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?
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.
The problem is, shitty people are always going to abuse the laws. The goal, or at least the purported goal, is to minimize how many people get hurt when the law is abused.
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.
these days, if you say you are English they will lock you up in jail.
Of all the things that never happened, this didn’t happen the most.
What, where?
Because America is entirely broken.
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.
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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.
Why is it stupid when he is already facing financial ruin?
k there captain butthurt
He makes his living by fucking with people he doesn’t like and he certainly got off easy compared to the damage he’s caused.
*amok
Lil’ “bone apple tea” comin’ atcha!
Amok*
Found AJs account
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.
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It wouldn’t be worth it. Better to humiliate him and release the contents of his poorly hidden porn folders.
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.
oh no. let his idiot followers think it was a conspiracy. the more riled up they get, the more likely they’ll do something stupid that ends with them in prison or dead. no, let’s stir the pot.
I don’t think my sanity can tolerate more insane shit. Living in the US sucks.
i think the next time they grab up torches and pitchforks, the military will intervene. that’s probably our best hope since most of the good citizens of the left are cowards. the sooner we get it over with, the sooner this country can go forward.
Interesting assumption that the military would not be divided.
the more likely they’ll do something stupid that ends with them in prison or dead
That would quite possibly also entail them killing random innocent people or indoctrinating more. No thanks.
…and take a shit ton of innocent people with them.
That’s not how things work, though. Sure, some of them would wind up in prison. So? A negligible impact.
Do you think January 6 was organic? If so, you haven’t been following the investigations. It was an attempted coup, and the more people the extremist right can get riled up and ready to commit violence where directed, the more likely the next attempt is to succeed.
That’s how you create a martyr, galvanize a movement, and create mass condemnation against whatever cause you stand for.
This is simply false. His followers are cowards. They will do nothing. .
Who said they weren’t?
If some fool killed Jones, his followers would say his name for generations, talking about how he was killed by the deep state for telling the truth. They would spread his words further and more than they do now. People who don’t think much about him, or people who think he’s probably full of shit but like to listen to him for fun, and entertain his ideas a little, would suddenly take him more seriously, becoming followers as well. People who would argue against his lies now, will feel uncomfortable speaking out. For at least a while, anyone who tried to debunk his views would suddenly be painted as disrespecting the dead, at best, and viewed with suspicion. What it’s possible to talk about would shift right, extremism and conspiracy theories becoming more acceptable, facts and reason becoming less so. In the midst of it all, some new spokesperson for the lunatic fringe would rise up and replace him seamlessly.
And maybe they are cowards, but cowards are motivated by fear, and people motivated by fear often lash out violently.
i just don’t see how hard it could be to assassinate alex jones.
“No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban.”
2nd strike. Extending ban from 1 to 3 days.
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.
This is an absolutely a valve problem.
I mean, it’s just a game. The shitty part isn’t on Steam’s side; It’s on Alex hiding funds and refusing to pay for the lawsuits he lost.
Valve will allow anything if they can profit from it.
War is profitable. So I hear.
I mean… Half the games on steam are about war
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.
And you’re just one person. Clearly, your boycott is ineffective against Nestlé. Nestlé seems to be doing fine.
ROFL…. So boycotts are only for people who lack the balls to stand up against the things they like?
Yes and no. They’re obviously more universal, but historically, they only actually work against things people already don’t like.
True… god I hate people so much.
@politics @GilgameshCatBeard Hate is a pretty strong world
You’re stalking me now? I’ve reported all of your spam comments- including the ones you deleted.
Edit: Nvm I understand now!
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.
Oh, I understand now! Yes, that would be an excellent reason for a boycott, but it never works because people never seem to be willing to sacrifice even the smallest amount of convenience for the greater good. I’d be in, and a lot of others probably would be too, but how does one even organize something like that? I think that’s another part of the problem. For a boycott to work, it has to be well planned and organized.
Exactly my thoughts. Well said. Though, under normal circumstances, people would be absolutely outraged by this and the shockwave would be spreading across all platforms to boycott immediately-
but mUh gAmEz?!
So…. It won’t happen.
I boycott Nestlé, and I have ran into someone in the world who does the same.
So in my little town if there is a chance that the two of us ran into each other at the same Walmart, right as I was explaining to my kid why we couldn’t buy that type of bottled water, I think that there are a bunch of us boycotting nestle while unorganized.
Overtime cents add up to dollars, even if we can’t bring them down, we can still help them not grow as quickly.
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.
Didn’t they also rule against AI artwork? Seems that where their pocket book and legal worries are concerned, Valve treads lightly. Moral concerns and societal obligations? Not so much.
They also told a dev to stop developing a game since if they gave the go ahead Nintendo could potentially go after them.
They care about money more than anything else, just like any other corporation.
I don’t think you need to care about money more than anything else to realize that avoiding a potential lawsuit from a notoriously litigious and powerful company is a wise decision
They could have given a different answer, or worked with them to find a solution, but they went with the cheapest and easiest.
As I said earlier, fans excuse and hide the rest.
Are you talking about the dolphin emulator per chance?
