The Onion takes over Inforwars

[Smit]

This is outstanding!

The Onion has agreed to a new deal to take over Infowars

Excerpt:

The satirical website The Onion has a new deal to take over Infowars, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' far-right media company. If approved by a Texas judge, the deal would take away his Infowars microphone and allow The Onion to resume its plans to turn the website into a parody of itself.

Families of those killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, who sued Jones for defamation, want the sale to happen. They're still waiting to collect on the nearly $1.3 billion judgment they won against Jones for spreading lies that they faked the deaths of their children to boost support for gun control. That prompted Jones' followers to harass and threaten the families for years.

The families are also eager to take away Jones' platform for spewing such conspiracy theories. The deal not only would divorce Jones from his Infowars brand, but it would turn the platform against him by allowing The Onion to mock his kind of conspiracy mongering and advocate for gun control.

The families "took on Alex Jones to stop him from inflicting the same harm on others" by using "his corrupt business platform to torment and harass them for profit," said Chris Mattei, one of the attorneys for the families. "When Infowars finally goes dark, the machinery of lies that Jones built will become a force for social good, thanks to the families' courage and The Onion's vision, persistence and stewardship."

For its part, The Onion called it a "significant step in an effort to transform one of the internet's more notorious misinformation platforms into a new comedy network for satire." The company says it could announce its new rollout of Infowars in a matter of weeks if the judge approves the deal.

"Eight years, almost to the day, after the Sandy Hook parents first filed suit against Alex Jones, they'll finally get some justice, and even some money," said Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion. "This is a chance to make something genuinely new out of a very broken piece of media history."

[Bucky Cornstarch]

The same people will still be fooled. Not by falsehoods and half truths, but by satire.

[jstell]

Satire is tough these days.  Used to be you could say outlandish stuff as political commentary and people would understand there's no way our leader would actually say that out loud.  Now, I do a double-take on actual headlines most days.