Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is seeking to protect his personal social media accounts from being sold in the upcoming auction of his Infowars media platform to pay more than $1 billion he owes relatives of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, claiming selling those accounts would violate his privacy and deny him a chance to make a fresh start after bankruptcy.
The trustee overseeing the liquidation and selloff of the assets of Infowars and its parent company Free Speech Systems, asked a federal judge on Friday to include the social media accounts as part of the auctions scheduled for November and December. The judge delayed a decision on the matter for at least a week.
Jones’ lawyers argue the personal media accounts that use his real name are not owned by Infowars or FSS, but are controlled by him personally, and should be considered part of his “persona” that cannot be owned by someone other than himself.
Fuck this guy.
But his personal social media account? What the fuck is that
The issue he’s gone and pulled to Donald Trump or Elon Musk. He’s decided that he will use his personal accounts to announce things to do with his “company”. This has become a big problem because people have got to the point where they follow his personal accounts to find out what his company is doing because his company accounts don’t post too much.
So he’s done this to himself. He’s made his personal persona inexorably interlinked with his business persona. At the time I’m sure he thought this was a great idea since both personas are utter dipshits.
Everyone is missing the best part of the article:
and his video game “Alex Jones NWO Wars” released in 2023, that features Jones as the hero in a shooting game.
Alex Jones killing Hogan and Kevin Nash? But they’re on the same side!
Cry some more crocodile tears ya no-neck freak.
Ruin his life. Destroy everything he has. Make him reap what he sowed.
Justice boner
Hmm…
Yeah…
Get fucked.
I’m sending thoughts and prayers for his utter fucking destruction
They argue that trustee Christopher Murray does not have a right to the social media accounts as property that can be sold, and warned that a purchaser could face lawsuits as to whether they were rightfully obtained.
I’d like to buy it and start posting LGBTQ-positive content. I’m not part of the coalition. I just think it’d be fun to watch people react.
Jones is appealing the civil jury verdicts, citing free speech rights and questioning whether the families proved any connection between his comments and the people who harassed and threatened the relatives. He has since acknowledged that the shooting did happen.
Yeah, Margie TG just happened to follow a kid shouting at him for being part of a coverup and recording it on her phone be coincidence. It’s not because she gets her talking points from this asshole.
I want john oliver to buy all of his stuff and run his own show with it that would be so funny
So fuck Alex Jones, but I really don’t think it’s a good idea to force people to sell their accounts so that other people can impersonate them. It’s just inviting social engineering attacks.
Except in this case, much like with Trump, His business and his person were deeply intertwined. So the account is a business asset. And as such, it is subject to being an asset of the company. Maybe he should have separated them at some point.
Isn’t it against the tos to sell your account?
If the Wendys burger chain was sold, there would be no problem with the new owner taking the Wendys social media accounts. In this case Jones has long used his social media accounts as part of his business. They’re part of the Infowars assets so they can and should be handed over to debtors to settle the claims against Infowars.
Yeah well Wendy’s would be owned by the company not a person… You need some kind of legal distinction between the two…
So if Wendy’s sold the account to a non Wendy’s person that would be different than it being used by a different person within the company… I’m sure most social media companies have a distinction for business accounts.
And if they can close any account if they choose…
Law trumps TOS so it really doesn’t matter what it says.
But is there any precedent in selling accounts due to a court decision? Does the social media company get to close the account due to the TOS violation?
In any case, if it does get sold, it’ll create an interesting situation.
Yes but you can just tell everyone the attacks never happened, for attention
What’s stopping him from just making infowars2?
His rage is his commodity, so I don’t get why he can’t just start up a new channel and just do the exact same thing.
What’s stopping him from just making infowars2?
The law, basically. Taking his assets elsewhere to “hide” them from his creditors constitutes fraud.
He even tried to already, but that was shot down by the judge, who made him swear under oath to not try that again. Which he already IS doing, very blatantly.
And he’s actually been trying again recently as the auction gets closer. But people aren’t really following him to his new Twitter account
That’s not what they’re suggesting, I’m pretty sure. They’re saying, after selling all the stuff, just start up a new company with the same schtick. Alex Jones is free to still be Alex Jones. And that’s all Info Wars really is/was.
With what money? He owes much more than the combined worth of his personal and business assets. Any significantly similar new company he would found would be under water in debt from the start.
He’s banking on a far right billionaire or organization buying Infowars and keeping him on as an employee, because that’s the only way he can keep doing it.
🤷 That’s a different question.
They also seized his bank accounts and production equipment.
That said, I wouldn’t exactly be shocked if his sycophantic fans got together and built him a studio and gave him a salary.
Or a new patreon account and he would be rolling in money again. But I sure hope he keeps trying because until his debt is settled they are gonna keep taking from him.
I doubt all his equip etc. will be enough to cover the 1 billion. So any and all patreon income could be confiscated as well.
That’s what I meant by I hope he keeps trying so it can be taken as well.
