then what good is the brand?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Jones will create his own new brand once this is settled.
|
| So it is more of a question to the bankruptcy court
| itself, as I would agree that there's no value in
| Infowars without Jones. So my opening bid to the court is
| $1.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _You know, if Elon buys it at the same levels of
| inflated values he did for Twitter so that the creditors
| get paid,_
|
| He paid $44B. He probably could have got it for less at
| the time, but if you think it's not worth that, I'm not
| sure what to tell you. It's literally where all news gets
| broken. All of it. And he's using it to influence global
| politics.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Inflated values was Musk's own words, not mine. To the
| point, he was _forced_ by a court to honor his original
| higher price than what he wanted to pay after re-
| evaluating it. Not sure why you 're quibbling over the
| fact that everyone thinks Musk paid an inflated price.
| motorest wrote:
| > He paid $44B. He probably could have got it for less at
| the time, but if you think it's not worth that, I'm not
| sure what to tell you.
|
| It's indisputable that Twitter was worth $44B at the time
| of the sale because by definition the price of something
| is what the buyer and seller agree to perform the
| transaction.
|
| What's also indisputable is that even Elon Musk was
| refusing to pay that much for Twitter and tried to back
| down until he was sued to force him to put his money
| where his mouth was.
| paulpauper wrote:
| I doubt elon will want it
| BadHumans wrote:
| Elon is going to be the highest bidder if they run the
| process again.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Maybe Alex Jones will also get a nice contract to sell his
| vitamins to the US armed forces.
| chollida1 wrote:
| > I think the Judge maybe naive in thinking that re-running
| an auction will generate more money (normally it will
| generate less, as the losing bidders will drop out) but he
| did not agree with Jones' claims.
|
| What evidence are you basing this on?
| ajb wrote:
| I no longer remember the title of the paper but it was on
| the Gordon-Brown-era spectrum auctions. Basically if
| bidders can obtain information about each others
| preferences other than via the auction - or in some cases
| even via the auction - the expected price is lower. I think
| it applies when a limited number of bidders are interested.
| If Elon is interested then all bets are off :-)
| randomfool wrote:
| The actual issue is that the winning bid was $7m- $1.75m cash
| + $5.25m in debt forgiveness. The question is whether that
| bid is higher than the competing $3.5m all-cash bid.
|
| That $5.25m debt forgiveness would have to be valued at
| $1.75m or more for the winning bid to actually be higher, but
| if other creditors are assuming that they will have losses of
| higher than 66% then the $3.5m all-cash bid would actually be
| better for other creditors.
| adolph wrote:
| > The end effect will probably be even more subscribers and
| money for Jones
|
| That seems a very foreseeable outcome.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| > What recourse is left when the legal system is this broken?
|
| I mean, I'm not advocating it, but we saw the decision of a guy
| who made the news over the past week with a healthcare exec.
| davidw wrote:
| "no consequences."
|
| This is basically going to be the United States for the
| immediate future, if you're connected to the right people.
|
| Downvote all you want, but we see it with our own eyes.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| When has it been otherwise? See also: Hunter Biden.
| davidw wrote:
| It's never 0 or 100. But it does ebb and flow, and boy is
| it about to flow.
|
| Comparing one guy who was in the hot seat only because of
| his surname to the incoming shit storm is risible.
| Natsu wrote:
| Can you point us to videos of other people doing lots of
| federal drug & gun crimes who get away with it?
| davidw wrote:
| They rejected a plea deal. That almost never happens. He
| was 100% guilty of some things, but they wanted to drag
| out the whole process for publicity rather than to
| actually do some semblance of 'justice'.
|
| And some of these incoming people threatened to keep
| going after him just to inflict pain on his father.
|
| These are no longer the party of Romney and McCain. "The
| cruelty is the point".
| josteink wrote:
| > Comparing one guy who was in the hot seat only because
| of his surname
|
| There exists boatloads of concrete evidence Hunter Biden
| was guilty of several categories of crimes, related to
| drugs, corruption, illegal firearms and child
| prostitutes.
|
| There's a reason he had to be pardoned by Joe, right? He
| essentially created a "the full laptop" pardon, complete
| unprecedented.
|
| Any other person guilty of half these things would be in
| for life.
|
| You got it backwards. He didn't get a shit storm due to
| his last name. He got a free pass due to it.
| Pxtl wrote:
| The only reason Biden pardoned his son was that Trump
| _explicitly said_ he was going to use the DoJ for a
| punitive witch-hunt. No father would ever subject their
| child to that.
|
| If Harris had won, Biden would not have pardoned Hunter.
| Likely Harris would've pardoned him in a year or two after
| he'd seen prison.
| jason-phillips wrote:
| > What recourse is left when the legal system is this broken?
|
| Exactly. The lawfare must stop.
| rbanffy wrote:
| They won a defamation lawsuit when what he did was way more
| than just defamation. He deliberately made the families'
| lives hell, and did that for profit.
| blacksqr wrote:
| This seems to me like a victim of attempted murder suing the
| assailant into bankruptcy, where one of the assailant's main
| assets is a really expensive gun, and the assailant is still
| saying how much they'd like to kill the victim with that gun.
|
| Surely there must be a legally viable way to resolve such a
| bankruptcy that doesn't involve the assailant buying back the
| gun with funds raised from friends.
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| You speak practically. Unfortunately the courts do not, and
| as a result, the courts are suffering a deficit of trust and
| confidence, nationally.[1] The problems transcend one case
| and unfortunately they do not point clearly to one answer or
| a single set of answers. Is it the system? Is it the laws? Is
| it the people? Why do we get bizarre elevation of form, and
| results wholly devoid of justice?
|
| [1] https://www.mass.gov/news/supreme-judicial-court-chief-
| justi...
| Vaslo wrote:
| Can't blame him, that monetary judgement is ridiculous and
| should be capped.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Why should it be capped? Was the harm dealt to the victims
| capped at all?
| gigatexal wrote:
| What a shame
| Clubber wrote:
| >After Jones refused to cooperate at trial, judges in Connecticut
| and Texas found him liable by default, and juries then awarded
| the families more than a billion dollars in damages, which Jones
| is still appealing.
|
| Default judgements usually occur when the defendant doesn't show
| up. Was this the case?
|
| I haven't been following this much but I suspect the billion
| dollar settlement will be overturned on appeal as being
| excessive. They're trying to get what they can while they can.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| > I suspect the billion dollar settlement will be overturned on
| appeal as being excessive.
|
| Why?
| a-french-anon wrote:
| He clearly wrote "on appeal as being excessive".
| Clubber wrote:
| You have to prove damages.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| You don't, though.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_damages
|
| > Because they are usually paid in excess of the
| plaintiff's provable injuries, punitive damages are awarded
| only in special cases, usually under tort law, if the
| defendant's conduct was egregiously insidious.
| sophacles wrote:
| Jones had a default judgement against him because he repeatedly
| failed to comply with court orders and discovery. It probably
| didn't help that he openly declared on his show that his
| idiotic behavior was a clever plan to fool the courts...
| apparently a couple million fools can't keep a secret.
| krisoft wrote:
| > I suspect the billion dollar settlement will be overturned on
| appeal as being excessive
|
| Not a lawyer, but that didn't seem to have happened?
|
| Quote from this article: https://www.reuters.com/legal/appeals-
| court-upholds-nearly-1...
|
| "A three-judge panel of the Connecticut Appellate Court found
| that a jury's October 2022 decision to award $965 million in
| damages plus attorneys fees and costs to families of the
| shooting's victims was not unreasonable given the mental
| anguish they suffered due to the lies by Jones about Sandy
| Hook."
|
| They found fault with a smaller portion of the whole award, and
| even there not because it was found to be excessive: "the
| judges found fault only with a portion awarding $150 million in
| damages under a state unfair trade practices law, finding that
| should be thrown out because it did not properly apply to the
| facts of the case."
| Clubber wrote:
| Just found out he recently lost appeal. He has Connecticut
| Supreme Court, federal district court and SCOTUS to appeal to
| now.
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/connecticut-court-
| uphold...
| rob74 wrote:
| Ok, then I would be very surprised (positively) if it
| weren't overturned by SCOTUS (if it goes that far).
| Clubber wrote:
| The damages seem excessive to me. If he were the shooter,
| it would be justified, but he was not. I'm surprised the
| appellate court upheld it. Don't get me wrong, what Jones
| did was pretty horrible, especially after having just
| lost their kids right before Christmas. The presents were
| still under the tree. I couldn't imagine, but he wasn't
| the shooter.
|
| If it stands, it would also set a pretty bad precedent.
| Trump could sue MSNBC for $1B for their RussiaGate
| reporting. Gaetz could sue ABC for $1B their View
| reporting, etc. They would be effectively shut down.
|
| Or maybe it would be good. It would force news
| organizations to not be so sloppy.
| rcxdude wrote:
| >Default judgements usually occur when the defendant doesn't
| show up. Was this the case?
|
| Almost. He was overtly attempting to stall the proceedings by
| endlessly failing to co-operate in discovery.
| zabzonk wrote:
| Probably needs to be settled before Trump gets in?
