An Open Letter to Peter Thiel

Thiel aspires to a political career doesn't he?

This level of vindictiveness towards the media does not bode well.

Imagine all billionaires behaving like this, a war on the media by the rich.

Imagine all US Senators conducting long term campaigns to bankrupt companies that they don't like.

And why stop at attacking media? Maybe you have a company that competes with Thiel.... he has now seen he can destroy companies with lawsuits.. Maybe in future this will be the strategy for destroying competition.

It's a little dismaying that the HN community seems to be so universally, 100% supportive of Thiel in this matter. As I wrote in another comment, we should perhaps be thinking less of the specifics of this case than of the precedent.

"The precedent that if you write scandalous gossip about someone, your company can be destroyed? What's wrong with that?"

Well, first off, scandalous gossip is a little subjective, and as Denton correctly points out, Gawker's sites aren't all trashy gossip in the first place. But, second and more importantly: no. That's not the precedent. The precedent is a billionaire who doesn't like what's being written about him funding other lawsuits to take down a media company.

"But look at the Hogan case. They were found guilty. Thiel had to find a case that could be won, because Gawker really is that bad!"

No. I mean, yes, maybe Gawker really is that bad, but Thiel--or anyone following in his footsteps--only has to find cases that are good enough to get to court. He could effectively cripple or destroy Gawker with cases that weren't winnable, as long as they were expensive enough to defend against and just kept coming. All our "philanthropist" needs is enough money.

The thing is, maybe the next target isn't going to be a site like Gawker. Maybe it's going to be the Intercept, or the Atavist, or Mother Jones (which has already been threatened with similar suits, IIRC), or Reason. Maybe the philanthropist won't be someone we're all quite so willing to give the benefit of the doubt to.

Look: these sort of cases are very often not ones that are over tasteful stories written by people you'd be comfortable sharing an elevator with. I'm not a fan of Gawker-the-site (although I'm a fan of some of Gawker's other properties, which these discussions seem to keep eliding). But I'm still, however reluctantly, on their side in this.

The world will survive just fine without Gawker, sure. But what if the press--not just Gawker, but any site that's got Gawker-level resources or less--has to start thinking, "If someone rich enough and vindictive enough to start funding libel lawsuits against me hates what I write, can I defend myself against them even if they're frivolous?" Do you really think there's no chance that won't make journalism a little more timid? A little more risk-averse?

Do you really think that's a good thing?

I wonder how many others feel so uncomfortable visiting Gawker that they'll debate whether to click this link.

I did click it, and read the letter in its entirety. I found it utterly unconvincing: a last-ditch moral appeal from someone with absolutely no moral credibility.

So disingenuous. Clarium was a bit ... volatile, but as I understand it generated 8 percent and change compounded returns over the life of the fund, and it likely wasn't that correlated with other funds in your portfolio, which means the idiosyncratic volatility was less of a concern than it might have been investing in a guy that ran with the herd.

A fund that does well can shape its returns, but you cannot control investor behaviour. So talking about a 90 percent loss of assets without mentioning the compounded return of the fund is really a sign that you aren't trying to be fair, but just stick the knife in. Or, throw enough mud and some of it will stick.

"A.J. Daulerio, author of the 2012 story on Hulk Hogan, is out of work and unable to pay the $100,000 in punitive damages awarded by the jury."

Odd that Gawker wasn't (isn't?) covering its journalists under its libel insurance policy, and is now relying on its failure to do so to justify publishing arguably libelous, or at least close to libelous, material.