In the other direction, Thiel's Trump support suggests that his funding of Gawker lawsuits isn't just about Gawker and his history with them (which is how many people defend Thiel's actions, describing Gawker as an unusually bad actor that is reaping what they sowed). Instead, it suggests that the Gawker lawsuits are indicative of his broader attitudes about how the press should behave and what consequences there should be for press that doesn't.
I think this tends to be papered over too much with "yeah yeah, it's the same thing", but Thiel is not suing Gawker.
Thiel is bankrolling a lawsuit against Gawker related to its publishing videos of someone being naked without their consent, an issue that in the case of Erin Andrews led to a $55 million award and widespread public sympathy (http://abcnews.go.com/US/erin-andrews-jury-set-deliberate-75...).
Whatever you feel about the Hulk Hogan lawsuit against Gawker is wrong, ask yourself if you would you would feel the same way in the Erin Andrews case.
I think this phenomenon shows it nicely. Since Thiel has "touched" Trump, he is now "unclean" in the minds of people who perceive Trump through their morality circuits.
Nick Denton said as much "The details of your involvement will be gruesome if you continue suing us".
Sounds like a threat to me.
Thiel surely knows this but he's no coward. If I was him I'd have kept everything a secret. He must have weighted the probability of getting his funding discovered and then attacked by the Media Tribe against the (positive) deterrence factor plus being researched by (negative) private investigators i.e. blackmail efforts.
It is ironic that the chilling effects argument would push him into more clandestine arrangements (it's a sinister cabal!). You can't make people happy these days. Far from a billionaire having more rights than the average person, the Media is really arguing they have less rights than the average person i.e. He shouldn't have funded Hogan openly or privately; that is not at all. Presumably if the average person decided to pull together a public fund for their hero Hulk Hogan it wouldn't be a problem.
Nick Denton is not a very astute person. Just like in an ecosystem the foxes can't meaningfully 'win' against the rabbits. Some of the rich and powerful I know of would just have outright killed him for toying with them. Denton is depending on the morality of the people he attacks and that is not a very smart thing to do in the long run. That's not me being bombastic or making weird implicit threat. It is an observation of the reality for journalists around the world, the CPJ knows that very intimately. The irony is that if Thiel wasn't a supporter of the CPJ, didn't have strong convictions, then perhaps he'd be less likely to get attacked by the likes of Gawker.
If Gawker ever went after real targets Denton would be joining something like the Ecuadorian Embassy. That is a fact.
That's why we should be supporting real journalists and not this poser.
It's an ad hominem fallacy: Thiel supports Trump, ergo his assistance to Hulk Hogan is foolish.
The point was that as a Trump supporter Thiel is OK with using false conspiracy theories to manipulate the public.
Many major stories that made it big in the national news start off as a local or small paper doing the initial reporting. (For example the Flint, Mi lead water) These papers have such tiny budgets that they can easily be silenced.
That's theoretically true - after all, it's the same way patent trolling works. But he hasn't actually proven that yet, since he did win a juried verdict (with punitive damages, on top of that).
That's about as clear-cut a decision as our legal system can provide (before getting to the appellate level).
The only difference this time is they picked on a bully with bigger pockets.
It's all handwaving madly so the flaws in their reasoning aren't spotted. That remains my position until a good argument gets presented that isn't all over the place with logic leaps.
Plenty of environmentalists would be happy if an oil company got sued into bankruptcy over a spill.
It's the way of the courts, really.
If I'm reading your statement correctly...
I've listened to some of Trump's speeches, and also the mainstream media's constant misrepresentation of them.
Would you mind sharing how Trump is polluting our "highest political discourse"?
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/donald-trump-birther-obama...
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/02/donald-trump-...
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/09/18/politics/trump-obama-musli...
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/gop-primaries/268472-tru...