There’s a bidding war on for your mind

Congratulations to Global Tetrahedron for buying Infowars and pivoting it from fake news (bad) to fake news (good).

Alex Jones’ media empire and assets were forced into a bankruptcy auction following a $1.5 billion judgment against him for repeatedly claiming the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax. On Thursday, we found out who won that auction.

“The Onion, with the help of the Sandy Hook families, has purchased Infowars,” Ben Collins, former disinformation reporter and CEO of The Onion said on Bluesky. “We are planning on making it a very funny, very stupid website.”

Ben later told the Associated Press they hope to relaunch Infowars in January. Everytown for Gun Safety will be advertising on the new site, the New York Times reported.

Hey Ben, now that you own all of the remaining Brain Force Plus supplements, mind sending me a case? It’ll add some razzmatazz to the newsletter.

I see skies of blue  

There’ve been waves of people leaving X for Bluesky, another microblogging platform, since it launched in 2021, but this most recent wave has serious momentum, with over 3 million people joining in the past week.

Meanwhile the Guardian has said -30- to the platform, and our friends at the Center for Countering Digital Hate nuked their account from orbit. Our X account will remain up for now (SOMEONE has to monitor the ad ecosystem), but we’ll be spending more time on Bluesky.

You can find and follow the fine folks of Check My Ads in this starter pack (and if you want to join the platform but aren’t sure where to start, Mashable has a great guide).

What breed of dog tells strangers where you live? A doxxshund!  

If you haven’t been paying attention to your advertising ID on your phone, I have some bad news: it’s doxxing you.

See, the advertising ID isn’t just telling data brokers that you like to shop at Shien, or spend too much time looking at cars you can’t afford. It’s also tracking where you’re going with your phone — home, work, and anywhere else. And companies are selling that data.

Investigative reporter Rachel goes deeper into this story in this week’s WTFriday. 

Whether you have an Android or Apple phone, you can find out how to disable the advertising ID in this guide from the EFF.

If you need some motivation to take 30 seconds to futz around in your phone’s settings, 404 Media reported this week that the Secret Service says it doesn’t need a warrant to track you with location data.

That’s all for this week; have a great weekend, folks!

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