Thiel shows why tech billionaires are the new robber barons | Hacker News Reader

Thiel shows why tech billionaires are the new robber barons

reuters.com

262 pointspetethomas372 comments

> Litigation finance is typically a business venture. It doesn’t become charity because a wealthy person uses it as a template for a personal crusade and then insists he’s doing everyone else a favor.

Why? Many cases brought by individuals or groups on moral grounds have led the way to better governance. A lot of good work has been done by groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Why should individuals or groups not be allowed to litigate moral changes? Who is supposed to do this?

What's lost in all of this is what the lawsuit was actually about. Gawker wasn't speaking truth to power and criticizing individuals. Gawker posted an illegally obtained sex-tape. These articles attacking Thiel framed as billionaire versus journalists doesn't even mention this fact. The question should be why you need a billionaire to fund a lawsuit to get some sort of justice.

I don't think the problem is the fact that Peter Thiel tossed money in the direction of a lawsuit. The issue is that money matters in justice, and that Peter Thiel coincidentally put his money somewhere did not make this so.

People are focusing shame on Peter Thiel today but that's the wrong place. There will always be rich people.

Now, I agree with that. But it's not the argument other people are making. People are saying this is an attack on journalism, and complaining that Thiel could have bankrupted Gawker just by attrition.

Yeah, he could. But that was not in fact what he did. Gawker didn't lose by attrition, they lost a particular case they damn well deserved to lose.

On the other hand, Thiel says Gawker's former victims have been forced to settle for a pittance because of attrition on their end. That sounds entirely plausible.

Money matters in court, by default that favours corporations (including media corporations like Gawker, and their $200-million owner Nick Denton) over all but the richest of individuals. That's the status quo, now the media are upset that it didn't work in their favor for once.

Yes, Gawker deserved to lose that case.

However, the Thiel involvement produced a vindictive and revenge-based strategy to try the case in such a way that Gawker couldn't use their insurance to pay the damages.

So I don't think anybody's arguing that Gawker shouldn't have lost that case. But it's clear the motive here wasn't just punishment, it was to put Gawker out of business.

And I used to hate Gawker because of all this Valleywag nonsense they did, but they have a lot of good sites today.

Like the site that sold that bought a stolen iPhone and bragged about it? If Gawker has any good content it's coincidence and not because they actively attempt to make it good.

Part of the purpose of tort law is to discourage tortfeasors from future misconduct. With a company as big as Gawker, insurance subverts this to some extent.

Do you think it should be possible to insure yourself out of liability for gross invasions of privacy?

It's not the insurance company that has wronged him. It's perfectly reasonable for Bollea to seek deterrence rather than settlement money/damages. Anyone would prefer that, unless they were forced to settle for something else for money reasons. Usually the plaintiff would settle/go for damages because they have to prefer money, because going to court is damn expensive.

So saying this was unfair and vindictive is presuming that the status quo, where money decides court cases, is just and reasonable. That Bollea should have been forced to go for the money because he's not really rich, he just has a rich backer. But I disagree with that. As long as money matters in court, the more people get access to multimillionaire justice the better.

I used to hate OJ Simpson because of the murders, but he was funny in the naked gun movies..

If Thiel didn't have a history with Gawker, I would believe to this nobel cause. However, it is obvious that he is using his power for personal revenge.

The short article just tries to show that the new billionaires are not different than old billionaires. They won't hesitate to use their power for personal gain in any area.

Well, you may say, of course, they will use their power for their personal gain. Well, yes, that is the point. Silicon Valley billionaires are not different.

> If Thiel didn't have a history with Gawker, I would believe to this nobel cause.

Thiel's history with Gawker is irrelevant to whether the cause is noble. If the cause is noble, it's noble regardless of who is funding it and why. If funding cancer research is noble, it is still noble even if you became interested because you had cancer.

The issue is that money matters in justice

Which reveals the lie behind the term "justice system". It's a judicial system. Its goal is to render judgments. Its relationship to justice exists only in the abstract.

> There will always be rich people.

Peter Thiel is not an automaton. he is a human being. he bears responsibility for his actions. he might not be doing anything illegal, but it is perfectly justified to expect more of people than merely following the letter of the law, and as for the rest, anything goes! it is particularly justified to expect more from such influential people like him. he bears, if not legal, then moral responsibility. and after all, laws did not spring out of Zeus' head or something, we defined them, and situations like this, and discussions that they instigate, can change those laws.

I don't like moral expectations, because I feel that it competes with precious narrative-time in public discourse with something far more interesting -- hard mechanisms. I believe in a policy / mechanistic fix of the importance of money in the judicial system, rather than spending time shaming one Peter Thiel.

I don't like moral expectations because it works like a black box, which I would be okay with if only the results weren't so lacking and unreliable. When discourse is constrained by limited resources, I prefer to speak of mechanisms because I feel it has a more plausible relationship with moral results.

When I'm one on one with you, then of course, we might discuss our moral framework and expectations, standards which may go far higher than brute mechanisms.

i can understand where you're coming from. i've felt exactly the same about Martin Shkreli. people just went crazy about him, and few asked how to change the system to not allow it. but still, even if the system is wrong, so is Shkreli.

no system can be perfect. even in pure math you have Gödel. in the ugly gray world of real life, of human societies, it can only be worse. unpredictable outcomes, grey areas,.. they are unavoidable. so i think we must do both - create systems which try to guarantee good order, and always complement them with a human touch. and that means personal moral responsibility, and a duty to think of more than just satisfying the dead letter of the law. furthermore, a system which would exactly codify morality is probably impossible, or even deadly for society. (just imagine what it means to have laws covering everything that is immoral... it would be the most extremely totalitarian state imaginable.) a lot will always be left to people themselves, to decide and to enforce in this way, through open public discussions, and their ugly brother, public blaming and shaming. it not even clear: should we even make a law against what Mr Thiel is doing? the answer does not seem so easy to me.

also, how could this discussion even take place if no one should judge the actions of Mr Thiel? what kind of abstract articles would we then be reading? "somebody somewhere did something, we can't say too much about what, so you don't figure out who it is"? :)

BTW, is it not kinda funny to defend a well known libertarian by proposing a stricter system? :)

Of course money matters in justice, as it matters with everything else. I can't imagine a system in which it doesn't matter. Perhaps if the Bar Association cartel was broken, lawyers would be less expensive, but there needs to be a kind of mechanism to allocate the judicial resources of the state.

You really can't imagine? What if for example the losing party in a law suit was automatically forced to pay the legal expenses of the winning party? That is actually how it works many places outside of the US. It's quite effective at discouraging frivolous lawsuits, and it means that a rich person can't bankrupt a someone by waging a legal attrition war.

It also means a non-rich person can't initiate a lawsuit because they'd be ruined if they lost. There are always uncertainties. Truly frivolous lawsuits tend to be dismissed pretty quickly in any case. But there are many reasonable cases where the outcome is nonetheless uncertain.

In that system Gawker would still be fucked. However a rich person who controls a media company can still discourage lawsuits against him by spending a lot of money on lawyers to defend him.

Suppose that rich media-owner slandered you. Even if the lawsuit would not be frivolous, the small possibility that you would lose and have to pay for the rich guy's very expensive lawyers would dissuade you from suing him in the first place.

So you sue Walmart for 20K on some legitimate grounds but loose to their AAA legal team. Now you are on the hook for 700K of their legal expenses. It's already the case that a large players ability to outspend the small challenger serves as huge deterrent for smaller players to take on the big guys you want to make that deterrent X10 more powerful.

Yes, that would help. However, there is still an upfront cost of being able to defend the lawsuit. I imagine the wealthy in the countries that do have this system still have advantages in litigious matters

All that would do is cause a lot of poor people to not bring lawsuits that are just, out of fear that another company with more money and lawyers will be able to out lawyer them.

US has SLAPP for frivolous lawsuits

I am also somewhat uncomfortable that his sponsorship was kept secret for so long, and that it easily could have stayed secret indefinitely.

It's very likely that this was an intentional leak to send a message to other media outlets that they should think twice before attacking billionaires.

Nothing to stop the Koch brothers from doing this.

I thought he himself came out with this? I think even "intentional leak" is taking it a bit too far.

The goal here seems to be to make sure that Gawker won't be able to secure funding for further litigation which it'll lose anyway.

Why does that matter?

because then we would be more ignorant of how the world was operating.

(Clearly you care or you wouldn't have wound up in this thread.)

I had a thought in jest. But then I started thinking about it, and now I don't know whether it's a good idea or not:

We need a single-payer legal system.

Isn't that how Pyscho-Pass got a Sybil System? ;-)

The subject of the case is a red herring.

Typically in these situations, a settlement is reached or insurance covers the damages.

That didn't happen. Thiel had an axe to grind against Gawker, invested $10m in the litigation, and pushed the case past settlement offers - even removing a claim that allowed insurance to cover damages. It focused on maximizing the damage to Gawker, which isn't what civil court is typically supposed to do.

Thiel was out for blood, and he used his money in someone else's case to get it.

Yes, Thiel was out for blood, but so what? There's nothing inherently wrong or illegal about feeling vengeful. It's a natural human emotion experienced and indulged by pretty much everyone at some point in time. It's not like we can eradicate it or make it illegal, so complaining about Thiel's goals or feelings seems like a waste of time to me.

The issue, as usual, should be with the system itself.