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| Why, so the outgoing government which lost the public vote can
| make the decision instead of the president elect ?
|
| Disclaimer, I think Trump is a buffoon, but I also think this
| kind of thinking is backwards.
| kubb wrote:
| President elect shouldn't control the courts but whatever.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| You think the current president is influencing this court
| case?
| khuey wrote:
| The elected government isn't making this decision anyways,
| this is in a court in front of a judge (one previously
| appointed by the president-elect, no less).
| kubb wrote:
| Can Trump pardon Jones? I thought pardons apply in criminal
| cases, not in civil cases like bankruptcy.
| n144q wrote:
| It's not about pardoning, it's about what US bankruptcy
| trustee thinks is ok or not ok. Had this happen under Trump
| administration, I would assume that the trustee would not
| even allow such a deal to go ahead in the first place.
| fidotron wrote:
| And as a follow on, if the president pardons someone for a
| crime can those harmed by it still sue the perpetrator for
| damages in a civil case?
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| Yes absolutely. Being found not guilty of a crime or being
| pardoned has no bearing on the evidence that exists which
| is presented in a separate civil case against you.
|
| There's no double jeopardy in a civil case - it's a matter
| of if someone has a claim of damages.
| n144q wrote:
| United States Bankruptcy Judge Christopher M. Lopez was
| appointed to the United States Bankruptcy Court, Southern
| District of Texas, effective August 14, 2019. Judge Lopez was
| sworn in by United States Circuit Judge Gregg Costa on
| Wednesday, August 14, 2019.
|
| Hmm.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Trump, nor any other president, can eliminate the court's
| decision. A president's power would be limited to appointing
| judges in open positions, so potentially the responsible
| appeals court (up to the SCOTUS) could be influenced, but not
| controlled.
| relaxing wrote:
| > influenced, but not controlled
|
| A useless distinction in practice.
| bena wrote:
| This is kind of bullshit. The Sandy Hook families were a part of
| The Onion's bid. They were clearly ok with it.
|
| The court knows it can't sell it back to Jones or a proxy of, but
| this decision also allows Jones to continue as if he hadn't sold.
| And I think that's what they're aiming for
| keepamovin wrote:
| Because the auction was a scam, I guess.
| n144q wrote:
| Not surprised. The deal was on shaky ground -- kind of a secret
| deal without a process to include all potential buyers. The Onion
| could still have been the winner in a more public, transparent
| bidding process, but they didn't do that. Procedural correctness
| is important, otherwise you would see this, or in some other
| case, entire convictions being overturned, which is the opposite
| of what you want to achieve.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| Yeah it is so dumb seeing the shady shit when it's so not
| needed -- reminds me of that wild Alec baldwin prosecutor
| shakna wrote:
| The deal wasn't shaky. It was an auction where there were only
| two potential buyers who actually rocked up. It wasn't secret,
| it was public. It was issued by a court, including a process
| where bidders had to submit offers before a deadline. [0]
|
| ThreeSixty Asset Advisors ran the process. As they often do.
| Tranzon Asset Advisors assisted, as they often do. There were
| confidentiality agreements and sealed bids... But that's the
| _normal process_ for selling off assets through a court.
|
| A sealed bid is designed to avoid negotiation, and other
| processes more easily manipulated by bias, unconscious or
| otherwise. The bids are unseen between the buyers, and opened
| at the same time.
|
| There were a "large number" of interested parties before the
| deadline. However, most pulled out and did not submit a bid
| before the deadline. Leaving only two.
|
| Some potential bidders, like The Barbed Wire, stated that they
| pulled out because they simply couldn't afford the expected
| sale price.
|
| All of this was the _exact_ same procedure for other forfeiture
| assets.
|
| The Judge did not find any wrong doing by the buyers, but
| rather lamented that the final sale price was too low. That's
| it. Not a procedural stuff up. That was followed correctly.
|
| > "I don't like second-guessing trustees," the judge said, but
| that is exactly what he did.
|
| > "It's clear that [U.S. bankruptcy trustee Christopher Murray]
| left a lot of money on the table," Lopez said, adding that he
| thought the process was "doomed" the moment Murray decided to
| cancel a live auction and call for sealed "best and final"
| offers instead.
|
| He simply wanted the auction to take longer.
|
| [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2024/11/13/alex-
| jone...
| mxfh wrote:
| So it's just fair, that The Onion should now get a minimum
| provision of 20% of whatever the new price is for effectively
| advertising the auction.
| theflyingelvis wrote:
| So, I dislike Jones and think his shows are BS, but how can he be
| held responsible for the actions of his listeners? I haven't
| heard it mentioned that he asked his listeners to actually reach
| out to the Sandy Hook families and harass them.
| burnished wrote:
| Oh won't someone rid me of this troublesome priest
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Jones was never technically tried for anything. He refused to
| participate in the trial in a meaningful manner and had a
| default judgment against him instead.
| bdcravens wrote:
| He is being held responsible for personally defaming the Sandy
| Hook victims and families.
| theflyingelvis wrote:
| Thank you. Can you elaborate? Wouldn't jones stating garbage
| like the shooting didn't happen etc. be opinion? How were his
| statements defamation ? I missed where he defamed the
| families as I don't listen to his shows.
| relaxing wrote:
| > Wouldn't jones stating garbage like the shooting didn't
| happen etc. be opinion?
|
| Holy shit the last 8 years really have damaged our
| understanding of what "facts" are.
| bdcravens wrote:
| IANAL, but the semantics of opinion vs fact are typically
| tangential to the court's determination of defamation.
| However, in many cases it's a matter of framing: "I think
| that ..." prefixing a statement can carry a lot of weight
| versus _presenting_ it as a fact.
| mherkender wrote:
| Defamation is a crime, the fact that his listeners harassed
| people because of that defamation makes it even worse.
| rcxdude wrote:
| This. A core part of defamation cases (especially from a
| damages point of view), is showing that the false statements
| caused harm, and that's generally by way of those statements
| influncing other's beliefs and actions (apart from
| harassment, this could also take the form of people being
| unwilling to work with/provide a service to the defamed party
| because of said statements).
|
| (Note that it's important that the statements are false, and
| depending on some details, that either they were known to be
| false at the time, or that there was a reckless disregard to
| the truth, i.e. no effort was made to determine if they were
| true or false. If you state something that is true, or is
| false but you had good reason to believe is true, or that is
| merely an opinion, then it's not defamation even if someone
| harassess them or worse)
| theflyingelvis wrote:
| Ok thanks. This is what I was curious about. Got it.
| n144q wrote:
| I don't think anything can ever happen in the US -- that's part
| of the First Amendment.
|
| I do think there should be some other way that would lead to
| Alex Jones lose his audience. But I don't see anything
| happening yet.
|
| Trump and Elon are not nearly as bad as Alex Jones (arguably),
| and lots of people don't like them, but they have an audience,
| lots of other people like them, support them and send money to
| them. If they are not held responsible for things they say, if
| Trump is aquitted of January 6th, I don't think people should
| expect much to happen.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| It's an immediate consequence.
| bhouston wrote:
| Remember that this was made possible by the intervention of Elon
| Musk.
|
| I suspect he may end up buying the assets himself or someone in
| this circle.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| That idea is disgusting enough for him to try.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Is that asset of any use at this point? Even onion's bid seems
| like a waste of money to me
| bhouston wrote:
| Could Elon or a billionaire friend of his buy it, at a
| slightly higher price than the Onion offered, and then employ
| Alex Jones as a host?
|
| InfoWars is worth nothing if not for Alex Jones right. So if
| you want to maximize value, you need to somehow keep him
| around to serve his audience.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Alex Jones owes a lot of money after the lawsuits against
| hi , if he was hired back at Infowars everything he made
| would be clawed over. Second, Alex Jobes is what his
| followers are interested in, if he still has any followers
| left. Anyone else who buys this asset will not be able to
| extract any value from it.
| norlygfyd wrote:
| This was not made possible by the intervention of Musk. If
| you're referring to the X Corp objection, this has absolutely
| nothing to do with that.
| amalcon wrote:
| I am just some guy who doesn't actually know much about this.
| This being the internet, though:
|
| If I understand, it's pretty routine in real estate foreclosures
| for a creditor to win the auction simply by bidding the
| outstanding value of the debt. Thus not needing to actually come
| up with much or any cash. This gains the ability to use or resell
| the property however you want.
|
| How is one situation different from the other?
| trollbridge wrote:
| Bankruptcy runs by different rules than foreclosures (which is
| why people about to be foreclosed on often file bankruptcy).
| Specifically, junior creditors are protected, and everyone gets
| a proportionate share of the proceeds.
|
| In a foreclosure, the senior lienholder usually gets the
| property and the junior lienholders either get nothing or get
| what's left over after the senior creditor gets whatever they
| were owed.
|
| I'm really not sure why the creditors in this case did a shady
| no bid deal... it seems they would have had an easy time buying
| out the junior creditors and then getting whatever they want,
| although I'm also not sure why anyone would want the
| "infowars.com" domain and a warehouse full of vitamin pills.
| JackFr wrote:
| Bankruptcy is something that happens to the borrower.
| Foreclosure is something that happens to the property.
| trollbridge wrote:
| Correct, although a foreclosure of a property will be
| affected if the owner of said property undergoes
| bankruptcy. (For private individuals, such as Mr Jones,
| some or all of their primary residential property is exempt
| from bankruptcy, and the foreclosure itself will be stayed
| until the bankruptcy is adjudicated, and, generally
| speaking, foreclosure will be stopped if they resume making
| mortgage payments, regardless of prior delinquencies.)
