Following his trial for defamation of the families of the children and school staff killed in the Sandy Hook massacre, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is using Valve Corp.’s Steam, the world’s largest digital distribution platform for PC games, to sell an Infowars-themed video game. Jones claims to have earned hundreds of thousands in revenue from the video game, yet he has refused to pay the Sandy Hook families. Alex Jones: NWO Wars also mirrors and cartoonishly repackages the conspiracy theorist’s regularly violent, hateful rhetoric despite the platform’s policies against hate speech.
I mean, why aren’t his assets seized and bank accounts frozen at this point?
Or is it only the poor that have to pay their fines?
The court is trying. He’s just playing a lot of games. Lots of the money is held by his parents or hidden in different shell companies. The court established that he and InfoWars are basically the same thing as far as the money is concerned, so he’s been trying to start new shows and businesses to further complicate things.
Court orders don’t automatically happen or always get enforced. Going through a divorce right now - lawyer told me that even if I do get an order that some of the shared debts are paid, he can just not. I’d have to go back to court and still get dinged on my credit.
If you’re poor though they just put you in jail while they figure that stuff out. If they figure it out.
They will not. This is a civil case its not like he owes the IRS. Man you said that so confidently and its got like 20 upvotes while being so clearly and easily serachable to be proved completely false. Lol this thread is full of morons
There are lots of ways to hide money and protect your assets, and many of them perfectly legal.
Lot of it stems from laws made to protect regular people in debt (bankruptcy laws, getting rid of debtors prison, etc) but people with money use them too
Imo it’s a worthwhile price. Otherwise credit cards would just take money straight from your wages if they could.
Not when one of his victims has terminal cancer and can’t cash out because Jones is playing keep away through the courts.
Completely empty comment just shitting on America, overwhelmingly upvoted. Lol what a fucking joke this place can be.
You’re free to leave. Unlike what America is becoming… you’ve got that freedom here.
Bye.
Explaining the many reasons why America is broken could take quite a while. Some sentiments are best summed up in a few words.
Because in the US we have laws. Thankfully so or armchair lawyer loons like you would be running a muck. It doesn’t really matter if he’s a shitbag, but you can’t just fuck with people because you don’t like them.
It doesn’t matter if I like him or not.
Court has ruled he needs to pay the fine, but instead of paying he is spending more money and doing ridiculous stuff like making this game. He is going against his court order. That shouldn’t be allowed. Any less wealthy person would have had their assets seized at this point.
Yes the US has laws, but he is breaking them.
It doesn’t really matter though if he has a pending court fine and he chooses to spend his money on something else. If he fails to pay the fine, there are repercussions. But this simply isn’t grounds for freezing someone’s bank accounts.
It’s not illegal to buy something while you have court fines due. It’s stupid maybe, but not illegal.
Valve allows this?
Valve allows a lot of games I’d question like the Kyle riddenhouse game or whatever that loser is that went across state borders to shoot people.
It’s more complicated than that. Probably best he dies of normal causes so no insane conspiracy’s pop up. Even then that’s too good for him.
That’s how you create a martyr, galvanize a movement, and create mass condemnation against whatever cause you stand for.
3 or 4? 1 person is with a $300 Walmart hunting rifle could pull it t off.
People don’t realize how much one dedicated person and a decent rifle can do, especially when no one is expecting it and the assassin doesn’t care about their future or anything but their objective
Hell do it dc sniper style, park a car and modify the trunk.
No one would see anything but an empty car parked down the block from his house or office.
Not sure this is a valve problem. The courts are simply going to have to seize his assets.
Valve is a soulless corporation that only cares about money. Why wouldn’t they?
To the best of my knowledge Valve allows basically everything that’s not outright illegal. They aren’t nearly as much of a “good” corporation as they’re often framed as. They’ll happily provide a platform for and take their 30% from anyone, including racists, misogynists, homophobes, etc.
Or maybe they don’t see it’s their place to gatekeep the store based on their own morals. If you start - where do you draw the line? Some examples like such games may be obvious, but there will be a lot more that are less so.
If people disagree with the message - nobody forces them to buy it after all and you can block any game from even showing up for you in the store, in my opinion it’s plenty enough from the valve’s part. I’d rather be the judge myself as to what I want and what I don’t want to see and play, rather than any corporation.
They used to disallow adult games, they don’t allow NFT or crypto.
They have drawn plenty of lines, and moved them when it benefits them. They are just like any other corporation, they just hide it really well and the fans forgive or hide the rest for them.
I find the “where do you stop” argument to be riddled with holes. Laws are essentially written to explicitly outline boundries and moderation policies are basically just internal laws. Like Canadian law has very specific laws regarding what constitutes hate speech, here is what that looks like.