Is what happened here unjust? Is it wrong for Gawker to have had to pay the $140M? If you believe so, then your complaint should lie with the court. People should expect justice in court, rather than "typically" avoiding it via settlements and insurance. Our judicial system should be robust enough to make the motivations of a lawsuit's participants irrelevant. No matter how badly Thiel wants to destroy Gawker, they should only be liable for an appropriate amount of damages. If the court failed Gawker there, that's the court's fault.

On the flip side, if you believe the settlement was just, then it's Gawker's fault for doing something so bad that it cost them $140M in the first place.

EDIT: At least 6 downvotes now, but no replies. If you disagree, can you defend your reasoning at all?

What you're outlining is what people are worried about here - that uninvolved third parties with means can influence civil court cases they are biased against.

You could argue that this has always been the case, where the U.S. justice system has always been biased in favor of those with the wealth or the means, but does that really justify not pushing back against it?

Keep in mind that I'm not defending Gawker or sex tapes. If it comes down to deciding between a world where the sex tape with my best friend's wife can be published, or a world where billionaires can use their wealth in court to take out press organizations, I'm leaning more towards the latter.

There's nothing inherently wrong with third parties helping each other out. I can't understand why anyone would be worried about that. In fact, a lawyer is an uninvolved third party.

What is wrong is the degree to which wealth influences the outcome of a case. That's the real problem. In an ideal world, a person's case could be presented with equal strength regardless of the money spent for or against them. Obviously we don't live in this ideal world, but imo we should be laser focused on moving in that direction.

What frustrates me is the utter lack of focus on that task. Almost nobody seems to care about the broken legal system itself. All of the attention is being diverted to Thiel, billionaires, etc, and it's maddening. How do we expect to fix problems that we are willfully ignoring?

The media is acting in its own self-interest by framing this as a free speech issue. The "99%ers" are acting in their own self-interest by framing this as a billionaires-vs-the-rest-of-us issue. Where are the "good and just" people who should be acting in their own self-interest by demanding improvements in justice? Shouldn't that be all of us?

Again, you're bringing up the red herring: that this is really just a legal issue that was adjudicated in the court case, and that the motivation and cause of this court case being brought is completely irrelevant to the ethics of what Thiel did.

Saying that vengefulness is a part of the experience does not make the actions you perform vengefully suddenly OK, or else a we'd think a lot more highly of most murderers. Further, this isn't a complaint about his emotions. It's a complaint about his wielding his substantial power in order to bankrupt a company he felt annoyed by—it's about his actions, not his feelings.

Wow, were you really down 6? Per my other comment[1], I couldn't upvote you enough: the problem is that our truth-finding method in the justice system is vulnerable and open to manipulation. It should be robust against investments like Thiel's: roughly, an exponential investment of resources should only have a linear impact on the verdict.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11824193

I think Gawker was wrong, and deserved to be seriously damaged by this (and many other things), but lets not pretend that this wouldn't have hurt them if they weren't wrong. Defending yourself takes an enormous amount of energy, time, and money. If a billionaire hates you they can fund lots of lawsuits against you that would have otherwise never materialized. This would constantly drain you, even if you win, even if you win costs. Since the billionaire is just funding it, they don't even need to step into the court room to ruin your life.

In this case Thiel waited (probably) until Gawker had done something particularly bad (at least liability wise). That's good, but its easy to see what someone of his resources could choose to do with no apparent repercussions. Of course this is disturbing. The fact that our court system is abusable in this fashion doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned about the individuals who might so abuse it.

The article took this case as proof and omen way beyond what it actually shows, but its not nothing.

So your complaint is that Thiel could have done something else than what he did, and that would have been bad?

In reality Thiel didn't abuse the court system with meritless cases. Had he done that, I would also have been disturbed. But since he didn't, it's hard for me to get upset about it.

I don't want to directly comment on Thiel's actions, but one of the most annoying things in court cases that I care about is when it reaches a settlement, preventing precedent from being set, and allowing other actors to do the same thing as the defendants, knowing that somebody else is going to need to bring them to court in order for them to be held accountable. Settlement in cases can be a greedy/short term out that allows the same injustice the plaintiffs suffered to be perpetrated against others.

I thought this was the common complaint about settlements, which is why it confuses me that people are complaining in this case that the purpose of a civil court lawsuit is to extract the largest settlement.

Example:

"The legal system has certain informal but crucial checks and balances in it. One of them is that the cost and uncertainty of litigation make it in everyone's interest to settle, and in addition insurance creates incentives to settle. A third party purposely removing those incentives distorts the process." - CPLX

P.S. No witchhunt being started CPLX, just confused by your position.

I won't pretend Thiel's behavior in this matter is unambiguously good, but Gawker is a habitual bad actor, assisting stalkers, violating privacy on numerous occasions for reasons most reasonable people wouldn't consider newsworthy and offering bounties for stolen property. Several of those behaviors are illegal, and the last is likely criminal.

Viewed in a favorable light, Thiel wants to discourage gawker and companies like it by offsetting some of the risk of taking legal action. Viewed in an unfavorable light, he wants to take revenge on Gawker for invading his privacy and that of his friends. Even in the worst case, I can't say I blame him.

Let's not forget that Gawker monied up ahead of the trial, too. In a January 2016 staff memo, Gawker CEO Nick Denton described an investment by Columbus Nova (controlled by Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselburg) as a way to make sure his company had the resources for a full-stakes court battle.

The judge in the case had recommended mediation, but both sides really wanted a big trial. So they got one.

Interesting. Can you provide sources and also what do you think the end game is? Did Nick Denton know he was going to lose and go ahead anyway? Or was he just unable to conceive of losing?

Glad to oblige on sources. Here's a copy of Nick Denton's memo announcing the investment and its relevance to the Hogan litigation: http://jimromenesko.com/2016/01/20/gawker-takes-outside-mone...

And here's a Fortune story with a little more background on the investors: http://fortune.com/2016/01/20/gawker-funding/

On the "endgame" question, it's worth noting that Gawker's new backer is one of the world's 100 richest people, with an estimated $9.8 billion net worth, according to Forbes. Thiel checks in at just $2 billion or so.

If both billionaires want to keep battling, this case could rattle around in a lot of different courts for a long time. We may not know yet who ultimately wins/loses.

Was Nova involved in the court case, or have a personal vendetta against Hogan?

You can tell it's a hit piece because having a vendetta against someone outing a gay man is something most people would find perfectly acceptable and ruins the narrative.

Precisely. The legal system has certain informal but crucial checks and balances in it. One of them is that the cost and uncertainty of litigation make it in everyone's interest to settle, and in addition insurance creates incentives to settle. A third party purposely removing those incentives distorts the process.

Also to this general point, another check and balance for civil litigation are the reputational and discovery risks. With very few exceptions we require proceedings to be public, meaning that a plaintiff has to be willing to publically stand behind his action, and we allow defendants to have very broad discovery rights, to inspect the books and communications of a plaintiff.

Both of these are disincentives to filing a revenge based lawsuit -- as opposed to an action primarily to recover monetary damages -- and these were perverted as well by having a hidden third party who managed to evade that scrutiny during the proceeding.

There is a reason why vendetta based litigation is not all that common, and formal and informal checks and balances are a big part of it.

As an aside, if I were in Peter Thiel's camp right now I would hope to God he's all paid up with his taxes, doesn't have any angry lovers or ex-employees out there, and isn't engaged in any unethical or embarrassing activities, given that he now almost certainly has a lot of investigative journalism firepower pointed at him.

> The legal system has certain informal but crucial checks and balances in it. One of them is that the cost and uncertainty of litigation make it in everyone's interest to settle, and in addition insurance creates incentives to settle. A third party purposely removing those incentives distorts the process.

Seems like distortion in the same way paying a friend's bail is corruption. Not at all!

> Both of these are disincentives to filing a revenge based lawsuit -- as opposed to an action primarily to recover monetary damages -- and these were perverted as well by having a hidden third party who managed to evade that scrutiny during the proceeding.

It is honestly news to me that the purpose of lawsuits is not to be revenge based but to be based on recovering the highest amount of monetary damages. Can you explain in more detail why you believe this to be so?

You're aware that some people view settlements to be a form of corruption? i.e. Big Guy pays off little guy, continues to screw little guys using the superpower of inordinate amounts of money. It is a complaint I've heard many times before.

> As an aside, if I were in Peter Thiel's camp right now I would hope to God he's all paid up with his taxes, doesn't have any angry lovers or ex-employees out there, and isn't engaged in any unethical or embarrassing activities, given that he now almost certainly has a lot of investigative journalism firepower pointed at him.

Amen, I've been saying the same thing. I'd be advising Thiel to carry full body hidden camera/audio recording devices in future, as well as examining all my personal and financial affairs with a fine toothcomb before the enemy gets to them.

It should not have to be this way, but you know, it is.

You're advocating a flawed legal system. You're basically saying: The legal system can be abused by any rich person with a vendetta, therefore shame on Thiel for abusing it.

However, it's not feasible (or desirable) to put an end to rich people or vendettas. Thus, isn't the best option here to fix the legal system itself?

There is no system on this planet that cannot be at least somewhat abused by a person with a billion dollars in resources and no ethical constraints.

I agree that weaponization of the courts as a tool for bullying, carrying out vendettas, and/or shutting down innovation from small companies is a huge problem (Donald Trump's penchant for this is one of the reasons I have a hard time closing the gap on supporting him).