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| > I'm really not sure why the creditors in this case did a
| shady no bid deal... it seems they would have had an easy
| time buying out the junior creditors and then getting
| whatever they want, although I'm also not sure why anyone
| would want the "infowars.com" domain and a warehouse full of
| vitamin pills.
|
| The creditors with smaller claims hate the guts of the
| creditors with bigger claims, and likely wouldn't sell for
| any amount of money. Also, I am not sure whose claims have
| been decided to be senior to other claims (seniority of
| claims has little to do with monetary amount). Not all types
| of debt are equal.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| > I'm really not sure why the creditors in this case did a
| shady no bid deal...
|
| The reason is because there were two civil judgements against
| Alex Jones to satisfy with the second judgement being about
| 27x larger than the first. As a result, it is mathematically
| impossible to run an auction that triggers an outcome large
| enough to satisfy both judgements proportionally and
| positively. Many members of the second judgement decided to
| forego any winnings from this auction so as to satisfy the
| first judgement positively on the condition they would earn a
| share of ad revenue from the intellectual property in the
| future. Their primary motivation was not ad revenue or any
| other form of income, but instead ensuring the concerned
| intellectual property rests with an owner not friendly to
| Alex Jones.
|
| That is the reason the Onion won the auction despite offering
| the lower of two bids, because the larger bid did not
| positively satisfy the parties to the first judgement.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| appointed in 2019, gee what a shocker
| hbn wrote:
| Jones seems like a nut, but the way he's being taken to the
| cleaners and sued for comical amounts of money are just absurd.
| I'm not being hyperbolic saying people would be less mad at him
| if he had done the shooting himself.
|
| And it's especially rich in a time where the most popular podcast
| genre is women commenting on brutal murder cases as they're fresh
| and being investigated, and throwing out their pet theories about
| real living people being responsible. What's the difference?
| Andrex wrote:
| As a CT native, you'll never coax an ounce of sympathy for
| Jones from me. He made his bed, doubled down, and faced
| justice. The system worked at least one time.
| acdha wrote:
| Jones continued to inflict harm on families who'd lost
| children, and profited significantly from it both financially
| and politically. He defied multiple courts, too, so there was
| no question of premeditation or incapacity, just repeated
| decisions to cause harm year after year.
|
| That's the difference: true crime podcasts don't cause harm on
| that scale, and few people are going to defy the authority of
| the legal system the way he did.
| roenxi wrote:
| While that is terrible, I don't know if you can argue it is
| terrible to the tune of what they've done to Jones. Every
| major media outlet has some instances of, effectively,
| targeted harassment in their history. Whether the public
| endorses that harassment is more a question of how effective
| the reporters are than anything else.
|
| It makes sense that Jones would lose the case, but the scale
| of the judgements was eye watering and is difficult to
| justify. The scale of the compensation is in a different
| world to the amount of damage done (intentionally, the bulk
| is punative). That changes the nature of what is going on.
| acdha wrote:
| > Every major media outlet has some instances of,
| effectively, targeted harassment in their history. Whether
| the public endorses that harassment is more a question of
| how effective the reporters are than anything else.
|
| Do you have any examples supporting the equivalence you're
| claiming? The high judgements were caused by his defiance
| of earlier judgements so that pattern is really what we're
| looking for.
| vizzier wrote:
| Not OP, but Fox Settled the dominion lawsuit for $725M
| [1]. So this type of harassment means big judgments
| against you.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Voting_Systems
| _v._Fox...
| acdha wrote:
| How was that harassment? They directed a baseless smear
| campaign which posed a significant risk to Dominion's
| business. Unless we're defining "harassment" as
| "accountability", that seems fair.
| vizzier wrote:
| You're right, harassment might not be the right term when
| applied to a corporate entity. Either way these were both
| defamation suits.
| acdha wrote:
| I think the more important aspect is that both of these
| were cases where someone knowingly promulgated false
| information fully aware that their story was not
| supported by the facts. Real journalists don't tend to do
| that both because it's unethical and because it can be
| financially ruinous.
|
| The situation is different in cases where the truth isn't
| clear or where supporting evidence turns out to be fake
| because in those cases a real journalistic organization
| will retract or update their story. Had either of them
| been willing to do so, they almost certainly wouldn't
| have even been sued. The Sandy Hook settlement was so
| large because it was obvious that Jones simply wasn't
| going to leave the victims alone.
| skulk wrote:
| > I don't know if you can argue it is terrible to the tune
| of what they've done to Jones
|
| They're telling him to stop. That's what the judgement
| really is. He refused to defend himself in court and he's
| been told that he needs to stop. And you need to stop
| carrying water for him unless you can point to a single
| specific thing that the court did to him that was not fair,
| and making vague and uninformed statements about the big
| picture result doesn't count.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| He's been ignoring the courts. I don't know what you want
| them to do? I guess they could put him in prison, but I'm
| guessing that would be considered harsh too.
|
| Again, for the 2nd time, its not what he's done, it's that
| he's ignoring everyone telling him to stop, including the
| government. I don't know what you expect the punishment for
| that to be. If it were you or I we would have had our asses
| dragged into prison a long time ago. He's only gotten this
| far because of his money.
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| Call me crazy, but I don't think the government should be
| able to "tell you to stop talking" about something just
| because it makes some people upset.
| acdha wrote:
| You're welcome to try to get the laws against defamation
| repealed but until then there is a specific legal
| standard which was met in this case. If you think that's
| unfair, perhaps start by asking yourself whether his
| lawyers made the same argument and why it failed.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > While that is terrible, I don't know if you can argue it
| is terrible to the tune of what they've done to Jones.
|
| As a single human being, he's literally not capable of
| suffering as much as the bereaved relatives of a classroom
| full of murdered children, shortly afterwards made the
| targets _often by name and photo_ of the most insane people
| in the country.
|
| > Every major media outlet has some instances of,
| effectively, targeted harassment in their history.
|
| Is this even an argument? They get sued all the time, and
| lose. They haven't ever viciously and endlessly gone after
| the parents of a classroom full of dead children. They did
| go after Richard Jewell and Steven J. Hatfill, though.
| User23 wrote:
| My understanding is he didn't lose the case on the merits.
| During discovery he was required to hand over documents
| from his Google account, but Google had locked his account
| and he couldn't get access. The judge then ruled he was in
| default for failing to produce.
|
| This is obviously a massive abuse of the justice system,
| violating the maxim that the law does not compel the
| impossible. But, since the prevailing opinion (including
| both judge and jury) observably is "enh, fuck that guy"
| nobody much cares. However the shoe is going to be on the
| other foot sooner or later. It may be that hounding Alex
| Jones wasn't worth the precedent (making this style of
| lawfare acceptable, not an actual legal precedent) that
| this case sets.
|
| I can easily imagine a case where, say, X blocks discovery
| in a similar way to achieve a similar outcome for someone
| on the left. Do we want this to be how we do things?
| jdiff wrote:
| This is not at all what happened. I can't speak to his
| Google account, but Jones failed to produce text messages
| from his phone referencing Sandy Hook, claiming they
| didn't exist. Then his lawyers mistakenly sent a copy of
| the entire contents of his phone to the prosecution,
| showing that the text messages did in fact exist, and
| would have been found for a simple keyword search for
| "Sandy Hook," demonstrating that they were trying to
| conceal these messages from the court.
| acdha wrote:
| Jones lied under oath that he did not have the messages
| he had been ordered to provide but then accidentally
| turned them over, which came out quite dramatically in
| court:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-62416324
|
| Any time someone tells something is "obviously a massive
| abuse of the justice system", ask them for details. Many
| people lie for political reasons knowing that their
| followers will not check the facts, but those claims
| usually fall apart as soon as you do. Lying to a judge or
| doing something you were ordered not to do is going to
| get you in trouble no matter what else is going on.
|
| In the case of discovery about Google, note that there
| were two separate problems:
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/alex-jones-and-infowars-
| were...
|
| The first was that he lied about a spreadsheet not
| existing, and then the defense got evidence that it did -
| since that behavior was habitual, a judge is going to
| punish it more harshly than an isolated mistake which is
| promptly corrected.
|
| The second problem was that he was trying to use the
| defense that he didn't profit from Sandy Hook stories
| while not providing data which could have been used to
| test that claim. The judge didn't jail him for that, but
| he wasn't allowed to make an unverified "trust me bro"
| claim.
| hbn wrote:
| When was the last time he was profiting from Sandy Hook
| conspiracies? I heard him apologize for it years ago and say
| he doesn't believe it.
|
| And true crime podcasts definitely do cause harm, the fans of
| those shows love playing vigilante detective, stalking and
| harassing people close to the case to get information. I
| remember a few years ago there was an incident where they
| were protesting outside of some guy's house because he was a
| suspect in his girlfriend's disappearance, so he couldn't
| even go outside. True crime is an entire industry monetizing
| tragedies in realtime on a scale the Sandy Hook conspiracies
| never came anywhere close to.
| m-ee wrote:
| The deposition of his father clearly laid out that they saw
| spikes in sales when the sandy hook conspiracy was
| mentioned and actively sought to replicate it.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| This doesn't answer the question about when this was
| occurring.
