Its not made up lol. Its the system thats in place. Alex Jones and his legal team had to play ball, thats how the legal system functions. He not only didnt do what he needed to, he actively lied and ignored the process so the judge used their existing powers to punish him. Its not just made up in this instance, these are existing powers within the legal system when the subject of a trial decides they just 'dont wanna'.

Legally you can say almost anything you want. But you still have to work with the legal system. Whats even more ridiculous is that legally speaking these defamation cases were almost certainly going to found in favor of Jones but he bungled his defense so bad hes being punished.

to quote that video I posted "He snatched defeat from the jaws of victory"

Unironically, wholeheartedly, YES, we should be okay with this. I don't think you realize the full extent of how badly Alex Jones fucked up. He made specific statements about specific people, that were false, and that he KNEW were false. These statements ruined the lives of multiple grieving families, forcing them to hire personal security at great personal cost, and to uproot their entire lives and move to entirely different states out of fear of their personal safety. That's the baseline defamation, and it's as close as you can get to the textbook legal definition of defamation. Then Alex Jones ignored the lawsuits, refused to turn over evidence he was legally required to provide for discovery, and then proceeded to lie to the court that the evidence didn't exist. His actions were so bad, the judge warned Alex "if you don't start doing what we say, we're going to enter a default judgement, and that means we're assuming everything the plaintiff says is true and that they would assume the worst about Alex's actions. He continued to ignore the court, so they got a default judgement. That's the second part of why it's so high.

Then while holding a trial to determine how much Alex owed after getting the default judgement, his lawyers fucked up and leaked evidence they had previously lied about not existing directly to the plaintiff's lawyers, AND ignored the plaintiff when they said "hey did you send this to us on accident, because if you don't respond we're going to use it as evidence." So now the court has direct, incontrovertible evidence that Alex Jones not only defied the court, but gave a bald-faced lie while doing so. He directly attacked the entire legitimacy of the entire judicial system. And that's the biggest reason why the judgement is so high: if the court DIDN'T award damages high enough to ruin his life, it would have sent a message to every billionaire and megacorp in giant flashing red letters saying "That massive team of lawyers you've been paying millions for to make sure you don't lose a lawsuit? You don't need them, you can just ignore the court outright, and even if you get caught red-handed lying it won't make a difference."

So yeah, if you mistake the Defamation 101 chapter in the textbook for a how-to guide, don't take part in the legal process at ALL, repeatedly lie to the court, give the plaintiff clear and convincing evidence that you lied, and ignore the plaintiff when they do their due diligence and ask you if they can use the evidence you accidentally gave them, your life SHOULD be ruined.