X says The Onion can’t have Alex Jones’ Infowars accounts
A new court filing claims X’s TOS prevent the sale of accounts without consent.
Another legal complication may have surfaced in The Onion’s bid to buy the Infowars empire from bankrupt conspiracy media mogul Alex Jones. X filed a limited objection to the transfer of Infowars’ X accounts to the satirical media empire in a federal Bankruptcy Court on Monday.
The objection claims that X Corporation’s terms of service states “the Trustee cannot sell, assign or otherwise transfer such license absent X Corp.’s consent,” according to court records.
X Corporation cites its own Terms of Service (TOS) agreement in its objection. The TOS states accounts cannot be transferred, gifted, sold or assigned to other parties ”without X’s express written consent.”
“Because the X accounts are governed by the TOS, the TOS make clear that X accounts are X Corp.’s ‘exclusive property,” according to X’s court filing.
Jones’ assets including the Infowars website went into a liquidation auction earlier this month to raise money for the nearly $1.5 billion in damages he accrued in civil trials brought by the family members of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Jones was found liable for spreading rumors about the victims’ family members that the Sandy Hook shooting was staged as a false flag attack.
The Onion’s parent company Global Tetrahedron stepped in to purchase the Infowars site after receiving permission from the families to accept a lower bid and forgo a portion of the sale to pay Jones’ other creditors. Onion CEO Ben Collins announced the deal on his Bluesky account as well as the newspaper’s plans to turn Infowars.com into “a very funny, very stupid website.”
US Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez halted the deal calling for an evidentiary hearing to review the auction process. The auction’s trustee Christopher Murray said in court that Global Tetrahedron’s bid was not the highest offered but the sale price included a legal clause citing its deal with the families. The Associated Press reported Monday that Lopez will hear arguments on the trustee’s sale of Infowars to The Onion on December 9 or 17 in order to ensure “a fair and transparent process.”
