Infowars Sale to The Onion Rejected by Federal Bankruptcy Judge
www.nytimes.com
The Onion’s bid for the conspiracy website was supported by the families of victims of the Sandy Hook shooting and a nonprofit focused on ending gun violence.

“It seemed doomed almost from the moment they decided to go to a sealed bid,” Judge Lopez said. “Nobody knows what anybody else is bidding,” he added.

  • JasonDJEnglish
    57·
    10 hours ago

    The market decided.

    This can’t be the first time the courts had to liquidate assets to pay for a civil suit, right? There must be an outline of some sort for them to follow?

      • ricecake@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        14·
        5 hours ago

        No, that’s actually still the market deciding. It’s a perfectly standard type of auction that discourages low-ball bids. Bidding is secret, you only get one bid, and you don’t know who or if anyone else is bidding.
        If you want it, you make your best offer for what you’re willing to pay for it, and if someone else bid more they get it. If you would have been willing to pay more with more rounds of bidding, you should have bid that from the start.

        Open-bid auctions get better prices for sellers when there are a lot of bidders, and better prices for buyers when there are few. Given there were two bidders, it’s fair to seek the most either party will bid, rather than seeking $1 more than the maximum the loosing party will pay.

        • Aatube@kbin.melroy.orgOP
          11·
          1 hour ago

          Thing is, starting with lowballing (high in a market’s case) and then getting into a price war is exactly how a market decides things. I get what you mean, but I also agree that the market is equivalent to open-bid.

    • realcaseyrollins@thelemmy.clubEnglish
      1·
      10 hours ago

      Yeah, secret bids aren’t normally accepted in auctions. You’re generally supposed to know how much people are bidding so that you can bid above them, and I don’t think you’re supposed to include assets you don’t yet have control over as part of your bid either.

      These rules not being followed is why the judge was initially so mad in the first place.