A satirical newspaper called The Onion won an auction earlier this month to buy conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ website InfoWars and other linked assets. But the sale is now in limbo because a federal judge put a temporary hold on the deal.
Elon Musk threw another wrench in the works on Monday when he said he didn’t agree with giving InfoWars’ X accounts to the new owners.
An objection made on Monday in bankruptcy court by X Corporation says that it owns all X accounts on its platform, even the ones run by Alex Jones and InfoWars. Elon Musk’s platform says that The Onion can’t buy these accounts from Jones or his company, Free Speech Systems, because Jones doesn’t own them and can’t sell them.
For the second time, Musk has stepped in to support Jones’ use of social media. Elon Musk fixed up Alex Jones’s and InfoWars’ X accounts back in 2023. In 2018, these accounts were “permanently banned” by Twitter’s former leaders because their posts had inappropriate and offensive content that broke the rules of the platform. Musk said at the time that he didn’t agree with Jones but wanted to let him back in because of “free speech.”
Musk’s lawyers now say that people who use the so-called “free speech platform” don’t really own their profiles.
“The Trustee wants to “sell” the X Accounts, but that would be illegal because it would mean giving away the right to use X Corp.’s services.” “This kind of sale would clearly be against X Corp.’s TOS and its ownership rights,” the lawyers for X said in the filing. “To put it another way, the Trustee wants to sell something that neither it, Free Speech Systems, nor Jones legally owns or has any stake in.”
It is clear from this court document that X Corp only objects to the sale of the X accounts and not to the sale of Free Speech Systems as a whole to The Onion. @infowars, @BANNEDdotVIDEO, @WarRoomShow, and @RealAlexJones are the names that are being linked to the case.
Musk’s social media site says that all of these accounts belong to X Corporation because that’s what its terms of service say. The business does say in Section 4 that all users are given a “license” to use their X accounts. Users can’t sell or give this license to someone else, though, without X’s permission.
After being told he had to pay the families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School killing victims nearly $1.5 billion, Jones filed for bankruptcy. He had to pay damages for defamation because he kept saying false things about how the 2012 shooting that killed 20 first graders and six teachers was a fake set up by actors to get more gun control.
Federal bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez said on Monday that he may hold an evidentiary meeting next month to decide if The Onion should be allowed to buy Alex Jones’ media company. This is happening while Musk fights the transfer of these X accounts.
Also Read: Elon Musk’s X is Changing Its Privacy Rules So That Other People Can Use Your Posts to Teach Ai
Lopez could finally let The Onion go ahead with the buy, call for a new auction, or pick someone else as the winner.
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