I think a good way to keep this system fairly stable but approximately prevent its weaponization is to require that each side has equivalently-priced representation. The Court should require the wealthier party to disclose their legal costs and pay 1x that much money into a trust managed by the Court, which would then be forwarded to the other party's attorneys. This way, both sides are evenly matched and it's a fair fight; if Thiel wants to pump $10m into the other party's legal offense fund, that's fine, but he'll have to pump an equivalent amount into the legal defense fund.

This will lead to people using shell corporations so not only will you have to use an entity without assets but also have to pay for its defense.

> The subject of the case is a red herring.

Agreed. It matters to Terry, but doesn't explain what's happening now.

> Thiel was out for blood, and he used his money in someone else's case to get it.

Correct. The 'Thielite' side I'm on doesn't dissent from this.

> It focused on maximizing the damage to Gawker, which isn't what civil court is typically supposed to do.

Not so sure about that. I think you may be extending your ideas about civil lawsuits over the edge. I've never heard it said before now that one of a civil court's functions was to maximize the settlement. Presumably civil courts existed without insurance companies being around at some point, so maybe not.

I'm open to having my mind changed though, should you find evidence in law of a civil court's function being described in that way.

> even removing a claim that allowed insurance to cover damages.

Yeah, ensuring that the guilty party had to pay out of their own pocket.

The subject of the case really isn't a red herring.

Neither side here looks great. It's reasonable for someone to sue Gawker because of what they publish.

It's a bit scary to have someone attempt to take down a publishing company just because of a long-held grudge.

That's a template for private censorship by the rich.

To me it would only be scary if a media company was taken down by a rich entity simply litigating them until they couldn't afford to fight the lawsuits anymore. In this case, Gawker lost because they were in the wrong.

A media company operating with integrity has nothing to fear here.

I've read exactly two articles re: Thiel vs. Gawker, but....isn't that exactly what's happening? I don't see Gawker's "wrongness" as entirely relevant to the fact that Thiel is ostensibly subsidizing litigation in the hundreds (edit: tens) of millions of dollars-just to see Gawker go away.

I absolutely loathe Gawker Media, I loathe this even more.

>I don't see Gawker's "wrongness" as entirely relevant to the fact that Thiel is ostensibly subsidizing litigation...

It is directly related...If Gawker was not guilty of committing a tort that resulted in actual damages, then Thiel or anyone else would not be financing litigation against Gawker.

>Thiel is ostensibly subsidizing litigation in the hundreds of millions of dollars-just to see Gawker go away.

Who gives a shit and why? Is it just because Thiel has a personal issue with Gawker? If Bollea couldn't afford the litigation legally he could use credit, take a bank loan, have family loan him money...legally, he is allowed to sell portions of any potential damages he may/may not be awarded to finance the litigation. What is a better alternative? Certainly we don't want to limit litigants financing to what they can afford out of pocket.

And its not like Thiel or any other financier is allowed to have any influence on the independence of the client's lawyer, so its not like Thiel can prevent Bollea from settling if the amount is agreeable to the client.

Finally, there are mechanisms that Gawker had at its disposal it didn't use that they could have to stop the bleeding. They could have offered Bollea a settlement and avoided litigation, and even if Thiel unduly influenced Bollea to keep the litigation to bleed Gawker, they could have file a Proposal for Settlement above the actual damages and when the judgment comes back under the proposed settlement amount, then Bollea would actually be responsible for Gawkers lawyer's fees (i.e. they would be net + on the litigation even though they lost).

I don't see Gawker's "wrongness" as entirely relevant...

It is 100% about the wrongness. If they weren't wrong, they would not have been sentenced to pay $140M.

"Hundreds of millions"

The quoted number is 10 million http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/business/dealbook/peter...

He's also financing multiple cases, isn't he?

> To me it would only be scary if a media company was taken down by a rich entity simply litigating them until they couldn't afford to fight the lawsuits anymore

It already is scary because people are taken down by the media company simply publishing lies because they can't afford to sue.

Crying on behalf of Gawker in this case is a lot like crying for the bully that's finally getting punished.

> A media company operating with integrity has nothing to fear here.

Until they do? Gawker is very likely to win on appeal, but who is going to want to invest in Gawker knowing that a litigious billionaire has a grudge against them?

IANAL and I'm no expert in the US justice system.

"Gawker is very likely to win on appeal"

Sounds to me like a flaw in the justice system, if one side hands out high amounts of punishment, then the appeal system systematically reduces the payment. Not something the person who sues or supports the legal action is responsible for.

Do they? Even if Gawker was in the wrong here, is publishing someone's private sex tape $140 million worth of wrong? What about all the other tabloids that have done something similar?

It's exactly this kind of "jackpot justice" that illustrates how bad the system is, that everyone is one sympathetic jury away from being shut down.

I can't upvote csallen's comment enough: the cost of being wrong is far too capricious. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11824026

The amount in proportion to the money they make from doing this, and to what is needed for them to feel the burn.

That is like saying law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear from discretionary enforcement.

What is your feeling on discretionary enforcement that targets a someone, or a population, because they are undesirable? If such enforcement uncovers crime (but was not motivated by crime), is it just?

The problem is "integrity" is subjective.

Nobody cares about the beautiful stories that are published, just the ugly stories. Those ugly stories are still an important part of journalism, especially when they're ugly to people in power.

> That's a template for private censorship by the rich.

No. Contrary to popular opinion, you can't sue somebody out of existence if they've done nothing wrong. The courts frown on attempts to do that.

For you to do something wrong, you had to cause clearly defined harm. If you're causing harm, why shouldn't you be sued out of existence?

The injustice here isn't that the rich can eliminate bad actors ... it's that the rest of us can't!

You underestimate the power of being able to turn the Eye of Justice selectively upon individuals or groups of enemies. It's one of the reasons people get so upset with racial or class-based profiling.

We may all agree that enforcing speeding laws is a good thing, and someone who gets a ticket for it deserves the fine. But if I could fund the police department to have a car permanently follow just you around and nail you for each transgression, it turns something that is fair for each individual offense into something unfair in aggregate. Even if by doing so I was making the roads safer, and you technically deserved each fine.

I think Peter Thiel is doing something similar and even though Gawker is in the wrong in the individual case and deserves to lose, I strongly dislike being able to keep paying to throw the justice system against your enemies.

In your example, you're conflating the actions of a government and the actions of a private individual. Peter Thiel isn't the government.

You are also muddying up scale. In your example, the government is much more powerful than the individual. In the Gawker case, all the parties are pretty much at parity.

There has always been yellow journalism. Gawker isn't new. What is new is that this is the first time an establishment like that got a bloody nose. Usually they're the ones using the legal system to silence those they abuse.

>I strongly dislike being able to keep paying to throw the justice system against your enemies.

Why? This is simply how the world works.

It doesn't have to be the justice system.

> Contrary to popular opinion, you can't sue somebody out of existence if they've done nothing wrong.

That's absolutely incorrect. There is ample precedent of people using the civil legal system to suppress the media.

Perhaps you heard of these guys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_and_law

I was explicitly talking at the US legal system, so the proper link is this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_and_law#Cases_in_t...

Read that over. They did not have a lot of things go their way.

It's not the legal fees that are doing them in, it's the damages awarded by the judge.

This sounds like it's meant to be a correction, but the post your responding to mentions neither legal fees nor damages. Are you responding to the right comment?

> The question should be why you need a billionaire to fund a lawsuit to get some sort of justice.

Exactly. You shouldn't need $10M to sue someone for a grave invasion of privacy.

It's also true that groups such as the EFF are funded in large part by corporations and billionaire foundations (although not exclusively).

However, there is a crucial distinction between the EFF and what Thiel did. The EFF is an issue-driven organization. They issue position statements and operate in public. Their lawsuits are specific to the issues they advocate. The public has the ability to debate these issues and ultimately evolve the law around them. They have that balance of power.

Thiel's objective was simply to run Gawker out of business. He pursued a variety of lawsuits on a diversity of claims that were united only in their goal of censoring a publication. That is not principled philanthropy. Operating in secret and without a principled issue focus, he does not face a balance of power from the public.

If Thiel funded a privacy-advocacy foundation that gave legal aid to victims and engaged in principled public debate, that would be one thing. But that's not what he did here.

Precisely the issue is that equality under law is farcical these days. When you have to have tons of money or know lawyers/judges to get any kind of legal projection or justice, the Constitutional principles of the fourteenth amendment are being undermined. Lawyers and judges benefit and perpetuate it, an increasingly militarized police force profits and pushes it, along with their municipalities.

I just wish people would remember the Constitution every god-damn once in a while, especially seing as almost all of them swore oaths that they are then breaking.

Can anyone tell me what the legal punishment/repercussion for breaking the oath of office is?

"The powers of the States in dealing with crime within their borders are not limited, but no State can deprive particular persons or classes of persons of equal and impartial justice under the law."... as long as you have money to feed the fucked up system.

What this is really about is class warfare, and the rich are winning. Also, the bankers have always been the real robber barons, so I don't like this halfassed attempt at claiming a few tech billionares are even close to comparable in power level.

There is a difference between winning a lawsuit to right a wrong and then to go further and actually try to take down a paper. Whatever Gawker did to Theil it's not worth doing what he is doing but thats up to him.

