Satirical newspaper The Onion made waves when it moved to buy the assets of Infowars, the far-right conspiracy theory webcast of Alex Jones, from a bankruptcy auction. But there was a sudden, unexpected wrinkle in the sale, reported 404 Media on Tuesday: lawyers for tech billionaire Elon Musk objected to a specific piece of the sale.
The complaint, wrote Jason Koebler, is that the sale includes Infowars' accounts on Musk's X social media platform, previously known as Twitter — and Musk's legal team wants it to be clear they actually own those accounts, not The Onion or Infowars, and all people and organizations on the platform have a "license" to use it, not ownership of anything on it.
"X Corp. does not object to the proposed sale as a general matter, but objects to any proposed sale or other purported transfer of any account used by Jones or FSS that is maintained on the X platform (“X”)," the company wrote in court documents.
This is a "highly unusual" argument, noted data privacy journalist Joseph Cox on Bluesky.
"In the objection, Elon Musk’s lawyers argued that X has 'superior ownership' of all accounts on X, that it objects to the inclusion of InfoWars and related Twitter accounts in the bankruptcy auction, and that the court should therefore prevent the transfer of them to The Onion," wrote Koebler.
This argument, he added, serves as a stark reminder to internet users that "you do not own your followers or your account or anything at all on corporate social media, and it also highlights the fact that Elon Musk’s X is primarily a political project he is using to boost, or stifle, specific viewpoints and help his friends."
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Infowars, a conspiracy-angled show that funds itself largely with Jones' side hustle of selling branded nutritional supplements and survival gear, has been in financial limbo ever since Jones was found liable for $1.5 billion over the harassment campaign he waged against families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims; he has for years baselessly claimed this massacre was staged by the government with child actors.
After months of wrangling in which Jones tried to worm his way out of paying the amount, he agreed for his company to be liquidated as part of the judgment — while ranting about the injustice of it to his audience in real time.
The Onion recently gained a new CEO in former NBC reporter Ben Collins, under a newly formed company known as Global Tetrahedron — an inside joke reference to a satirical Onion article about a corporation that buys the entire economy and all world governments.