First you outline protected grounds. In Canada this is race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, genetic characteristics, disability and conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted. (note: pardons are only available via democratic votes or through appeals in Canada)
There’s a stage where you determine what context stuff is in. Like whether it is being performed publicly or privately but marketing a video game is definitely publicly so in tgis context we can skip to it’s last part where you explicitly define hate speech. Hate speech is rhetoric that :
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Describes group members as animals, subhuman or genetically inferior
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Suggests group members are behind a conspiracy to gain control by plotting to destroy western civilization
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Denying, minimizing or celebrating past persecution or tragedies that happened to group members
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Labelling group members as child abusers, pedophiles or criminals who prey on children Blaming group members for problems like crime and disease
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Calling group members liars, cheats, criminals or any other term meant to provoke a strong reaction including usage of known slurs in the context of intended harm to group members.
These rules likely wouldn’t touch some hateful rhetoric that sneaks through under the wire disguised in very abstracted metaphor but it creates a pretty distinct pass fail bar that would catch explicit hate speech on their platform.
The problem with that is that providing a platform and a revenue stream is providing support. Whatever the intent is, that is the result. The issue isn’t what I see on the Steam store, it’s providing a platform at all.
And yes, obviously there’s the question of where to draw the line. But not drawing one at all means providing support for the Alex Joneses of the world. There’s no way around that. And I don’t think that that’s a worthwhile trade.
Valve allows basically everything that’s not outright illegal
While true, and I agree it’s the right thing to do, some things like this and the Rittenhouse game are in a weird murky gray area where one could argue that it’s inciting violence etc. And if that someone is a lawyer, they could convince a judge/jury that it is illegal.
I agree that they should allow anything that isn’t illegal, but people say this like it’s black and white, and legality very much is not black and white.
Unless it pisses off the Chinese government, like the game Devotion that was released from a Taiwanese developer. But I don’t think Steam has a high ground so much as it has good PR while not being extremely greedy. In contrast, GOG also removed it, which sort of discredited any high ground they had.
Why not? It’s not like the kids are going to boycott them. Boycotts are only for easy to refuse things. Or things that sound good in a instagram post.
Not for actual thinks they like and can’t live without.
That’s how boycotts have always worked. Boycotts have only been successful when people already didn’t like the thing they were boycotting.
I looovvveee tollhouse cookies, crunch bars, KitKats and stouffer’s French bread pizzas but I still don’t buy them, even though they are like the only people to make a wide range of frozen dinners, and I am not even a little bit salty about it, definitely, not at all…
So yeah, some people do stick to their morals over creature comforts.
Even when it really sucks.
I did just remember Schwann’s is a thing though, so maybe nestle is good for something at least.
ROFL…. So boycotts are only for people who lack the balls to stand up against the things they like?
Valve allowing that dingus to sell a game while refusing to pay his victims families?
Sounds like a good reason to boycott to me.
But no one will.
I’ll take this opportunity to plug a tiny podcast that I stumbled onto called “Some Dare Call it Conspiracy”. It’s hosted by two English guys that were hard-core conspiracy theorists for 15 years.
They now discuss, debunk and interview people around the conspiracy life. It’s really fascinating to learn about Pizzagate, Chemtrails, Hunter Biden’s Laptop and Jeffery Epstein from very knowledgeable people but in an environment of debunking.
Their latest episode is an interview with Rob Jacobson, a former staffer for Alex Jones that worked for him for 12 years. Jacobson ended up testifying against Jones in the Sandy Hook trial. The episode is on their Patreon at the moment but will roll out to the general public in a few days. Fascinating stuff and Jones is every bit as shady as one expects.
I’m a huge Knowledge Fight fan. And your recommendation sounds right up my alley.
KF is a podcast done “the dollop style” with the broadcasts of Alex Jones, both modern and years old episodes. Dan Freissen has listened to 1000s of hours infowars, has read None Dare Call It a Conspiracy (which is why the recommendation perked my ears), has read Protocols of the Elders of Zion, “you name it”.
He shows how AJ’s Globalizist conspiracy is just a reskinning of old antisemitic writings.
Dan was flown to Texas to help the lawyers of the Sandy Hook defamation trial. I can’t say enough about how much I respect him.
Btw, by “the dollop style”, I mean comedian Dan Friessen tells his findings to comedian Jordan Holmes who is naïve on the topic.
Edit: Knowledge Fight has zero ads. Never has. No paywalls. They have no interest in sensationalizing. It feels very honest.
I’ll link the episode most inline with this article. #602 with Sandy Hook lead counsel Mark Bankston.
It seems like you folks like Behind the Bastards. They’ve been guests a few times. Here’s one Part One: How The Rich Ate Christianity
Edit: I wanted to clarify the relevance of #602. That came out in 2021, right after the default judgement was issued in Texas. I believe the lawyers never gave interviews until that ruling. I listened back. It’s a neat little time capsule. Just skip ahead until you hear Mark Bankston speak if it’s your first taste.