The problem though is that as extreme wealth gets put into fewer hands it allow them to basically bleed anything skeptical to this out.

Furthermore and as a sidenote.

I find it ironic that Theil of all people, a libertarian who claims we more or less don't need government end up kind of illustrating exactly why we do. Thats of course on top of his funding of Palantir a company who's based on government work.

I like some of his thinking but I think he is showing some major flaws.

Anarcho-capitalists advocate private courts and private enforcement, but that is impossible (at least for cases like this one) to put into practice when an existing government has already established a monopoly on this. Unless the government is abolished, using its facilities is a perfectly reasonable way to settle conflicts. Not only that, in some cases, using government facilities becomes mandatory, whatever your political beliefs. For example, if someone gets murdered in his house, and he is the sole witness, he is bound by law to report it. (At least, this is how I understand the law.)

> I find it ironic that Theil of all people, a libertarian who claims we more or less don't need government end up kind of illustrating exactly why we do.

I also find his actions ironic, but maybe for the opposite reason. In funding this lawsuit, Thiel appears to be funding the initiation of force -- bringing the power of government to bear against a private organization which hasn't used force or the threat of force (as far as I know). I would have assumed that as a libertarian, Thiel would be against this sort of thing, as you say, but apparently the temptation to use the State to crush someone he didn't like was too great.

I would disagree with you that his actions illustrate that more of this is exactly what we need, though.

They actually did use violence.

If I set up a hidden camera in your shower, and post the results on youtube, most libertarians would agree that I have committed some sort violence against you or your property.

If instead, I pay someone else to set up hidden cameras in your shower, I have also helped commit violence against you.

Thats basically what Gawker did in this case.

the "off what we need" comment has to be understood in the context of wealth moving towards the ultra rich.

What then is left in a ancap/libertarian society to defend those who aren't wealthy?

The whole base of a democratic government, for all it's flaws, is to provide rights to the individual regardless of heir wealth and to defend those on your behalf.

He's a smart man, so it is quite possible he has some nuanced opinion that is not exactly cookie-cutter libertarian from a textbook.

And this should be allowed. Siding a certain way on some political issues shouldn't require you to be absolutely dogmatic to all of the relating principles and perspectives in all contexts.

I mean, I wouldn't expect this from myself, so I wouldn't expect it from others.

I gave a small explanation concerning Thiel's ideas and the intelligence agencies last week:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11782998

I don't deny this whole area is troubled and troubling, when national security is concerned it seems every path is taking you to some kind of hell. The world is a Big Place and common sense often falls short of being an ethical guide. I'm sure joining forces with Joseph Stalin produced mixed feelings. If courage is what is required to deal with that kind of thing then I'll be pleased to be called a coward.

He is a smart man, but that does not mean his morals are better.

He can do whatever he want's I still find it ironic since his stance is one of quite fundamental morals.

Him using his money in court to get revenge. Now imagine that in a private court he could potentially be primary shareholder in.

> Why? Many cases brought by individuals or groups on moral grounds have led the way to better governance.

Intent matters. One of capitalism's great powers is harnessing the greedy and power-hungry and getting them to at least sometimes work for society. (It's not perfect, but it's better to have Bill Gates trying for a monopoly than starting land wars.) But that doesn't make them great-souled public benefactors. (Although later they do sometimes become that as well.)

Here we can infer intent from design. If Peter Thiel's goal was to help out defenseless individuals harmed by thoughtless journalists, that suggests one set of structures. E.g., a public nonprofit that does advocacy while funding the occasional suit from someone without money or power.

The structure actually chosen was to secretly fund a series of suits against a single publisher with the apparent intent of driving them out of business. The first plaintiff chosen was already rich (net worth, $25m) and famous. And if you talk to journalists, the result isn't to make them generally more careful. It's to make them more afraid of Thiel and other billionaires. [1]

So either A) Thiel is a kind-spirited public benefactor who's just not very competent or B) he's getting exactly the effect he wanted, which was to hopefully crush Denton and scare anybody who plans to write about him, even when the articles they write are perfectly legal. He seems like s smart guy, so I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt and going with B.

[1] e.g.: http://www.wired.com/2016/05/three-cheers-for-peter-thiel/

> If Peter Thiel's goal was to help out defenseless individuals harmed by thoughtless journalists, that suggests one set of structures. E.g., a public nonprofit

This has popped up several times in this thread, and I don't see why it's true. There's no obligation, legal or moral, that philanthropy be coordinated through a nonprofit. The only reason for the nonprofit is to get tax advantages. If you're donating tens of million of dollars to a nonprofit, it'll be to one where you wield significant control (officially or not).

If Thiel's actions here were inappropriate, they'd be exactly as inappropriate if managed through a nonprofit.

"E.g." means "for example". By which I mean: there are a bunch of ways he could do this, and I was suggesting one. Also note that I said other words than "nonprofit" that are part of the example that I expected people to generalize from.

But to yield to your nitpicking for a moment, your last sentence is wrong. Nonprofits have public disclosure requirements and state audits to make sure that they are acting to actually benefit the public. So him putting tens of millions into a nonprofit would be a) inherently less wrong, because they would not have been secret, and b) likely to be yet less wrong, in that they would have had to face substantial scrutiny from public servants.

I agree that there are a bunch of ways he could do this. What I don't agree is that any of those other ways are inherently more moral. The morality of an action is independent of the legal structure erected around that action. You might prefer a non-profit or some other structure that doesn't make it easy for Thiel to hide his involvement, but the reality is that none of that matters morally (or legally, really). Bad actions don't become good because a non-profit manages them and good actions don't become bad when they are performed by private citizens.

Your ideas about non-profits being "less wrong" are just incorrect. Privacy and secrecy are not immoral things. A non-profit structure would be more transparent but that doesn't make it "less wrong". Secrecy can hide bad actions but can also make possible good ones. e.g. An ex-con (or at the more extreme end, a Nazi) who wants to donate to cancer research might have his public donation rejected on moral grounds. The donation is moral even if the person has engaged in other immoral acts. A secret donation is therefore more moral in this case because it is more likely to be accepted. More immediately relevant, Thiel's public backing of the suit might have made a win less likely, meaning that if funding the suit is moral, funding it privately was the more effective and therefore more moral option.

Note that the only entities complaining about this are themselves journalists. They're just closing ranks.

> Note that the only entities complaining about this are themselves journalists. They're just closing ranks

It would have been hilarious if someone had similarly casually dismissed the uproar software engineers were making over Oracle v Google: Note that the only entities complaining about API copyrights are themselves developers. They're just closing ranks

Would that not be true?

We do have our opinions and they do stem how we do work. Therefore we have interests, received opinions and such.

It wouldn't be true for me (as a software engineer). I would like to believe as a person more familiar with how the sausage is made, so to speak, I am more sensitive to potential threats to the industry than the layperson. Terming my concerns as "closing ranks" is a disservice because you are dismissing them without consideration or critical thinking - it's ad-hominem-lite

It just means when the party in question catastrophizes the new development, realize they might be coming from a place of self-preservation.

The media sees Silicon Valley as a competitor. A natural enemy.

The Valley after all deals with distribution of information on a massive scale. Traditionally this was a position held by either the Government or the Media. The state is still in the game for the usual reason of having access to unparalleled force on demand. The media on the other side has been much diminished by the Net, which is not what you'd expect if you thought they were information gathering and disseminating organizations. They deplore it!

In fact their power stems from the ability to form opinion and synchronize the mood of mass numbers of people. If the world is the Middle Ages then the Media is the Witchfinder General. If the Witch is a person, the tabloids typically deal with it. If the Witch is an idea, the broadsheets do it while congratulating themselves on their distinction to the tabloids.

This is all natural behavior of people, but it becomes focused like a laser on the whims of the opinion making classes. Sometimes journalists, typically of the Harvard School, sometimes those paying them to direct the faucet like advertisers or 'secret source' officials. The media has a similar role to the owner of a military garrison at a strategic river bend. The river and its traffic are wholly natural but the garrison is used to regulate it.

Suppose that the media were not the opinion forming organs of the people. What then? Chaos? Anarchy? Dogs and cats living together? No.

In fact people would naturally talk to each other on the new medium of information. We'd continue to develop tumblrs and 4chans. Thousands of small communities gossiping away about whatever they believe concerns them. Sometimes they would go overboard, but groups have an instinct for self preservation and mostly self regulate.

What would be diminished is the synchronization of opinion. Themes would still exist, perhaps more strongly than before, still a left and a right. Notice how the social justice advocates and NRX formed themselves organically. Neither of these groups can be integrated into the mainstream politics today. It's not that they are too extreme, it is that they evolve too quickly to be controlled at the same rate as before (it's like biology, smaller entities evolve faster). The connection between low church and high church is severed.

Gamergate is some evidence for my hypothesis, just in microcosm. We see a smaller community with one narrative crushed by the larger one with a different narrative. The Media does not like competition.

Hi, have you read http://degree180.com/8686-2/ ?

Founder of a business for identifying cyber-bullies threatened by one "Zoe Quinn" that continuation of their campaign would result in harassment..

According to the author, no complaints were received prior to this threat. After this threat, user complaints resulted in killing their kickstarter.

All is fair in love and war! It is certainly true that the anti-gamergate people needed no help from the formal media to go on raids. What appalls me is that I don't think most of them know they're raiding.

