New York | Alex Jones is facing a hefty price tag for his lies about the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre – $US49.3 million ($65 million) in damages, and counting, for claiming the nation’s deadliest school shooting was a hoax – a punishing salvo in a fledgling war on harmful misinformation.

But what does last week’s verdict, the first of three Sandy Hook-related cases against Jones to be decided, mean for the larger misinformation ecosystem, a social media-fuelled world of election denial, COVID-19 scepticism and other dubious claims that the Infowars conspiracy theorist helped build?

AP