I’m a policy wonk!
This, Q Anon Anonymous and Behind the Bastards were my favorite podcasts for a while.
QAA is absolutely brilliant reporting. Liv Agar’s ep on superfascism was so great that I had to listen to it three times to make sure I absorbed everything. The interview with Marcus Gilroy-Ware, in which the author makes the case that we live in a fake democracy, was similarly mind-expanding. I tried to listen to Liv’s personal podcast, but she’s too smart for me. It required more active-listening that I want when enjoying a podcast rather than being relaxing. Big brained af.
Oh, haven’t heard of it. I’ll check it out. The Some Dare guys are pretty informal and raw, but they seem like guys you’d want to have a pint with if you met them in the UK. One if them is a rapper and the other is a death metal guy but they’re both pretty smart.
They talk about that actually. About how they think to get really deep into conspiracy theories it helps to be a creative type because you kind of have to be to get so far up everything’s butt and see such tenuous connections everywhere.
Can you link directly to the pizzagate one. I’ve never heard a good debunk beyond “there is no basement so nothing is true”.
The short answer is no. I can’t think of when tried a pizzagate debunking. (They are going on 900 episodes.) I do distinctly remember an early episode when they analyze an undercover Periscope video inside Comet Ping Pong.
For a hopefully longer, but slower, answer, I made a thread asking the small community on lemmy.world.
I love that show. Although I’m admittedly a lapsed fan, I was listening to them on my walks to grad school in 2013 or so.
Incidentally, I love looking for Ross Blocher’s name in Pixar credits.
So digging way back in the memory machine, I can even remember hearing Carrie on the inKredulous podcast #014 from 2012. I think that might be when I started listening to her and Ross’s show.
That show was from what I consider the glorious lo-fi days of podcasting. I’m not even going to listen back to it to see if it holds up before posting.
Thanks for the recommendation! I’m a huge Behind the Bastards fan, anything in that vein is super fascinating to me.
I love that podcast. I’ve been listening to one that a trucker recommended to me recently. It’s full of inside jokes so it takes a minute to be all in, but it’s really fun. It’s called Timesuck with Dan Cummins. Not every episode is perfect and it’s a bit long, but I love it.
Did OP say anything about Epstein’s crimes? No. He may be referring to the fact that people think that he didn’t kill himself (I don’t have a specific opinion on the matter.)
Edit: I just looked up the episode’s description: “Welcome to part one of episode 7!! The big question we’re asking today… Did Jeffrey Epstein kill himself?? Everyone has an opinion on this, what’s yours?”
Ugh, I was so excited for this … And at about 20 minutes into the first chemtrail episode they say contrails are the exhaust fumes coming out of engines :facepalm:
That doesnt square with the fact that these guys were hard-core conspiracy theorists? 😂😂
Look, people need something to play after they’ve finished Hogwarts Legacy.
What’s up with Hogwarts legacy? It’s one of the most progressive minded games I’ve ever played, so much so that J.K.Rowling herself tried to taint it by saying money that went to that game supported her views instead of the views in the game. Even though she doesn’t get any residuals from sales. She tried to tank sales to get back at them for making an open minded game instead of one that aligns with her views.
Lots of TERFs and anti-LGBTQ+ knuckledraggers made it a point to “play wizard game to own the libs” after many people decided not to play it on grounds that, regardless of whether or not it directly supported JK Rowling, it certainly indirectly supports her by spotlighting Harry Potter.
Also, as you said, JK Rowling tried to fuck with it because she’s a pissed off TERF, and some people just want to distance themselves from that whole mess.
In other words, Hogwash Legacy became a virtue signal for the fragile snowflakes on the right to stand cucked in solidarity with their astroterf queen.
It’s one of the most progressive minded games I’ve ever played
That is such an incredibly low bar. What passes as progressive values in AAA games is just a shoehorned and saccharine checklist progressiveness. I can almost understand why the chuds get annoyed because playing some games can be like bad corporate DEI training.
Right wing ideology meanwhile is baked into gameplay. It doesn’t matter much if the themes are anti-racist so long as every problem can be solved with the right gun. It doesn’t matter if you’re a socialist state in a strategy game who’s economy is straight out of the Chicago school.
A couple games get it right. “This War of Mine” shows you what’s happening in the out of bounds areas of Call of Duty. “Darkest Dungeon” is a microscope on the exploitation of capitalism. But good luck finding something like this in the AAA space.
It doesn’t matter much if the themes are anti-racist so long as every problem can be solved with the right gun.
Welp, so much for me trying to cite Wolfenstein 3D as a progressive-minded AAA game.
Fun fact the game can be beaten in 45 minutes and steam refund policy allows returns on games played 2 hours or less
That is a fun fact. Here’s an ever funner fact: Don’t give your money to assholes and then take it back. Just like, don’t give it to them in the first place.