| jeltz wrote:
| > And it's especially rich in a time where the most popular
| podcast genre is women commenting on brutal murder cases as
| they're fresh and being investigated, and throwing out their
| pet theories about real living people being responsible. What's
| the difference?
|
| I am totally fine with convicting those for slander too. It is
| a pretty disgusting market.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| The sentence you're claiming isn't hyperbolic is hyperbolic.
| While you can absolutely reasonably disagree with the
| judgement, I don't believe you can reasonably use a phrase like
| " _seems_ like a _nut_ " to summarize his part in this, if
| you're at all familiar with it and are being honest. "Immoral"
| would be the absolute minimum descriptor one could employ, even
| in the context of cold objectivity.
|
| And why should we compare this to the podcast you're
| describing? They're two completely different kinds of
| immorality, and are not teams I must pick from.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I feel like your first paragraph has some slight sense, but
| then you demolish it with the second paragraph which just shows
| that you actually have no idea who Alex Jones is or what he has
| done
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Nancy Grace comes to mind, who has far more reach being on
| national television. She made claims about people who were
| later found to be guilty. Her speculation pushed harassment.
| jjeaff wrote:
| Alex Jones has far more listeners than Nancy Grace has ever
| had. He was pulling down 8 figures selling fake boner pills
| and tin foil hats on his merch website.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| later found to be NOT Guilty* I typod.
| newZWhoDis wrote:
| Let's talk about scale: Jones has to pay ~5x what Boeing did.
|
| Boeing killed 346 people
|
| https://apnews.com/article/boeing-guilty-plea-crashes-245a38...
| gretch wrote:
| Boeing killed people while making a not-good-enough design
| for a highly complex airplane system. And even though it
| killed 346 ppl, it continues to get millions people safely
| from point to point safely.
|
| It's negligent and they need to change, but it's pretty
| forgivable.
|
| Jones went on a mic and ripped false info, enriching no one
| but himself and grieving these families repeatedly.
| Nathanba wrote:
| This is misrepresentation, they didn't just happen to make
| a mistake in a complex situation. The crime was to know
| about the mistake and still not fix it - on purpose. The
| crime was to know that they should be giving people
| training on this system for safety reasons but they didn't
| anyway. Afaik it is an additional misrepresentation that
| the same system is now continuing on to fly. It is not,
| they fixed it and patched it.
| gretch wrote:
| Some of the issues were reported and a decision maker
| thought "we can get by without this". Pretty much the
| same reason the Challenger exploded. With a large
| company, there's gonna be reports about all sorts of
| stuff all the time, and you have to sort through the
| noise. They failed to do that here.
|
| But is there any shred of doubt that no one, including
| the greediest most-souless bureaucrat, actually tried to
| make an airplane crash and kill people?
|
| Crashing airplanes is VERY predictably bad for the stock
| price.
| Nathanba wrote:
| >But is there any shred of doubt that no one, including
| the greediest most-souless bureaucrat, actually tried to
| make an airplane crash and kill people?
|
| This is not taking into account how humans are. People
| raise their children really badly all the time even
| though they know what they are doing is bad but they just
| don't care in the moment. Who wants a bad child? But they
| still make all the mistakes and end up producing bad
| children. Incompetence and malice are often nearly
| identical.
| gretch wrote:
| > Incompetence and malice are often nearly identical.
|
| That is not the basis for our system of law. Intention
| (mens rea) matters greatly. Hence anyone who understands
| law shouldn't be surprised at comparing outcomes between
| the boeing case and the jones case.
|
| You can disagree with it, but you really shouldn't be
| surprised.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| There is lot of evidence that the faults in Boeing have
| been internally reported multiple times and neglected.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Who deserves stronger punishment: a man who makes an error
| while driving and kills a family by accident?
|
| Or a man who deliberately runs a person down (but his target
| survived), and intends to continue doing so?
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Jones seems like a nut, but the way he's being taken to the
| cleaners and sued for comical amounts of money are just absurd.
|
| I'm normally extremely sympathetic to this argument, but not
| only was this a conspiracy theory about dead children, but it
| implicated the bereaved, devastated parents and all of the
| relatives of those children. It's so many people that you can't
| really make up for it, ever. There's no number of dollars or
| good deeds that will get him into paradise.
|
| The fact that he still operates in much the same way as before
| makes me think he's blessed by intelligence agencies to use as
| pretense for what they want to do or as distraction from what
| they are doing.
| jancsika wrote:
| > Jones seems like a nut, but the way he's being taken to the
| cleaners and sued for comical amounts of money are just absurd.
|
| I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is the Jones/Sandy Hook
| case-- like the Fox/Dominion case-- was an outlier because
| there is nearly never that amount of evidence to be able to
| pass the high bar for defamation.
|
| So I think it's the other way around-- Jones was comically
| brazen in the claims he made. Hence the huge amounts in the
| Jones cases. (And if the podcasters are as brazen, go tell the
| real living people about their open-and-shut defamation cases
| and collect a nice finders fee for yourself. :)
|
| Edit: clarification
| loeg wrote:
| Jones was also completely hostile to the courts and legal
| process. That will get you a larger punishment than someone
| who did the same actions but respected the court.
| Nathanba wrote:
| I watched some of his videos at the time and to me it seemed
| mostly like the exact same content that he always does. Very
| much not brazen claims of facts, just musing and speculating
| that it's all fake and the parents are smiling so they might
| be actors. That's it. And the entire time he was emphasizing
| that he doesn't know for sure and it's all theory.
| jjeaff wrote:
| he specifically called out parents by name, constantly made
| claims that they were obviously crisis actors, showed
| pictures of the parents, and did nothing when his listeners
| started harassing the parents daily.
| mintplant wrote:
| Popping open Podcast Addict, the top 10 podcasts right now are:
|
| 1. No Such Thing As A Fish; 2. My Brother, My Brother And Me;
| 3. Planet Money; 4. Revolutions; 5. 99% Invisible; 6. Stuff You
| Should Know; 7. The Adventure Zone; 8. This American Life; 9.
| Freakinomics Radio; 10. The Rest Is History
|
| I had to scroll to #32 to find Casefile which _sorta_ fits your
| criteria, except it 's hosted by a dude and I think he
| generally discusses older cases.
| j2kun wrote:
| Yeah OP is out of their mind on this point. Even spotify
| doesn't have many true crime podcasts in their top 50.
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| #3 after comedy and news, ahead of sports.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/786938/top-podcast-
| genre...
| afavour wrote:
| > And it's especially rich in a time where the most popular
| podcast genre is women commenting on brutal murder cases as
| they're fresh and being investigated, and throwing out their
| pet theories about real living people being responsible. What's
| the difference?
|
| Can you cite any data on that at all? I'm aware of the genre of
| podcast you're referring to but I've never been aware of it
| even remotely being the most popular genre.
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| it's #3 after comedy and news
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/786938/top-podcast-
| genre...
| davidt84 wrote:
| True Crime as a whole may be.
|
| That says nothing about "women commenting on brutal murder
| cases as they're fresh and being investigated, and throwing
| out their pet theories about real living people being
| responsible" even existing at all. (Although I'm sure
| there's some examples of it somewhere.)
| afavour wrote:
| To conflate "true crime" and what the OP was referring to
| strikes me as pretty dishonest.
| Pxtl wrote:
| His wealth is primarily the proceeds of slander and fraud. He
| should not have _any_ of it.
|
| Unfortunately, slander and fraud are really hard to enforce. In
| a just system he'd have never earned that money in the first
| place.
|
| Fortunately, his legal defense was comedically incompetent.
|
| So I'll take "all his money goes to his most-harmed victims" as
| a compromise.
| elzbardico wrote:
| I don't agree with Jones' political positions, but as someone
| who was not born in America, I think I can see the issue in a
| less passionate and partisan way. For me it is clear that the
| this judgment had a gigantic political vector.
|
| I fully agree on the guilty verdict, but the sentence, frankly,
| was meant as a political message for Jones and everyone else on
| his side of the political spectrum: Stop talking the things you
| talk, because we are coming for you, and we get you, you won't
| like it.
|
| As someone who was born in a corrupt small town in a corrupt
| banana republic, and was somewhat familiar with this kind of
| thing, it was pretty easy to see it for what it was.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| I really don't understand how a judgement this large can be
| reasonable in a case where nobody has had his house burned down.
|
| A billion dollars is ten billion crowns, that's 10 000 million
| crowns, or around 5 000 apartments.
|
| I don't understand how 5 000 apartments can be a judgement handed
| out to an individual over something he says. It doesn't really
| matter what he says, when it's this kind of huge amounts. One
| can't fine somebody the value of an entire town unless he's done
| destruction of that order, or at least a fraction of that order.
| mdorazio wrote:
| Look up "nuclear verdicts". The unreasonably large dollar
| amount is intentional and not meant to reflect the real value
| of harm caused.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Yes, but a billion dollars. It's 30x the sale price of
| Minalyzer, a very cool Swedish firm which was bought by
| Veracio.
|
| It's a level where, when it is an international case, it
| makes sense for states to get involved with diplomatic
| pressure. Surely your legal system must be more reasonable
| than this, because if it's like this, how can it function?
| fenomas wrote:
| It wasn't a billion dollars for a single thing, it was
| awards to 15 different defendants, ranging from ~30-120
| million each.