Portal 64, they used the non open source code/tools, so Nintendo does have a bit of a case, hence why they are hesitant to give permission after the dev asked them.
One of those if they never asked, probably wouldn’t be an issue since valve never “knew of it”.
Pretty sure they’re talking about Portal 64
No, someone was developing a fan demake of a valve game for the Nintendo 64, and since the tools to develop a game for the Nintendo 64 aren’t legally available and it’s being used for valve’s IP then nintendo would be able to go after valve.
NFT and crypto would shoehorn in on their gun skin casino they market to children
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.
By those rules we can’t even criticize Hamas or Houthis
Yes you can.
Those groups are not fully in religious in nature but represent in part a political movement with a history of violence. As long as the ire is not placed on the entirety of the faith, a particular sect that is enacting it’s ideology based on violence is not a criticism based from the religion but by the actions of the group as a political and military force. Still not cool to infer they are genetically inferior or sub human or even that they are all pedophiles or something but the fact that they have been actually commiting specific crimes as an organized group means that they are free game to be critiqued for their crimes.
You can also actively critique the writings and dogma of a religion itself but the hate speech portion doesn’t kick in until imply that the people who follow it are mentally ill, inferior, predisposed to crime or all going to enact all the practices listed in their holy texts that represent a modern illegal practice etc. etc. etc.
There is a distinction between nationality and government/ politics as well. You can absolutely exercise free critique of someone as long as it is not based on the criteria of their national origin. As long as you stick to talking about the facts of what specific individuals or political groups have actually been accredited as doing you are in the clear.
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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.
This is too bad, but yes. They are like any other large corporation, I suppose – motivated primarily by greed.
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.
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.
I’m very excited. Thank you. KF plus British accents sounds so fucking good to me.
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 don’t believe Pizzagate was ever bunked, or debunked. The problem is that there are so many claims made that a rigorous debunk is difficult and time consuming.
The best attempt was NY Times that covered some details but cherry picked the claims it could debunk and completely ignored others.
Rolling Stones made a feeble effort spending most of the article on how the story spread, not it’s veracity.
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.
How do you debunk Epstein? He was convicted
Probably meaning the “Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself” theory.
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?”
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.
Right… But how is that the games fault if it’s a good game with a very progressive message? If anything you would want people on the right to be tricked into playing a game that supports what they fear.
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.
Guns are only for the right. Clutch my pearls and call me a swine if any leftist movement ever used violence, let alone gasp guns to accomplish their goal!
Leftist here with a gun, but I do not believe in using violence unless someone is using violence against me or mine directly. I wouldn’t dream of using a gun to accomplish any goal other than eating or recreational shooting. I believe that we’re intelligent enough to accomplish political and social goals without violence. Violence is a lazy way to do that and just creates more violence down the road. That’s just, like, my opinion though.
No matter what side you’re on, this is a quality joke.
And unfortunately, that Stormfront Doom mod isn’t on Steam afaik.
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.
True… But if you buy and return it you can give it a negative review?
Now we’re talkin’
I live in the middle of nowhere and rely on amazon sadly just not possible for me
If you read the reviews for it, you can 100% beat the game in about 25-35 minutes and return it for a full refund. I was tempted to do that but I didn’t want to enticed anyone else to buy it who may not play such a game on the devs.
But then you could also review bomb it right?
I think reviews from users who refunded aren’t counted in the overall score.
They really should be… If you’re refunding because a game is shit then it makes sense to review it as such to warn others
Too bad- if a game sucks and you return it, you should be score to thumbs down and write a review of why.
You can do anything if you believe in yourself.
If they know where money is coming from, aren’t there legal mechanisms to take it directly from Valve?
Lock him up (for life, 0 chance of getting out), Access his bank accounts, pay out the damn families already, forget about him and let him rot in there.
Do you think he did the shooting himself?
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My concern here is that these are not real sales and steam is allowing Jones to use their service for a poor attempt at laundering, but I suspect as a non user steam is already using services to ensure that the sales are coming from legitimate computers and cards.
This article invests a lot of effort trying to make it look like it’s all Steam’s responsibility.
Well I’m glad I didn’t buy that, I didn’t know he was actually associated with it financially. Figured it was the right kind of joke, not something tacky, tasteless, and stupid
When I was looking through the discussion hub for it there are so many banned accounts lol. It’s a ‘joke’ only as much as people say they were joking when they say ‘jews control the media’ or something, it’s full of racist memes.
He is a shameful human being. Nothing else to say here.
I’d classify him as a big fleshbag of bacon grease moreso than a human.
very cool America
I’m curious. What would you like “America” to do in this situation?
Have an actually functioning legal and economic system so people like this can’t be created nor have this sort of power in the first place? When you have criminals running businesses making bank, multi-millionaires even, while not giving his victims the compensation that they’re supposed to be getting, you’ve fucked up. Seize his assets and distribute them to the people who he defamed, take all of his earnings except for the bare minimum he needs to survive until this debt is paid off (which it won’t be since it’s far more than he could ever pay anyways). That’s what he should expect if he disobeys legal orders and refuses to do the bare minimum in paying victims out.
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