The Onion nabs Infowars.com domain name, will replace disinformation with humor

Satirical publication The Onion has successfully taken the domain name Infowars.com from an auction to liquidate the media empire of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, after a federal bankruptcy judge forced an auction of Infowars.com, some 400 other domain names and related intellectual property for a starting price of $1 million. However, it is unclear what other domains are covered. As it stands, Infowars.com is undoubtedly the most valuable of the bunch.

Alex Jones is due to pay $1.5 billion in damages after some of his followers continued to harass and threaten the families of victims of the 2012 school shootings by falsely claiming they didn't happen.

Ben Collins, chief executive of The Onion, said earlier that the company planned to “end Infowars' reliance on disinformation to sell health care products and replace it with endless Onion-style humor” and that it intended to re-launch Infowars next January as a “new, modern, and entertaining magazine”. It intends to relaunch Infowars in January of next year as a platform for “extreme absurdity and fun”.