|
| More importantly, you're missing that this was a default
| judgment - Jones didn't defend himself, so the award is
| kind of the theoretical maximum. The results aren't
| comparable to regular court cases where both sides make
| their case.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Yes, but it's still the value of a whole town.
|
| A legal system must be robust even to weird or peculiar
| people who refuse to work with its rules and still
| produce reasonable results.
| pavlov wrote:
| Why should the system accommodate people who refuse to
| defend themselves?
|
| I understand that in a system like Russia where
| dissidents face made-up charges and their attorneys are
| harassed by the state. But Alex Jones isn't in that kind
| of position at all. He has no problem getting legal
| representation.
|
| The default judgment basically means he admitted guilt by
| his refusal. That was his choice.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Because such a system creates absurdities.
|
| There are always going to be crazy people and a system
| must be able to deal with them.
| maeil wrote:
| This is dealing with them. It's just not dealing with
| them in a way that you like.
| ryandrake wrote:
| The system is dealing with them: By imposing the maximum
| possible judgment.
| fenomas wrote:
| Nonsense - a legal system must _apply the law_. Also,
| Jones wasn 't "weird or peculiar" - he repeatedly
| disobeyed and misled the court.
|
| This is like a soccer match where one team won by fifty
| goals, because the other team repeatedly committed fouls
| and then left the pitch, and you're arguing that the
| referee should disallow some of the goals because you
| feel in your gut that fifty is too many.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| It must give reasonable results, and a 1 billion
| judgement against individual over something like this is
| not.
|
| That procedure or rules have been followed is no reason
| to accept an absurd outcome. An absurd outcome is rather
| a reason to reject a set of rules or procedures.
| sp33k3rph433k wrote:
| And this absurd outcome is partially due to a flagrant
| disregard for the sets of rules and procedures that came
| before this case.
|
| The Knowledge Fight podcast covers this case in its
| entirety and it's clear that Infowars et al. has toed the
| line of criminal to delay and deny justice to the
| victims. The legal system hit the end of the road and
| said "everything owed to the victims or everything
| Infowars has" and this is the result.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| But the ruling was for compensatory damages - that is, the
| compensate the victims. It wasn't a punitive damages - which
| would make more sense - basically "You don't get to have your
| infowars any more".
|
| Compensatory damages is making the claim that the sandy hook
| families actually suffered $1B in damages.
| preciousoo wrote:
| How about in a case where libel was relentlessly thrown at
| families over the course of years, on one of the internets
| largest and most engaged audiences, leading to harassment,
| threats, and assault? What should the judgment be for that?
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Not a billion dollars anyway.
|
| But 500k per person maybe, if it really heinous?
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| If that's the case, I sure hope nobody finds my post
| history from my teen years, or the history of anyone who
| was a rebellious teen on the internet in the 2000s.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| That's why we have courts and juries, to make these
| evaluations. Why should your number should be used over
| theirs?
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Because it's obviously crazy. 1 billion dollars is the
| 588 people's entire life income.
|
| It's just excessive.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Alex jones sold something like $165M in supplements in
| the 3 years preceding this case... this is somehow the
| opposite of people complaining that judgements against FB
| are too small based on the Revenue.
| pythonaut_16 wrote:
| So you're saying the legal system should hinge on the
| judgement of what random people believe is "crazy" rather
| than judges, juries, laws, etc. One opinion should
| outweigh everyone and everything else?
| Eisenstein wrote:
| The people who saw all the information and heard from the
| parties involved made that decision. You are saying they
| are wrong based on a feeling.
| hajile wrote:
| It was a default judgement. No trial took place and there
| was no ability for the jury to see evidence from both
| sides. The monetary amount was absolutely based on
| feelings.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| They heard testimony, including Jones'. The fact that
| they weren't able to see evidence from the other side is
| because they refused to give any.
| karaterobot wrote:
| You just repeated the thing he said was not worth $1 billion
| dollars, and then said "but isn't _that_ worth a billion
| dollars?! "
| preciousoo wrote:
| I emphasized that it wasn't just over words said, but the
| frequency of, audience size, and actual real world harm
| that's taken place as a result. And as other commenters
| have pointed out, he acted in contempt of the court on
| several occasions
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Have the families needed to engage private security? I
| wonder what their bills have been.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Several had to move..
| busterarm wrote:
| The same way that big media organizations get away with this
| in court.
|
| "This content is entertainment and there's no way that any
| reasonable person could construe this information as facts."
| If MSNBC, CNN and Fox News can get away with this argument
| every time they are sued, I don't see how InfoWars doesn't.
|
| But then again, court cases aren't about facts or truth.
| skulk wrote:
| It's very simple. InfoWars did not defend itself in court.
| Fox news would have. CNN would have. Is it the court's job
| to defend every defendent?
|
| The amount of comments opining here without knowing a
| smidge of the details of the case is sickening.
| busterarm wrote:
| That's not true either though. The default judgment was
| for not complying with the discovery process to the
| satisfaction of the court. Other options like perjury
| charges were available to the court, but the court chose
| the nuclear option to default against Jones.
|
| Also in many cases courts will allow you to walk back
| from the circumstances that ended up with a person in
| default and to proceed with a fair trial. I even have
| direct experience with this in a foreclosure/foreign-
| judgments case.
|
| The court could have allowed Jones to correct the
| financial and web-analytics records and proceed, but it
| didn't.
| skulk wrote:
| I'm not going to dig up the transcripts, but I was
| following this pretty closely when it happened. If memory
| serves right, Jones was given several chances to comply
| with discovery requests and was constantly attempting to
| misdirect and otherwise disrupt the proceedings. It's not
| like the court balked at the first weird thing the
| defense did and immediately entered into a default
| judgement. I believe the default judgement is the only
| thing that makes any sense in this case. The courts
| aren't there to play games with people like Jones.
|
| edit: I dug up the judgement anyways. Take a look and
| tell me if any of this isn't reasonable. How many more
| chances do you think Jones deserves here?
|
| https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21074211-alex-
| jones-...
|
| > The Court now finds that a default judgment on
| liability should be granted. The Court finds that
| Defendants' discovery conduct in this case has shown
| flagrant bad faith and callous disregard for the
| responsibilities of discovery under the rules. The Court
| finds Defendants' conduct is greatly aggravated by the
| consistent pattern of discovery abuse throughout the
| other Sandy Hook cases pending before this Court. Prior
| to the discovery abuse in this case, Defendants also
| violated this Court's discovery orders in Lewis v. Jones,
| et al. ... and Heslin v. Jones, et al. .... After next
| violating the October 18, 2019 discovery order in this
| case, Defendants also failed to timely answer discovery
| in Pozner v. Jones, et al. ..., another Sandy Hook
| lawsuit, as well as Fontaine v. InfoWars, LLC, et al.
| ..., a similar lawsuit involving Defendants' publications
| busterarm wrote:
| Parties play games in cases of this nature all the time.
| Court battles like this can be bitter.
|
| Perjury is a criminal charge. Contempt is an option to.
| Judges use the lever of jail time to deal with situations
| like this all the time (again, direct experience here --
| a surrogate court judge put two 70+ year old ladies in
| Rikers for a month for failing to comply with the court
| repeatedly over years). Going to default was exceptional
| behavior that nobody shed a tear for because it's Alex
| Jones.
|
| Edit: To answer your question > How many more chances do
| you think Jones deserves here?
|
| If you're looking to make a political statement, sure
| none. If you're looking to have a fair trial, there's
| still steps A, B and C.
|
| Even the fact that he had to fight all those cases for
| the same thing separately is a deliberate step to fuck
| him. Then the court treating giving the same data in each
| trial as a separate offense is certainly cherry-picking.
|
| I'm not really complaining though because the concept of
| a fair trial does not exist. Civil or criminal. Do
| whatever you can not to end up in court. It always boils
| down to who has the most resources and the appetite for
| battle. Some pockets (like the state's) are near-
| infinite.
| busterarm wrote:
| Wanted a separate post for this comment --
|
| I have never, ever seen a judge use contempt or a default
| judgment (against someone represented in court) without
| directly threatening to use that power first.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| >given several chances to comply with discovery requests
|
| The Jones side claims that these discovery requests were
| for documents that don't exist. The linked judgement
| provides no detail on what the specific discovery
| requests were that went unanswered.
|
| Do you know what the discovery requests were for
| specifically?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| No, I do not know.
|
| But I know that "that document doesn't exist" is a valid
| response to a discovery request. Silence is _not_ a valid
| response, even if the document doesn 't exist.
|
| (If one side falsely claims the document doesn't exist,
| the other side then can present evidence to the judge
| that the document does in fact exist, and that the first
| side is withholding evidence. If you play that game and
| get caught, various bad things can happen to you. The
| judge can look more skeptically at everything you say
| thereafter, the judge can rule that the other side is
| entitled to assuming the contents of the document are
| whatever would be most damaging to your side's case, you
| or your lawyers can be fined, and your lawyers can be
| disbarred. Judges deal with this kind of stuff all the
| time; detecting and blocking such games is a major part
| of what they do.)