Still the formal media did recognize them as a natural ally and appeared to universally pan the gamergate community so far as I could see. That is the focus on my attention, because I wonder most about why that would be so.

Yuck. Got a tl;dr? I'm tired of every other paragraph being a diversion into discussion of what she was wearing or other irrelevancy.

See my above comment. Gamergate "victims" actually are responsible for cyber-bullying, not the other way around.

Author thinks there's big $ in anonymous bullying.

> The question should be why you need a billionaire to fund a lawsuit to get some sort of justice.

You don't need a billionaire to get "some sort of justice." Bollea could have found someone to do this on contingency. But you may need a billionaire if your goal is to destroy a multi-million dollar media organization.

>"Gawker wasn't speaking truth to power and criticizing individuals. Gawker posted an illegally obtained sex-tape. "

Nice deflection! No one cared about the sex tape, they cared about the racist rant contained therein.

Tony did not sue Gawker because of a sex tape (although that was the vector Thiel's lawyers chose), he sued them for exposing a racist rant of his.

To claim that exposing his racist rant isn't criticizing a public individual is quite the massive deflection!!

There wasn't a racist tirade in the video posted by Gawker. Your facts are wrong.

The racist tirade was published by two completely different publications much later on by July 24, 2015. As far as I remember, by this point, Hogan had already been suing Gawker for releasing the sex tape for quite a while.

As another poster noted, you have the facts backwards. Gawker posted the racist rant as retribution for Hogan's lawsuit. The sex tape was published because it was a sex tape of a famous person.

>These articles attacking Thiel framed as billionaire versus journalists doesn't even mention this fact.

This one does though:

>As for Gawker, it disseminated a sex tape of a retired pro wrestler. Let’s not pretend that the website did it as part of a great journalistic mission. Gawker did it to lure eyes to its website while smugly saying the First Amendment sheltered it.

The author's beef isn't with Thiel using his money to help sue Gawker, but with him considering this to be philanthropic:

>The problem isn’t the way Thiel used his money. It’s his pretensions about it.

> The author's beef isn't with Thiel using his money to help sue Gawker, but with him considering this to be philanthropic:

>> The problem isn’t the way Thiel used his money. It’s his pretensions about it.

But it is philanthropic, it just doesn't align with the author's idea of philanthropy.

What?! You have a seriously messed up idea of the definition of the word philanthropic.

>the desire to promote the welfare of others, expressed especially by the generous donation of money to good causes.

If Thiel believes that sponsoring this lawsuit improves the welfare of others, then it is by definition philanthropy.

Just like how it's philanthropic if I tape bum fights and make them freely available on YouTube.

Except in Thiel's case, there seems to be a strong concurrence of moral justice behind him. Your example would get none of that.

Philanthropy assumes a common/public good.

Because getting a settlement for invasion of privacy is exactly the same?

False equivalence. Hulk Hogan may not be my favorite celebrity, but he deserves privacy more than Gawker deserves page views.

Are more leaked sex tapes used for commercial purposes in the public interest?

Nobody pretended so - which is the whole point. Thiel could have given his money to a foundation that openly sponsors lawsuits for media victioms. That would haven been for the public good.

Instead he chose to sponsor the lawsuit (and other lawsuits) against gawker in secret because he feels wronged by them with the intent of punishing them. And that's not in the public interest because it can be considered a form of vigilantism.

>it can be considered a form of vigilantism

No. Vigilantism is extralegal. A lawsuit is by definition not vigilantism.

Maybe he did so in secret because he didn't want it to be framed 'billionaire vs journalist'

Perhaps he felt that he was wronged by them and that may be petty, but it doesn't mean that the lawsuit he did participate in is unjust or an unworthy cause.

Bollea had a valid legal cause of action and Thiel backed the lawsuit financially...no matter what Thiel's motives isn't working within the confines of the law and availing oneself to their legal rights the complete opposite of vigilantism?

So the US courts are so corrupt that going through them is considered vigilantism?

If Thiel's action was vigilantism, the use of private combat or violence to punish perceived injustice, then maybe the real problem is that our legal system has become a form of trial by financial combat.

I agree he should rather have been open about it. But for one, it doesn't appear to have been a terribly well-kept secret, and for another, he could easily have hid behind a foundation too.

> Thiel could have given his money to a foundation that openly sponsors lawsuits for media victioms.

Why is that better than shuttering a perpetrator and dancing on its grave?

Cannot agree.

Legal precedent is legal precedent regardless of who brings the case or their stature. Thiel going in via the Hogan case is still public interest.

this is getting too much into "... and he said, and then she said...". was something wrong done? is there some sort of justice being done? no need to go deeper than this, unless it's one's hobby to discuss famous people's private lives

Thanks for contributing!

It's rare that someone contributes without adding anything worth reading. YOU are BETTER. RARE isn't just how you take your eggs.

You're not a hypocrite. You're a trendsetter. It's so lame to discuss famous people's lives. Especially when they aren't SF-famous! You have set the tone for this thread and HN is better for it.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

well, thank you too :)

Extremely wealthy people are just like any other group of people in that they come in all shapes and sizes.

Here, one very wealthy individual used his money to fund someone else's lawsuit. He did so secretly. He did so against an organization that had harmed him and against which he presumably wanted payback but that also had done a gratuitously damaging and sleazy act as part of a pattern of sleazy acts upon which it had built its erstwhile presumably profitable venture, hence presumably deserving payback.

So what does this say about Silicon Valley? Well, nothing at all, really. Both before and after this incident, Silicon Valley was, is and remains a place where multiple tech entrepreneurs and those who back them financially have built amazing ventures (and fortunes) that have reshaped all of world commerce even while many others failed. The thing that is new and different is the tech and the ways of using it to disrupt old-style business models. What is not different is the people. As with people everywhere, some are great, others sleazy, still others ravenously greedy, still others amazingly kind and gracious - in short, people who come in all shapes and sizes. I guess they are on average more educated and accomplished than average folks but the personal traits that define them, both good and bad, are pretty much the same as with people everywhere.

I don't know Mr. Thiel and don't know any more about him than what the headlines say. He may be fully justified in taking this action (it is a perfectly legal thing to do) or he may be displaying traits deserving our opprobrium. What I am sure of is that his actions here, good or bad, have little or nothing to do with what other prominent tech entrepreneurs do or how they think or how they run their companies.

So the logic of this piece - Mr. Thiel did x as a private act in his life, therefore all Silicon Valley tech billionaires stand indicted, therefore the public will now see them as no different than robber barons - seems to rest on multiple non sequiturs that really need to be more carefully thought through.

I guess we are conditioned to accept this sort of sloppy reasoning when it comes to discussing the very rich but this seems like a way-over-the-top overreaction to an individual episode that is what it is but that reflects very little on the broader environment surrounding it (or, if it does, not in ways that can be generalized in the crazy ways the author does here).

The problem with this line of reasoning is that it's hopelessly naive. It takes time for people who have been suddenly vaulted into the position of being the ruling class to realize that they are regarded as such.

Silicon Valley as a culture still sees itself as a scrappy underdog. They see startups as small underfunded rebels trying to disrupt rich and powerful corporate interests. They see themselves as unstylish and unpopular "geeks" outside the social power of the attractive and successful. Silicon Valley doesn't perceive itself as a center of wealth, power, and social control. But the rest of the world has no trouble whatsoever figuring it out, and they are scared of this power.

As they should be. Concentrations of wealth and power without accountability are dangerous.

The meta-discussion around Peter Thiel and Gawker is fundamentally about power and who wields it in society. When you see someone on your playground who is clearly far stronger than a normal person walk over and punch someone in the face with no accountability and no real ability to seek redress you don't actually care much what the person did to deserve it. You suddenly start getting very nervous about who he's going to punch in the face next, as you're keenly aware that it's not you who gets to decide.

This backlash is going to get louder not softer. The "Who me? What are you talking about we're all just private ordinary citizens pay us no mind" type arguments like this one I am replying to are not going to help.

Stanford has the number one business school in the country. Apple, Google, and Microsoft are the top three most valuable companies in the world. Peter Thiel has almost three billion dollars.

To an outsider watching this movie, the tech sector isn't Hoth, it's the Death Star.

Extremely wealthy people are not at all like any other group of people. They are far, far, more powerful.

So who punched who in the face?

The way I see it, Gawker punched Hogan very hard. Gawker was clearly far stronger, and Hogan could not afford legal redress.

Thiel helped the victim, not by punching Gawker, but by asking the legal system to provide redress.

This is the civilized way to solve a conflict, by not taking personal revenge, but by asking an impartial court to adjudicate the conflict.

In the end, after hearing the evidence, the State of Florida agreed to punch Gawker in the face.

Peter Thiel funding a lawsuit is far from the center of power and social control.

In this, he's merely a petitioner, hoping the true center of power and social control (the courts and lawmakers) will act in his favor.

Again, that's depressingly naive. If journalists call out Billionaire X for some bad behavior... Just buy the paper and fire those people. Or fund an endless stream of lawsuits to silence them.

That's the bigger picture here: Theil is trying to put a news outlet he doesn't like out of business. Even if he's totally justified the next 10 cases may not be but you can bet people will get the picture: don't piss off the SV billionaire club.

You know that calling a different opinion naive isn't actually an argument, right?

The mere possibility of a slippery slope doesn't show that Peter Thiel did anything wrong here.