Yeah, no idea how I didn’t read that part 😅🤦
Unfortunately that’s not a far fetched possibility.
He would still be in arrears for this judgement , as the seizures and auctions won’t actually cover all of the award. So, Infowars 2 would just be taken as well.
We should all pitch in some cash to buy them and use them to start posting pro-Fediverse, pro-FOSS and privacy-related stuff.
Yeah, it might bring in some crazies, but the Fediverse can handle that better than most places.
Lemmy@infowars.com users would be a sight to behold
𝙂𝙚𝙣𝙚𝙫𝙖 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙫𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙘𝙪𝙚.
Don’t commit war crimes. Instead, be the reason they became crimes!
Their interactions with .grad would be priceless. lol Not that they wouldn’t instantly defed each other.
It would be nice if some nonprofit got them and rebranded to “DisinfoWars” to post critical thinking resources and deconstruct disinformation
I really like this idea. Transform what he built into a force for good.
What’s the worst that can happen? Someone buys it and starts hawking boner pills? Yeah, that ain’t exactly gonna ruin his good name.
Think bigger, someone gets the accounts and releases all of his private messages. If he doesn’t delete them. I’m on the fence about the precident this would set.
Deleting them could be seen as intentionally diminishing the value of the asset before auction and get him in more trouble.
It’d be pretty fun if some org with opposite political leanings bought the account.
I’m hoping that the important assets get sold to the Knowledge Fight podcast. They’d be the ones able to do the most good with them.
Even his only fans?
This seems very bizarre to me. Is the argument, someone could make money off your account therefore it’s an asset that can be sold off? Next I suppose we should sell his body off into prostitution.
Still, nice to see Lemmy wholeheartedly supporting capitalism for once…
Ooh, I know, next force him to sell his Steam account!
I think it has more to do with the fact that he uses his twitter account mostly to advertise his business, making it more of a business account than a personal account even though it has his name on it.
Edit:
In seeking the rights to the social media accounts, the legal team for the trustee argued in court filings that Jones’ X account, and others on Telegram, Gab, Parler and other platforms, “are frequently used to promote and post Infowars content, and in some cases, have a significant number of followers.” Jones’ X account has nearly 3 million followers.
The trustee argued that social media accounts of influencers, celebrities and political personalities have become valuable assets, and that Jones’ accounts have drawn particular interest from multiple parties in buying them.
From the article neither of us bothered to read.
I don’t think that changes it. He uses the likeness of his face also; if some ad company wants to buy the rights to the likeness of his face is he forced to sell?
True I didn’t read the article though.
His billion dollar settlement won’t be discharged through this bankruptcy, so his wages will probably be garnished for the rest of his life as it is. I really don’t have any sympathy for him, and taking the social media account he’s been using for his business as part of that business’s liquidation really doesn’t feel like a big deal.
The precedent troubles me. That a media account in a personal name, even if through that one does commercial or objectionable things, can become a commodity to buy and sell - and be forced to sell.
The same precedent applies to ordinary people too. Should a debt collector acquire your Facebook page? Because you used Facebook marketplace it’s now a business asset?
If you had a talk show called the [Your Name] show, should it be immune to bankruptcy courts? Should a the company [Your Name] Inc. not be allowed to be bought and sold? Should we forbid people from selling tshirts or pictures with their names and faces on them? Where do you think we should draw the line?
The same precedent applies to ordinary people too. Should a debt collector acquire your Facebook page? Because you used Facebook marketplace it’s now a business asset?
Most people don’t own a business. The occasional use of facebook marketplace doesn’t make a personal account part of a nonexistant business.
That’s a fair point. It seems rather awkward. Selling off the assets of said talk show, easy decision. Selling the brand, though, if it’s tied to your person / personal name, that seems dubious. Especially against the named person’s will.
For something like t-shirt likenesses, I suppose I think the line is the person’s consent. I can sell permission for my face to be on your t-shirt, but being forced to seems wrong. In the extreme case: a person is legally entitled to sell nude images of themselves, but surely a court would never order it, even if that person had been previously selling nude images.
For something like t-shirt likenesses, I suppose I think the line is the person’s consent
So if he had a warehouse full of tshirts with his name or face on them and decides after filing bankruptcy that he doesn’t want to sell them anymore, should he just get to keep it? Should it all be destroyed?
If he took a cattle brand and burned his name into everything on set, does that mean he shouldn’t have to sell it any more?
In the extreme case: a person is legally entitled to sell nude images of themselves, but surely a court would never order it, even if that person had been previously selling nude images.
If someone was already selling porn before, do you think if they continued to that they shouldn’t have to give any of that money they earned to the people they owe money to? This case isn’t anywhere near that extreme because he’s not the only person in the world named ‘Alex Jones’, so how much of his ‘likeness’ is being sold is debatable to begin with. And also, we aren’t talking about future permission to use his likeness, we’re talking about a social media account used to promote his business.