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| The judgement document does not go into any detail
| therefore we don't know whether the Jones team responded
| with "these documents don't exist" or not. If that was
| their position, why wouldn't they have responded to that
| effect? There would be no motivation to do otherwise.
|
| The rest of your post is speculation.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| skulk updated their post upthread to include an actual
| quote from the judgment. That says quite enough. It
| doesn't have to list specifics of a repeated, flagrant,
| bad-faith pattern of attempts to disrupt discovery; the
| rest of the record of the case will do so, in detail
| after detail after detail.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| >the rest of the record of the case
|
| Is that not available somewhere? You'd think it would be
| presented in detail, since this is the key reason for the
| default judgement.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I haven't really tried since the SCO v. IBM days. But for
| a federal case, you used to be able to go to the
| courthouse and ask to look at the case file. You could
| make copies of anything you want (at their rates per
| page). Or you could use PACER to view it, if you had an
| account.
|
| I suspect things are more on line these days rather than
| less, but I haven't tried lately. If nothing else, you
| should still be able to see everything on PACER. (If they
| are online instead of in PACER, there may be a delay time
| - three months, maybe? But for this case, that shouldn't
| matter.)
|
| For state courts... I don't know.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >but the court chose the nuclear option to default
| against Jones.
|
| Institution that is a fundamental part of the
| establishment and status quo jumps at the chance to shit
| all over someone who's shtick is undermining public trust
| in the establishment and status quo. Water is wet. More
| news at 11.
| busterarm wrote:
| I don't in the slightest bit disagree, just pointing out
| that they had discretion and it was still a choice.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Yeah, I think the part that makes this so controversial
| isn't that they exercised their discretion to screw him,
| which is absolutely expected, but that the court chose a
| total amount so large as to be newsworthy and garner
| sympathy for Jones and make people question the actions
| of the court by itself. The idea that some singular kook
| running a talk show could get a judgement that we rarely
| ever see levied upon major corporations that pour far
| more man hours into far more definable evil makes people
| who've never heard of the guy ask WTF.
| 0x457 wrote:
| > But then again, court cases aren't about facts or truth.
|
| My sibling in Christ, Jones is paying because he fucked
| around with courts. He was told to stop by court, and he
| didn't. He had a chance to defend himself, and he passed on
| it.
| j-krieger wrote:
| This is a "millions of dollars" lawsuit. Not a 10 billion
| dollar lawsuit. Alex Jones owes what Reddit as a platform is
| worth. That is insane.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Good reason to listen to courts the first time!
| d357r0y3r wrote:
| Same reason Ross Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison for
| conspiracy charges and CCE. Unusually harsh for those
| convictions and a first time offender. The point is, as cliche
| as it sounds, to send a message.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| Stealing from an earlier comment of mine [1] in case you want
| to read the comments.
|
| Alex Jones declared in court that his show reaches about a
| hundred million people. If that's true then he's paying $10 for
| every person who heard him defaming the families of dead
| children.
|
| This would be the same principle as those fines in Nordic
| countries sometimes that depend on how rich someone is. If you
| can influence one hundred million people and use that power in
| a criminally irresponsible way, you get a proportionate fine.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33182728
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Yeah, we don't have that in Sweden except for criminal acts,
| and then the fines are a certain number of days of your
| income as a substitute for imprisonment.
|
| In civil cases our judgements are usually not enormous.
|
| I don't feel that your reasoning above makes the judgement
| more reasonable. Maybe he does reach that many people, but he
| obviously makes nowhere near that amount of money and it's
| out of line with other defamation judgements.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| > it's out of line with other defamation judgements.
|
| This point made me curious so I quickly looked around. Fox
| News paid a $787.5 million settlement [1] for making false
| claims about Dominion. Given that this happened as the
| trial was about to start, it's reasonable to assume that
| Fox News expected to lose even more if the issue went to
| trial. And that's for a party that arguably would have
| followed court orders, something Alex Jones refused to do.
|
| Next in line is Rudy Giuliani, who was ordered to pay $150
| million for defaming two election workers [2]. If Alex
| Jones defamed 12 families then it comes out roughly the
| same.
|
| [1] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/18/media/fox-dominion-
| settle...
|
| [2] https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/rudy-
| giuliani-def...
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Those are also extreme though.
| AustinDev wrote:
| All these cited claims seem political and extreme to me.
| I can't find a non-political example where the judgement
| this extreme.
|
| Depp v Herd defamation was around $10m.
| mvc wrote:
| There was a single victim in Depp vs Herd.
| standardUser wrote:
| The acts of defamation were extreme, clear cut,
| repetitive and devoid of remorse. I for one like knowing
| that if someone ruins my reputation with cruel lies in
| such a malicious and relentless way that they may face
| extreme consequences.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Yeah, we don 't have that in Sweden except for criminal
| acts_
|
| Sweden isn't the only Nordic country.
|
| Just look up speeding tickets in Finland and Norway.
| sophacles wrote:
| Because damages are easy to calculate - how much money did
| Jones make from intentionally lying about the victim? That
| money is the result of him selling their repuation without
| their consent - the market decided what the value of that act
| was.
| johnecheck wrote:
| Sooooooooo, if release a YouTube video defaming someone, and
| only made $0.35 off ad revenue, I only did $0.35 in damage?
|
| Definitely how that works.
|
| If I burn down somebody's house and sell tickets to watch,
| the damages are easy to calculate! It's just my ticket
| revenue! THE MARKET DECIDED!
|
| Gotta give you some credit though, you beat out some real
| competition for dumbest take in the thread.
| sophacles wrote:
| Well partly true... The part where no one wants to watch
| your videos seems extremely reasonable.
|
| Unfortunately you veer way out of reasonableness when you
| compare the crime of arson with the civil law of
| defamation. Criminal law and civil law are very different
| things... So much so that im not even sure what you're
| trying to get at with your analogy.
|
| You do seem upset about it though, and that does make
| sense... I'd imagine the world would be scary without even
| a basic understanding of the rules that you're held to.
| Fortunately this information is readily available... Some
| review material for junior high civics classes will cover
| most of what you need to know, and should only take you an
| hour or two to go through.
| elzbardico wrote:
| It was a Moscow Trials things. Not that Jones was not guilty of
| this specific crime, he was, but the goal was never punishing
| him just for that.
| xbar wrote:
| "Auction closed. Reserve not met. Try again."
| declan_roberts wrote:
| The first auction was illegal and this article should be seen as
| the mea culpa. The families bid the theoretical future earnings
| of jones instead of actual money. The trustee secretly accepted,
| but had to walk it back when it was exposed.
|
| It's like bidding on a foreclosed house with $0 but beating
| everybody because you say you're going to rent it and pay back
| the bank with that money.
| teach wrote:
| The first auction was NOT illegal.
|
| The trustee was explicitly granted wide latitude in how to
| handle the auction, including canceling it outright. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmDNz7irGgw&t=880
| patrickhogan1 wrote:
| A bankruptcy trustee was involved during the whole process (3rd
| party neutral). While the goal of increasing money to creditors
| here may work due to the free publicity, it harms the creditors
| interests who already agreed to the settlement. So you have a
| third party neutral trustee and the creditors who were harmed
| agreeing.
|
| With that said bankruptcy judges do reject plans quite often and
| this is a high profile case.
| dboreham wrote:
| This is all totally ridiculous. The assets are only worth a large
| amount when run as a disinformation outlet for Russian/extreme-
| right propaganda. Since no buyer is going to do that (see
| earlier, that gets you sued), the assets aren't worth much.
| kylecordes wrote:
| Now that it's public knowledge how low the bids were, a re-
| auction might attract many more bidders and raise a LOT more
| money for the creditors. It is certainly not an asset with any
| appeal to me, but a talented brand and e-commerce operator can
| likely generate a river of cash flow from the IP/audience for
| sale here.
| ginkgotree wrote:
| For an entire week, I thought this was an Onion parody headline,
| and didn't realize the Onion _actually_ tried to buy Info Wars.
| We're living in such an entertaining era. Life imitates art.
| akkad33 wrote:
| Refuses to allow? This is like saying I dislike to like instead
| of saying I don't like. I would assume there is a different way
| of writing that.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| "Disallow" is one option, though maybe uncommon.
| neom wrote:
| "Refuse" is an action verb, "Dislike" is a stative verb. The
| infinitive phrase ("to allow") serves as a complement to the
| verb "refuse," forming a grammatically correct structure.
| refusare = deny.
| pestaa wrote:
| 'Deny' is the trivial choice here I think.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| This other company is clearly part of the same legal operation
| and should also be held liable.
| lbwtaylor wrote:
| The amount of folks here supporting Alex Jones is completely
| shocking to me.
|
| He built a business out of attacking and re-victimizing parents
| whose children were murdered. He's scum of the earth.
|
| That business was taken away from him, and folks think that's too
| much? What the actual fuck.
| Eextra953 wrote:
| It shocking to me too. I can't understand how people are 'both
| sides-ing' this or just supporting him under some free speech
| argument. Free speech has limits and a court found Jones went
| too far and that cost him his business.
| kypro wrote:
| People have been arguing the same bogus free speech point in
| the UK recently because people have been arrested for saying
| things that are anti-immigration and offensive online.
|
| People have free speech, but obviously that doesn't mean you
| are free to say things that could be considered hateful or
| factually untrue. If you go around tweeting hateful things
| about the Royal family and the courts find you guilty, don't
| be surprised if that costs you your freedom. It's pretty
| simple.
|
| Alex is legally free to saying whatever he wants, but he had
| the wrong views on Sandy Hook and his wrong views hurt the
| families affected, therefore he deserves to lose his
| business.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Reflexive contrarianism runs amok in these parts. It's pretty
| pathetic.
| dnissley wrote:
| To be clear I haven't seen a single comment that could be
| charitably characterized as "supporting Alex Jones". I see a
| lot of comments that are pointing out that the judgment against
| him seems unreasonable given the damage he did to these
| families.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Torts are not just about damage, they're also about
| deterrence. Jones repeatedly demonstrated in the court battle
| that no deterrence would work on him.
|
| His entire business is built on this kind of defamation --
| how much proceeds of this kind of business should he be
| allowed to keep?
| hoten wrote:
| It is unreasonable imo. He deserves to see jail time.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| The people pointing out that the judgment is 'unreasonable'
| are either intentionally lying or extremely ignorant.
|
| The context is that the judge awarded a default judgment
| because Alex Jones literally refused to participate in the
| legal system. He committed overt perjury (and was outright
| caught on this) and proceeded to just stop complying
| entirely.
|
| If any of us received a court summons and refused to show up
| or defend ourselves the court isn't going to shrug and say
| the case goes away. In a system of law you can't just ignore
| the law and expect the judge to take pity on you.
| jotux wrote:
| I see a few instance of people defending his actions as "free
| speech."
