No joke: the Onion parody website buys Alex Jones’ Infowars out of bankruptcy
NEW YORK — Like a headline lifted from the Onion, the parody news website is buying conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars in a bankruptcy auction.
The Onion said in a statement on Thursday it aims to replace Infowars’ “relentless barrage of disinformation” with the Onion’s “noticeably less hateful disinformation.”
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“The Onion is proud to acquire Infowars, and we look forward to continuing its storied tradition of scaring the site’s users with lies until they fork over their cold, hard cash,” the Onion CEO Ben Collins said in a statement.
Financial terms were not disclosed, and are subject to future approval by a U.S. bankruptcy judge in Houston. Infowars’ website was shut down on Thursday and the Onion said it aimed to relaunch the platform in January.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez, who is overseeing Infowars’ bankruptcy, said he had some concerns about the transparency of the auction at a court hearing late Thursday.
“I personally don’t care who wins the auction,” Lopez said. “I just care about the process.”
The purchase marks a sharp turn for Infowars, one of the internet’s most notorious purveyors of right-wing conspiracy content and misleadingly marketed dietary supplements.
Founded in 1999, it became a prime example of how online media platforms could exploit tech companies’ hands-off approach to moderating content and disseminate evidence-free claims to vast audiences.
These included false claims that the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington and the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut were staged.
Several families of Sandy Hook shooting victims supported the bid by the Onion, led by a CEO who spent years covering online disinformation and extremism as an NBC News reporter.
The Onion will acquire Infowars’ intellectual property, including its website, customer lists and inventory, certain social media accounts and production equipment, the families said.
Jones filed for bankruptcy protection in 2022 after courts ordered him to pay $1.5 billion for defaming the families of 20 students and six staff members killed in the Sandy Hook shooting.
Unable to pay those legal judgments, Jones was forced to auction his assets, including Infowars, in bankruptcy.
Families of eight victims of the Connecticut school shooting backed the Onion’s bid, saying it would put “an end to the misinformation machine” that Jones operated.
Everytown for Gun Safety, the largest U.S. gun-violence-prevention organization, said it will serve as the exclusive advertiser on the new Infowars.