I hope other websites should learn not to publish something they don't have the legal right to publish.

except that having effectively unlimited amounts of money to keep throwing at a lawsuit is a depressingly good predictor of success.

And publishing sex tapes is an encouragingly good predictor of failure.

The system isn't perfect but I think it worked this time.

> The meta-discussion around Peter Thiel and Gawker is fundamentally about power and who wields it in society.

We agree on that much, but the Media are returning fire against Silicon Valley writ large, not just Peter Thiel.

They view us as competition. It's not about rich vs poor at all, it's a power vs a power. The media wants to drag the government into regulating Silicon Valley as a special case.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11824117

I think the future is weirder than they think.

Actually, the main point of the article was not really that Thiel had done something wrong. The point was that, given the average person's (not tech nerds, mind you) understanding of silicon valley's utopian dreams, the revelation of Thiel's secrecy is not going to look good. It's a matter of public opinion, whether or not that's fair. I agree, actually. I think big tech would be wise to put its money where its mouth is or face a public revolt.

TBH, I know a fair number of non-techies, and very few of them know about or care about the Thiel/Gawker case. For the most part, they file it under the heading of "rich people behaving like middle-schoolers" and move on. It seems to be a much bigger deal in media & tech circles; I think many of the reporters covering this are projecting their own fear & anger at Silicon Valley onto the general public.

The press cycles that I actually hear people talking about are the UCLA shootings, gorilla baby, and Donald Trump. Baffling to me, but I think that in the Gandhi cycle, the general public is still stuck between the "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you", and it's only certain industries that are being directly disrupted by Silicon Valley (media & music, particularly) that are in the "then they fight you" stage.

> The point was that, given the average person's (not tech nerds, mind you) understanding of silicon valley's utopian dreams, the revelation of Thiel's secrecy is not going to look good.

Believe me, the average person doesn't know jack shit about our utopian ideals. The idea they have even heard of them in passing is probably a Silicon Valley conceit.

Do a vox pop on the streets of a city that is not San Francisco. Draw up any list of shared/common ideals we have. Unless you lead the interviewee by generalizing wildly my guess is that you'll get no response at all.

This isn't to dismiss the public. It's just that the only place you'd have heard of our ideas is places like HN or otherwise being directly involved in geek culture.

You'd better hope this is true/continues to be true. If there's anything the latest election season has shown us, it's that a lot of people resent big, secret money.

Like Trump's fortune?

I think a better lesson would be that a lot of people are angry, and all too happy to follow anyone who gives them a target for that anger. Both this case and the press cycle following it are examples of that.

It seems like we're entirely way off base here thanks to a piece that seems like a well written piece of propaganda by a media consultant.

The NYT version has many more facts and significantly less unsubstantiated extrapolation. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/business/dealbook/peter-th...

One better topic is: In our society you need a wealthy patron to help protect you if someone posts defamation or something illegally obtained from you. If someone stole and posted my sextape, I would need 10 million dollars. What happens to society when laws can only be enforced by the wealthy?

>> What happens to society when laws can only be enforced by the wealthy? << Well, look around - we are in that society.

Years ago I was assaulted by former pro football player Ron Dayne in a bar in Madison, WI. He was pissed at the bouncer for making him wait in line like everyone else and took his anger out on me who happened to be in the front of the line by jabbing my eye three times, tearing my eyeball and covering me in blood.

There were about a dozen witnesses, including the bouncer, and when the police came and arrested him there was no real question about what happened.

It cost me a bunch in hospital bills and I had to wear an eye patch for a while.

After months of not hearing what was going on, I finally got the DA on the phone who told me that it would be hard for him to prove "intent" in prosecuting him... Seemed sketchy, if I shoot you with a gun, but don't "intend" to harm you is that ok? How about 3 rapid judo eye jabs tearing my eye? Or maybe it was that no one wanted to prosecute the hometown football star.

I tried unsuccessfully to find a law firm to represent me in a civil case and what I learned was that Mr. Dayne had every major law firm in town on retainer so that it was a conflict of interest for them to take the case.

I probably could have continued my search, but I was exhausted with what felt like an uphill battle in a big sports / football town.

Because of noprocrast I'm rarely logged in (ha!)

>I tried unsuccessfully to find a law firm to represent me in a civil case and what I learned was that Mr. Dayne had every major law firm in town on retainer so that it was a conflict of interest for them to take the case.

Oddly enough, you don't even have to have them on retainer - a free consult will do (in my jurisdiction anyway). My father did that to my mother and I when he decided to stop paying child support.

I hope your eye is better now.

That's actually a really depressing story. Genuinely made me sad to be honest.

I appreciate your empathy -- it was an intense experience and one I was ashamed to even share for years.

I think what was most sad for me was the loss of the illusion that the justice system had anything to do with justice.

I don't know whether the DA or the ball player is the most depressing part.

I largely agree with your overall point (that you can't overgeneralize), but I don't think this says "nothing." The fact of the matter is that billionaires wield a lot of power, and a lot of people trust billionaires to consistently behave more rationally and more cautiously than an average person.

Personally I think it's scary that any of these giants will weaponize the legal system and use their disproportionate power in an act of bitterness. And it raises the question how often this type of thing happens but doesn't get reported, moreso because these individuals are uniquely positioned to influence what gets published.

Pretty sure Hulk Hogan won the suit no? If it was a series of illegitimate lawsuits to try to bankrupt a legitimate news organization then I think there would be a case.

> I don't know Mr. Thiel and don't know any more about him than what the headlines say. He may be fully justified in taking this action (it is a perfectly legal thing to do) or he may be displaying traits deserving our opprobrium.

Had I not known who Thiel is (or read the subject of this submission), is sentences like this that would give away that the article is about an influential Silicon Valley player. The lawsuit has been throughly reported but if you don't want to comment on it for professional reasons that's fine. No one is questioning the legality of the lawsuit.

I agree. It is sad that now when people think of tech billionaires , they think of people like Peter thiel, a bad apple who even supports Trump. Valley has a lot of successfully people like Bill gates who have huge positive impacts on the world. Peter Thiel is such a notorious figure. It is disappointing that he is now representing other impactful tech billionaires.

He is not using sloppy reasoning, he is only saying what members of the media have been thinking for a long time now.

The media see us as competition.

More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11824117

You are just as presumptuous as the author. Perhaps there are traits more peculiar amongst these people that you presume is not the case. Perhaps the position itself allows these traits fuller expression. We don't know.

He may be fully justified in taking this action (it is a perfectly legal thing to do) or he may be displaying traits deserving our opprobrium.

Why the "or?" He can be both.

Extremely wealthy people are also just like any other group of people in that they act in their own self-interest.

> the logic of this piece - Mr. Thiel did x as a private act in his life, therefore all Silicon Valley tech billionaires stand indicted

It's a little disingenuous to characterize the logic of this piece thusly.

Mr Thiel is not just some guy, he's the main guru of the Silicon Valley crowd, a major "idea machine" who's constantly quoted, etc.

What the author is saying is more akin to this: we were used to seeing tech billionaires as "different" (more pure, better), and this episode shows they in fact aren't.

The argument is defensible, esp. with all the talk about disruption and "changing the world". Some things are new, some certainly do change, but "the world" does not seem very different.

It was ironically Chris Sacca (Of Twitter and Uber fame) who said in a Bill Simmons podcast in regards to Trump something akin to:

"The American people trust Billionaires implicitly because they are successful and therefore worthy of admiration".

Again not a direct quote and it wasn't said of the context of "I believe this is true" but just an observation he had made. I'll take it a step further and say Americans think wealthy and successful people are implicitly better then everybody else even if they received their wealth and success from their parents.

I wonder what's the connection, if any, between the author of the article and Gawker. If he's the same guy I found on Linkedin, he seems to be working for some kind of PR company for hire; also confirmed by the article footnote. I hope nobody takes this article only for what it is but also questions why it is.

Following that rabbit hole, the author seems to be this person: http://www.startegix.com/about.html

The first five things in the list of things his company does are: "Public Relations, Media Relations, Press Material Creation, Marketing Communications, Brand Positioning".

It appears that Reuters is running unmarked advertising for Gawker or some other client with similar interests. Lovely.

What I find more disturbing and ethically questionable is the that many of the news outlets blasting Thiel have major conflicts of interest that are rarely being disclosed.

For an example of how media is connected to Gawker, take a look at the disclosure for this Slate article http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2016/05/...

" Disclosure: One Slate editor is married to a Gawker editor. One is married to a lawyer who represented Gawker in the Hulk Hogan trial. One is a former Gawker Media executive editor. None of these Slate staffers worked on this story.

That is three editors who actually have a direct financial impact from the Gawker case. Even if they did not personally work on the story, the fact that a co-worker and likely friend's spouse is going to lose their job would be likely to color your objectivity.

Kudos to Slate for at least some disclosure. Note that by not stating who these people actually are, they leave open that although the person may not have worked on the story, one of those editors might be the boss of one or more people working on the story.

My guess is that if you looked at a lot of the coverage that has been blasting Peter Thiel, you will find a lot of conflicts of interest that are not being disclosed.

Good catch!

Even if so, I'd rather move beyond the Ad hominem.

Pointing out that a source is likely not impartial because they are a professional PR specialist is hardly an ad hominem.