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42384921#42387916
|
| "View it for what it is: a deliberate attack on free speech.
| This is essentially legislating from the bench. They can't
| ban him from speaking but they can make it very VERY
| expensive to do so, and warn anyone else at the same time."
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42384921#42385358
|
| "Maybe the "victims" should go after the actual shooter for a
| billion dollars then.
|
| Instead we have people crying that free speech is the actual
| evil crime here."
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42384921#42389350
| archagon wrote:
| Consciously or unconsciously, people begin with an unshakable
| feeling of "my tribe good," then reverse engineer a
| justification for whatever issue is being politicized. Even if
| it involves defending a repugnant conman and slanderer like
| Jones.
|
| It just goes to show that far too many people have no
| fundamental values, only political affiliations.
| talldayo wrote:
| It's Hacker News. I hate to say it, but this is all the website
| is known for at this point. Bring it up in passing conversation
| with the in-crowd and you'll get laughed out of the room for
| using "Orange Site" and fraternizing with drug-addled Elon
| worshipers and "soloprenuers" that beg for recognition for
| their dogshit SaaS product. The score has been known for years,
| the political leaning of Hacker News is basically the same as
| the "curious individuals" that inform themselves via JRE and
| random X accounts from Russia.
|
| The people using Hacker News are regularly a stone's throw away
| from the sort of people that use 4chan. Except Hacker News has
| usernames and karma so it tends to create cults of personality
| around people that say what people want to hear.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| About 30% of people are assholes, and birds of a feather flock
| together.
| dtquad wrote:
| >The amount of folks here supporting Alex Jones is completely
| shocking to me
|
| That shouldn't be a surprise considering how many American
| libertarian techbros are fans of Alex Jones Lite (Joe Rogan).
| uv-depression wrote:
| You're surprised? In any vaguely political thread HN is pretty
| much just a more well-spoken 4chan. Moderation here is entirely
| based on tone, not content, which along with its techno-
| libertarian origins makes it the perfect breeding ground for
| fascists and pseudo-intellectualism.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| > Moderation here is entirely based on tone, not content
|
| My least favorite thing about reading HN, by far. Glad
| someone else said it.
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| "Judge refuses to allow sales of Infowars to The Onion, allows
| sale of Super Male Vitality Alpha-Z Colloidal Silver instead"
| dang wrote:
| All: if you're going to comment here, please review the site
| guidelines and make sure to stick to them:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
|
| There's way too much nasty dross in this thread. No, the topic
| does not make that ok. As you'll see when you review the
| guidelines, " _Comments should get more thoughtful and
| substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive._ "
| thorum wrote:
| Am I missing something or does this NYT article not actually say
| what the judge based his decision on? That would be an important
| piece of information to have when deciding whether the decision
| was good or not.
| gms7777 wrote:
| From the article: "Judge Lopez said that the bankruptcy auction
| failed to maximize the amount of money that the sale of
| Infowars should provide to Mr. Jones's creditors, including the
| Sandy Hook families, in part because the bids were submitted in
| secret. "It seemed doomed almost from the moment they decided
| to go to a sealed bid," Judge Lopez said. "Nobody knows what
| anybody else is bidding," he added."
| nativeit wrote:
| Wait, couldn't this same argument be made in reverse? If the
| bids were open, the competing parties could simply go $1
| above the highest offer, which suggest _sealed bids_ are most
| appropriate to maximize the value. Auctions can't be fairly
| judged in hindsight, generally speaking.
| exac wrote:
| They could do an open run-off round of bids until they have
| two potential buyers, and then switch to secret ballot to
| get each party's highest bid I suppose?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| If the bids are secret and the highest bidder pays what
| they bid then bidders have the incentive to try to bid
| strategically, i.e. less than what they'd be willing to pay
| as long as they think that's more than anyone else would be
| willing to pay. Plus, if there is someone who thinks it's
| worth way more than anyone else, they could just place a
| modest bid and then if they lose buy it from the winner for
| $1 more than what the winner values it at anyway.
|
| The way you can avoid this with secret bids is to specify
| that the highest bidder will pay $1 more than the second
| highest bidder no matter how high they bid. Then everyone
| has the incentive to actually specify the maximum they'd be
| willing to pay, because if the next highest bid is lower
| than that they still actually do want to buy it, but they
| lose nothing by bidding higher because they only pay a
| dollar more than the next highest bidder no matter what,
| and then you maximize bids.
|
| But by that point you don't benefit from keeping the high
| bid a secret anymore, because of human psychology. Someone
| bids $100, is the current high bidder and thinks they're
| getting to buy it, then someone outbids them and loss
| aversion kicks in so they make a higher bid, even though
| the first bid was supposed to be their max.
| llimllib wrote:
| Known as a "second-price" or Vickrey auction for anybody
| who wants to read some auction game theory:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_auction
| freejazz wrote:
| Yeah but in the bankruptcy setting, this would
| demonstrate that the trustee didn't get as much as they
| could.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Does it? If it's public knowledge that Alice would pay
| $200 and Bob would pay $100 then Alice wouldn't actually
| bid $200, she'd bid $101 and still win, the same result
| as that type of auction. If nobody knows what Alice would
| bid except Alice then it's even worse, because Bob thinks
| he could win at $60 and would rather pay $60 than $100
| and Alice correctly predicts that Bob is going to do that
| and then wins by bidding $75. And if Bob bids $80 then
| Alice can still buy it from Bob for $110 but the estate
| is still getting $80 instead of $101.
| rob_c wrote:
| Go bank to pseudo security. This is the letter of an
| argument again ingnoring the spirit of the
| judgment/law/...
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| The spirit is that a person owes families he defamed
| billions of dollars and that person doesn't like who they
| need to sell their assets to to make that money. I don't
| even know how and why the details of how this money is
| recouped is important. If I go bankrupt and need to sell
| my house, I sure can't stop it from being sold to Hitler
| or something absurd like that.
| wbl wrote:
| How would it do that? You need to leave a little on the
| table for the deal to work.
| logifail wrote:
| > If the bids were open, the competing parties could simply
| go $1 above the highest offer [..]
|
| Isn't that what you want to happen?
|
| All the auctions I've ever participated have repeated this
| very process until none of the buyers are prepared to raise
| their bid, at which point it appears the seller has got the
| highest price anyone will offer.
|
| What am I missing?
| uberman wrote:
| sealed bidding entices bidders who really want something
| to overbid to ensure they win. It is a common strategy to
| maximize offers
| a4isms wrote:
| In some parts of the world, they auction houses in this
| exact manner. You show up, post a very large amount of
| money to prove you're serious, then everyone bids in
| person like an art auction.
|
| Here in Canada, when the market is hot there are lots of
| auctions withe multiple buyers competing for a house. In
| my market (Southern Ontario), it is almost always a
| sealed bid situation, and winning buyers often outbid
| their rivals by tens of thousands of dollars.
|
| The agents around here are fond of a process engineered
| to maximize the bids: If there are multiple bids that are
| all reasonable, they will tell the lowballs to go home,
| while telling those remaining how many bids are in, and
| offering everyone a chance to "sweeten up" before a final
| decision is made.
|
| I personally would never buy a home through such a
| process, which tells you that I absolutely would love to
| sell my home in exactly this fashion should the market be
| hot whenever that happens.
|
| Now that being said, I cannot say for certain whether the
| frenzy of shouting bids while staring your opponents in
| the eye will produce more money or the sealed bids will
| produce more money.
| michaelt wrote:
| In _theory_ , a Second-price sealed-bid auction will
| produce the same price as an Open ascending-bid auction.
| Every bidder will offer the true value of the item to
| them, and the item will go to the highest bidder at the
| second-highest price.
|
| But some people might think, due to human nature, that
| one auction or the other gets higher prices. Maybe an
| open bid auction gets lower bids, because interested
| people start lower knowing they can bid again, then back
| out when they see there's a lot of competition. Maybe
| sealed-bid auctions work better for large organisations,
| as getting board approval and CFO sign-off on a multi-
| million-dollar expenditure takes a few days. Or maybe an
| open bid auction gets bidders het up and excited because
| they're in second place and surely no matter what you've
| bid, you'd always bid 5% more to win - right?
|
| None of which is backed by theory, but if it feels true
| to the judge - who's to say?
|
| IMHO the main value of buying infowars, to The Onion, was
| the publicity and headlines. Those are harvested now. If
| the auction was repeated I can't imagine The Onion upping
| their bid.
| CDRdude wrote:
| The article suggests that this is is a first price sealed
| bid auction instead of a second price sealed bid auction.
| Skipping over the more complex nature of the Onion bid,
| the linked articles states "The total value of The
| Onion's bid was $7 million" and "First United American
| Companies had a higher bid, offering $3.5 million in
| cash".
| pyrale wrote:
| > who's to say?
|
| Surely we could find a professional, whose job it is to
| liquidate assets after a court decision, that the judge
| would trust?
|
| If this existed, it should have a name that emphasizes
| the trust aspect.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| This is the legal pretext, which appears about 2/3 of the way
| through the article:
|
| > Judge Lopez said that the bankruptcy auction failed to
| maximize the amount of money that the sale of Infowars should
| provide to Mr. Jones's creditors, including the Sandy Hook
| families, in part because the bids were submitted in secret.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > auction failed to maximize the amount of money
|
| I don't run auctions but something tells me there's a lot of
| research behind them that goes into optimizing for this
| precise thing. It's wild that the judge is disregarding the
| expertise of the person who was appointed by another judge to
| run the auction without asserting that the person is not
| qualified to run it.
| cogman10 wrote:
| It is quite wild and frankly just shocking.
|
| The hearings in the last 2 days seemed to have Lopez
| agreeing with the creditors and not Jone's FUAC. Yet,
| somewhat seemingly out of the blue, he decided to deny the
| sale.
|
| What's even more crazy about this ruling is he's told the
| trustee to come up with an alternative solution, that
| doesn't involve a new auction... But like no other
| guidance. That leaves the Trustee in a weird situation
| where the judge has said "I don't like what you did, fix it
| somehow, but not in a way that uses a new auction".
|
| Frankly, this judge has just been pretty bad at their job.
| More than a few rulings have been just weird ramblings from
| the judge with unclear instructions to the trustee and the
| other parties.
|
| And all this mainly appears to be because the judge doesn't
| like the amount that Infowars was sold for.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| Out of curiosity, does anyone in this thread who is
| commenting on the quality of this judge or the sanity of
| his ruling practice bankruptcy law? I don't, and I'm
| having a hard time evaluating these claims.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Not a whole lot of bankruptcy lawyers on the internet
| that I've seen.
|
| But here's one business law lawyer/professor breakdown of
| the proceedings that I think is pretty good [1]
|
| [1] https://confrontationality.substack.com/p/bankrupt-
| alex-jone...
| dtquad wrote:
| Infowars and Alex Jones have some fanatic followers. It
| should be investigated if the judge has been threatened
| to come to this conclusion.
| kernal wrote:
| The Onion should be investigated for making a false bid
| for which they never had the money for.
|
| >Jones' attorney Ben Broocks told Lopez at a hearing on
| Monday that the Onion only put up half as much cash as
| the $3.5 million offer from First American United
| Companies but boosted its bid with "smoke and mirrors"
| calculations.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Yes and Lopez rejected that as an issue. He also accepted
| the logic of why the Trustee picked the onion.
|
| What Lopez did not like was the dollar amount and how the
| auction was ran, that's it.
|
| Lopez kept the Trustee on board, though, because he
| doesn't believe the Trustee did anything wrong (Strangely
| since the Trustee organized the auction).
|
| It wasn't a false bid, it was a bid that would have
| relieved Jones of more debt than the bid FAUC put up.
| Which was accepted by his creditors.
| throw16180339 wrote:
| Judge Lopez was appointed by Trump, so I'd assume that
| he's acting under instructions. Why would Trump have
| appointed a judge who wouldn't do favors for him?
| Nuzzerino wrote:
| I hope you realize that he can't fire judges just because
| he appointed them.
| redeux wrote:
| I believe the implication isn't that he'd be fired.
| Rather that doing the bidding of the far right (as
| instructed) was the deal he made to get the job. I look
| at it as payment for services rendered.
| thorum wrote:
| Thanks! The archived snapshot doesn't have that, it must have
| been added later.
| doctoboggan wrote:
| Shouldn't all of the mechanics of the auction been agreed
| upon explicitly or at least implicitly with past precedent of
| bankruptcy auctions? How did the lawyers go ahead of an
| auction that even had a chance of being thrown out by the
| judge?
| cogman10 wrote:
| This is something that was brought up in the hearings.
|
| For starters, one issue here is the Judge is just, frankly,
| bad at giving instructions. He left how the auction should
| be ran up to the Trustee who ultimately used an auction
| company which handles these sorts of liquation auctions. He
| didn't give clear instructions on what he wanted.
|
| FAUC (alex jones's new company) did not raise any issues
| with the auction until after they found out that they lost.
| They had multiple communications with the auction house and
| the trustee right up until the winners were announced. It
| was only after they lost that they started throwing a stink
| about how the auction was ran.
|
| Frankly, it's a bad faith argument by FAUC that's just sour
| grapes over losing. They were always going to challenge the
| results on a loss, but it does look bad for them that they
| didn't do that until after the loss.
|
| Lopezes problem with the auction was mainly that he felt
| like the amounts were too low. He didn't really explain why
| he felt that and has left everything really ambiguous (not
| a good judge IMO). He has left the managing of infowars
| under the care of the Trustee and has basically given them
| a "fix it" order with really no clear guidelines on how
| they are supposed to do that (other than don't do another
| auction).
| WhatsTheBigIdea wrote:
| Judge Lopez's argument (as communicated by the nytimes)
| appears invalid.
|
| The standard American auction is the "English Open Cry"
| auction. The kind of auction we expect to see at cattle
| auctions, estate auctions, charity auctions, etc. The English
| Open Cry is what is known as a "second price" auction, which
| means that the winning bidder will pay 1 increment more than
| the next highest bidder was willing to pay.
|
| When you have a "sealed" or "secret" bid auction, the
| fundamental game changes to the "Vickrey Auction" which is a
| "first price" auction. This means that the highest bidder
| wins and pays the price they bid... which is expected to be
| the highest price at which they would be happy with the
| transaction.
|
| The Sealed-Bid auction should generate a price that is
| greater than or equal to the English Open Cry in all
| situations.
|
| The only caveat is that since the Sealed-Bid auction is
| always less kind to the bidder, it may not attract as many
| bidders as the English Open Cry.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Given how the NYT is describing the entire court case (only
| a level above shit slinging from Twitter), it sounds like
| this is less about any rationale and more dragging of the
| feet to get any kind of "win" out of this whole kerfluffle.
|
| The judge basically says as much in the end:
|
| >"You've got to scratch and claw and get everything you can
| for everyone else," he said.
|
| Which is a truly bizarre statement for a judge to make
| given the nature of this entire case. Then again, "good
| faith errors" certainly shows the bias of this judge here.
| archon1410 wrote:
| You're confused. It's the Vickrey auction which is second-
| price. English auctions are first-price. First-price
| sealed-bid auctions are different from Vickrey auctions.
| stevage wrote:
| > The Sealed-Bid auction should generate a price that is
| greater than or equal to the English Open Cry in all
| situations.
|
| That is a very large claim to make that ignores psychology.
| If it were true, you would never see open cry auctions used
| anywhere.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| > The Sealed-Bid auction should generate a price that is
| greater than or equal to the English Open Cry in all
| situations.
|
| Do you have a source for this? I find it hard to believe
| standard "English" auctions would be so popular if it was
| true.
| tz18 wrote:
| Parent commenter's description of the difference between
| an ascending bid auction and a second price auction (or
| Vickrey auction) is very confused. You can review the
| first chapter of "Mechanism Design and Approximation" for
| an introduction to auctions and proofs of the optimality
| of different auctions for different goals (e.g. the
| second price auction is proven to maximize social
| surplus): https://jasonhartline.com/MDnA/
| nocman wrote:
| > The Sealed-Bid auction should generate a price that is
| greater than or equal to the English Open Cry in all
| situations.
|
| Not necessarily. In many sealed-bid auctions, bidders hope
| to win with a lower bid (often _much_ lower) than they
| would if they were bidding against others in the same room.
| This is especially true if you have no idea whether anyone
| else is bidding on the item at all. I have placed very low
| bids on items in sealed-bid auctions for things I had no
| immediate need for, but would happily pay for if the cost
| was very low (and I have won many such items, sometimes
| because no one else even bid on them).
| tz18 wrote:
| This is almost entirely wrong in all respects. You can
| review the first chapter of "Mechanism Design and
| Approximation" for a good introduction to auction design.
| https://jasonhartline.com/MDnA/
| anigbrowl wrote:
| You're not missing anything. Most US legal reporting complete
| shit, opting to write about the implications rather than do any
| legal analysis.
| memtet wrote:
| I posted the same news 24 days ago, it got downvote-brigaded by
| malicious actors (at the same time they were upvote-brigading
| fake news that he lost InfoWars to The Onion):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42160692
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