From the author's page: "Keith uses the power of strategic communications along with his experience as a lawyer and company co-founder to secure maximum leverage for his clients. His individual and team recognitions include the PR News Award for Outstanding Media Exposure (Business Development); The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences Webby Award Official Honoree; and the American Bar Association Award of Excellence (for writing). Keith is based in New York City."

Granted, correlation is not causation and it's theoretically possible for the good Mr. Emmer to have a long standing interest in journalistic freedom. (A cursory Googling of his name and the obvious keywords shows no evidence of such history.) But would anyone here care to bet much money on it?

Ad hominem is when "an argument is rebutted by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself." [1]. This clearly seems to fit. Ad hominem is not always a fallacy: if there were some new facts presented, or if the argument was so complicated that you couldn't evaluate its validity yourself (like happens often in science and other technical fields), then the source of the argument would be relevant. Neither of those is true in this case. The article's argument isn't very convincing to me on its own merits, but I don't see how it's made worse by the fact that the author may have been paid to write it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

In fairness, his opinion is probably consistent with the views of the editors at Reuters.

Ad hominem isn't always irrelevant. You would expect a journalist to defend an organization that employs many journalists and it's useful to keep that into account, as it reduces the ratio between the (conditional probability that the journalist will argue for that position given that the position is true) and (conditional probability that the journalist will argue for that position given that the position is false).

It's not an ad hominem, because the article isn't making an argument, and someone questioning his motives isn't saying he's wrong because of his motives.

The article is making an argument (Thiel shows why tech billionaires are the new robber barons) and, regardless of the author's motives or background, I analyze his arguments.

Claiming "isn't saying he's wrong because of his motives" is just reinforcing what I'm trying to say.

The author defends Gawker by stating, "But at least Gawker did this openly." If he is working for Gawker, that is very relevant to his argument.

That's not an argument, that's a statement. If it were an argument (in the sense that a fallacy like ad hominem applies), he would have a set of premises and a conclusion. Also, the comment we're talking about would have to directly state, "BECAUSE he has ties to Gawker, he is THEREFORE wrong" which is not at all what the above comment is saying.

Furthermore, no one is claiming the article is wrong because the author has ties to Gawker. The claim isn't, "Because the author has ties to Gawker, he is therefore wrong", the claim is, "Because he has ties to Gawker, his premises may be biased."

Also, you can't analyze the author's "arguments" because he doesn't provide one.

I wonder what's the connection, if any, between the author of the article and Gawker. I'm going to warn you: if you apply this pattern of thinking in all sorts of spheres of life you're going to lose a lot of friends.

I would rather lose friends than have untrustworthy influences in my life.

Same here. But what I'm implying is that we've been fooled into believing untrustworthy people as trustworthy, and identifying some of those people as untrustworthy will get you in hot water.

This is totally BS. Litigation finance has been around for years, and has been done by all kind of people and organizations for all kind of purposes.

Thiel is rich, he does things, there is no causality with 'tech' here.

> Maybe it’s time for Silicon Valley to tone things down. To admit that, no, the Valley can’t solve all human problems -- not even close -- and never will.

WTF.

Can you point me to some examples where an individual financed litigation against a media outlet or journalist? I don't doubt they exist, but I can't think of any specifically.

When quite a few individuals took News International to court between 2009 and 2011 for illegally eavesdropping on their mobile phones in the UK, a number of them had their legal costs underwritten by Max Mosely. This is just the same thing: a wealthy individual making sure that legal costs do not preclude action against Gawker.

Thank you. I disagree that it's "just the same thing", but it is an interesting precedent to consider and one that I was not familiar with.

It's exactly the same thing. Mosely had his privacy violated by News International. Thiel had his violated by Gawker. Mosely set up a war chest to assist those taking legal action against News International. Thiel did so for those taking action against Gawker. Both had an axe to grind with news organisations they felt were behaving badly. Both assisted individuals with legal cases that would have otherwise gone nowhere because of the high cost of the legal system. Both News International and Gawker have relied on this in the past.

Where are the differences?

Not sure about the "financed" distinction, but the Alioto case pretty much put Look Magazine out of business:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Alioto#Political_career

Tech people to tend to generically think about the world in a way; this is not an absolute, but just a pattern. Techies for example care more about access to information than the general public; to be fair, being in SV does not make you a techie.

Maybe Thiel paid Hulk Hogan's lawyers through PayPal. (sarcasm level: infinity)

Isn't Omidyar on Gawker's side, though?

> WTF

I don't understand your indignation. Is it that obvious to you the Valley can solve ALL human problems?

Not the original poster, but I read the comment differently.

> Maybe it’s time for Silicon Valley to tone things down. To admit that, no, the Valley can’t solve all human problems -- not even close -- and never will.

I have a few problems with this quote. First, I don't think the people of SV ever got together and said, "We're going to solve all human problems!" The author is putting words into other people's mouths in order to make them look ridiculous.

Second, what does this quote have to do with the topic at hand? This is a discussion of whether or not it's okay for a billionaire to help fund someone else's litigation, and it suddenly veers into a weird attack on all of SV.

As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, the author of the article is a paid media relations person. This probably isn't journalism, it's more likely unmarked native advertising paid for by Gawker to drum up outrage in preparation for appealing the verdict of the lawsuit. I really thought Reuters was better than this.

Not OP, but it's just a giant false dichotomy. The author is trying to say that because SV can't solve literally every problem on the face of the earth that no one from SV should try to solve this one. Also, I'm not really sure what it means for "Silicon Valley to tone things down" -- what does that mean? Does it mean people in SV shouldn't protect themselves from slander and libel? Does it mean they shouldn't protect others from slander and libel? Does it mean they shouldn't use the court system to go after a cancerous and immature publication that literally ruins good people's lives? Does it mean they shouldn't use the legal system to promote their interests (notably as opposed to the "illegal" system, whatever that would be)? Too me, any of these are preposterous. It honestly sounds like the author is just whining on behalf of Gawker.

No one ever said it would.

There's a term for this (I forget it now), but what this person is doing is setting up an easy target to be torn down by creating a ridiculous opinion no one has. Then the author can be seen as the victor; it's really dishonest, and it should make everyone question the veracity of the whole article.

I believe you're looking for "Straw Man Argument": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man_argument

This.

Wait a minute. Gawker is no righteous hero here.

Let's see if I understand correctly. Gawker outs Thiel (which is nobody's business, yet Gawker decided to make it people's business). Gawker at some point later posts an illegal SEX tape (again, nobody's business).

Now, we're supposed to feel sorry for Gawker because Thiel wants to help out another person who was WRONGED by Gawker?

Wow. Just wow.

I don't feel bad for Gawker at all.

I do, however, feel concerned that a rich person like Thiel can buy litigation. That's a highly dangerous capability. He's using that power for good in this case, but I doubt he always will.

> I do, however, feel concerned that a rich person like Thiel can buy litigation. That's a highly dangerous capability.

Welcome to the legal system. Money allows you to mount lawsuit (frivolous or not) and mount effective defenses against them.

The problem is when there's an imbalance: when a tech giant sues a small start-up (e.g., Zynga suing over the "Saga" trademark) or when an individual elects not to sue a large organization because the costs are too high.

Thiel (and Newegg re: patent trolls, and EFF, and ALCU, and others) are evening that money balance so justice can actually be served.

Can they use this power for evil instead? Of course: and it happens every day already. That's the point.

The anti-Thiel arguments come down to: "Even though Gawker was proven guilty in a court of law, it's not fair because Hogan never should have been able to mount the lawsuit in the first place." In other words, Gawker should have won because Hogan has less money. All Thiel did is even the playing field.

If this was about freedom of the press, they would have won the lawsuit. They didn't. End of story.

Follow up: the other argument here is that the damages awarded from the Hogan verdict shouldn't bankrupt Gawker. And that's a fair point: if total corporate annihilation is a possible outcome from publishing a story, then would the press be more leery of posting important, controversial news. Thus impacting the value of a free press.

Again, valid argument (though this case is a bad example). But your quibble is with the legal system, not with Hogan or Thiel.

You will also need to weigh fairness in tying damages to "ability to pay", as well as "news-worthiness" (e.g., not a sex tape).

In a larger context, I think corporate annihilation is something corporations should live in constant fear of.

I agree that in this case Thiel evened the playing field, but the fundamental problem still remains. It's still highly problematic that either Thiel or Gawker can buy the law.

> I do, however, feel concerned that a rich person like Thiel can buy litigation. That's a highly dangerous capability.

What's wrong with backing some reasonable legal action?

Surely you're not against that?

I suspect the actual issue people have, which doesn't have anything to do with Thiel, is that a lot of people don't have the money to effectively back reasonable legal actions.

> I do, however, feel concerned that a rich person like Thiel can buy litigation.

What about when rich people fund the ACLU or EFF in order to support a lawsuit by those organizations?

So, do you also disagree when the ACLU backs a lawsuit? Or, say, when the EFF does?

Usually they don't do that anonymously.

As someone who has worked at 501(c)3 orgs that have launched public interest lawsuits, they are very likely receiving money to pay for those cases. And probably the majority of funding for a case comes from just one source--a source you likely don't know is funding it. Just because you see the ACLU or EFF doesn't mean you see where the money is ultimately coming from.

He does have to buy the right litigation though. Thiel can't just sue the NYT out of existence because he gets it into his head to do so. He'd need to find a meritorious suit.

It's surprisingly easy to find some way that the law was broken... it's quite complex.

And then pour your money into a case that has more chances than not of being thrown out? More power to you.

If your concern is that the legal system is too expensive, complex and dangerous then you are right. But there is nothing specially worrying about industrialists in this picture. The lawsuit suit that sideswipes you is far more likely to come from some crusading NGOs or from government agents trying to look tough.

Not really, just one that looks meritorious enough to a jury of average people.

Have you seen Gawker's piece on Thiel? (http://gawker.com/335894/peter-thiel-is-totally-gay-people)

Surely broke his privacy, but by no means was it offensive.

I get how HOGAN would be mad, but this seems like a whining billionaire without better ideas for his money. (irony much?)

1. What does a person's sexuality have ANYTHING AT ALL to do with VC funding? It blows my mind how much people care about who someone else is screwing!!! That's a private thing. Keep it at home.

2. If Thiel wanted anyone to know, it is his privilege to do so. It doesn't matter that it was not offensive to further_tech. Do you think it MAY have been offensive to Thiel?

1) First Amendment. Have you ever heard about celebrity gossips and VH1?

2) If it was offensive to Thiel, he clearly has an ego problem. Regardless, the article did not ATTACK him or MOCKED his sexuality. Any normal gay person would find other means to deal with this.

Violating someone's privacy is always offensive. Is that really in question? While lots of people say they put little value on protecting privacy, I have never seen them post their medical records or tax returns.

In practical terms for Thiel, there are likely large investors in the world (like say in the middle east) who might not be willing to invest in a VC who is gay, etc.

Either way he righted a wrong. His outcome was to stop a media service from releasing non-important but damaging information and Gawker's was to exploit private information illegally obtained for profit.

It's a better way to spend money than on a boat.

The same could be said about any media company.

He did not "righted a wrong". This was a vicious "eye for an eye".

You're not the one that gets to decide if that was offensive. If he was not comfortable enough to be out at the time that was written, then yes, that could be completely offensive to him.

I'm not deciding for him. I'm being commonsensical by saying his "punishment" was not justifiable because of this article.

For 99.9% of human beings, such article would never make someone spend enough money to put this newspaper out of business.

FYI - this was written by a PR person, not a journalist, and is designed to make Thiel look bad. Perhaps from someone hired by Gawker?

The author, Keith Emmer, is "the founder and managing partner of this strategic communications consultancy helping our clients... manage reputations... through editorial media"

https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithemmer

What a hack piece. It would have a modicum of legitimacy if it wasn't criticising the status quo of modern media that Reuters has deemed unworthy of coverage for the past forty years. Why the sudden self righteous moral indignation? I smell a rat.

I get the sense that "they" simply don't like Thiel his powers for good, when everyone knows you should only use the powers that come with been knee-tremblingly rich for evil.

And It would be a good thing if Gawker ceased to be. It's a blight.

> That may actually help rebuild some of the lost trust between it and the public.

Oh please. This is the sort of thing journalists say that has no bearing on anything real, they just say it to make themselves the center of conversation. Lost trust my ass. Nobody trusts big American business, or big business everywhere. Commerce has always had a large element of adversarial conflict to it, the tug of war between the public will, exercised through politics and legislation, and markets is what produces social progress, not any kind of altruism.

This is really just the press industry rallying behind their own. They think they should just be able to say whatever the hell they want about whoever they want with no consequences whatsoever. They're the ones that want a legal advantage. You know why nobody sues the tabloids? They all have humongous legal teams, going up against them is like shooting peas at a brick wall. But they've created a business model around saying vicious, wrong things about people who did nothing to deserve such treatment.

So forgive me if I'm a tad bit skeptical.

(Not taking sides or condemning/supporting Thiel)

Publications destroy people all the time - at least tabloids here in Germany. Most of those people have no money and can't sue. Journalism is fine when the 800pound Gorilla is on their side. Now once a person aims to destroy the magazine, journalists with pitchforks claim the end is near (aka censorship).

At least this is how it looks from the sideline.

Ever heard the phrase "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes"? Hard to feel sympathy for tabloid writers feeling unfairly targeted.

Distributing a private sex video was unethical and not an act of journalistic integrity. I view the Hulk Hogan case as justified and supporting it as a beneficial act.

FWIW, David Simon, one of the biggest living romantics about the American press, has been ripping Gawker and defending Thiel for the past week. Probably the most prominent of journalists who I've yet seen defend Thiel: https://twitter.com/aodespair/status/736536875498770432

See Generation Kill and s5 of the Wire to feel more of his press opinions

Thanks - I didn't know he was on twitter

The fundamental issue here is that rich people can buy the law. It's not as simple as bribery, but it's nearly as effective. The only defense we have against that is when voters and jurors are educated and deeply suspicious of laws and litigation that are bought.

Of course what Gawker did was reprehensible, but I don't need a million-dollar lawyer to tell me that. And when suddenly there is a million-dollar lawyer telling me that, I have to guess there's some other endgame here. My guess is that Thiel is building a template for future litigation. And while it happens to be good for justice in this case, I doubt it will always be so. That is definitely a bad thing.

Let's say the girl in this video [0] decided to sue Gawker. I'm going to just assume that she doesn't have the means to stand up to their army of lawyers. Is Gawker the rich person buying the law in this hypothetical?

[0] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3488027/Gawker-edito...

He didn't buy the law, though. Gawker completely and totally did the things they were accused of. Would the world be better off if Hogan did not have the resources to fight back against what they did?

No. But the world would be better off it litigation were not buyable by either Thiel or Gawker.

...if your premise is true then it is a damning indictment of Gawker. Not Thiel.

This issue has been covered in detail. Hogan did not have the financial resources to combat the Gawker legal machine, funded from the company coffers.

It took Thiel and his larger coffers to come along and upset their apple cart.

So, if a rich person did buy the legal precedent, it was only until a richer person came along and restored sanity and parity to the system.

In this case, yes, that's how I see it. But I don't trust Thiel just because he did the right thing this time.

The underlying problem is that anyone, Thiel or Gawker, can buy the law.

So, news companies (owned by rich people) which have been able to print untrue or private things with impunity are mad because someone richer than them decided to retaliate. Rich people mad at richer people for threatening their power.

This is basically why I find most money in politics stories to be laughable since these publishers sure spend a lot of money on ink.

Reuters is just mad they might actually step on the wrong person and be held accountable.

Man interesting how all this happens, a few weeks ago when the verdict came out and no one knew of Thiel there was no large outcry.

Now to find out that the lawsuit was funded directly by someone who was hurt by the high shittery from gawker. It is not a surprise.

Tech billionaires are people, gawker pushed him and he is pushing back. Not sure there is much more to this.

Let's just stop the name calling. Theil is not a "robber-baron". He created his wealth by providing services in the free market for others' benefit. He neither robbed, nor did he gain his money through inheritance.

He did not use government funds to finance the Gawker case. He used his own money on a cause he believed in. If you don't like it, give your money in Gawker's defence, or work to a better solution: limiting the amount of damages a jury can award in such cases.

It's evident that this was not only an isolated incident but one that seems to have more than a decent amount of justification. How so many people have managed to extrapolate this into tech robber barons taking over the galaxy is hyperbole at best. I think there is a part of this that admittedly has an ick-factor to it in general and people aren't sure how to articulate that. (Full disclosure, I utterly despise Gawker, have for years and have made prior vitriolic comments - quite proudly - about how awful Gawker and its associates are)

As for the financing specifically, is it really materially different than lawyers taking cases on contingency? They are in effect self-financing cases on behalf of their clients...same basic thing is going on here, the plaintiff has a "backer" to float the case for them.

From the article: "Many are growing disillusioned because they bought what Silicon Valley sold them: an idealistic and almost utopian vision in which the technological advances of the Information Age would change the world -- or at least the Western world -- for the universal good."

Maybe it's just me, but I only occoasionally even heard of that idea, much less bought into it. Am I that far out of the echo chamber?

While not necessarily in these terms, it is something is not uncommon to see in the comments here in HN (as in "truck drivers should learn how to program" and stuff like that).

While I feel there is a noticeable and unwarranted resentment growing in the media against SV (and I find kind of stupid binning so many people under the same umbrella), it is also true that many people in the environment do seem to suffer from naïveté and ivory tower syndrome, IMHO.

It used to be a very common idea, but has fallen out of vogue in favor of more raw capitalist sentiment. There very much used to be an idea of changing the world for the better, but it died along with a lot of America's positive outlook in the post-9/11 era.

I've heard that idea a LOT, especially from people 10-15 years ago. I think most people abandon that thinking pretty quickly, but it persists with a smaller but still significant number.

It was very much the stance of Wired magazine in the 90s, I think, and may still be. One major critique of that position is the "Californian Ideology" theory.

Isn't the quoted passage essentially what Mark Zuckerberg claims to believe? What about Google's "don't be evil"?

If this strikes you as somewhat accurate and funny, then at some point you've heard the idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXuFrtmOYKg

Fascinating to watch Gawker's quarter-billion dollar public manipulation machine kick into gear.

Linked-In just emailed me to ensure I was aware of another one of these articles.

Thiel better hope he can manage a death blow, or that people become bored of the manufactured controversy - there's nothing Gawker doesn't stoop to, it's going to be vicious.

For the record, Scott Adams also believes in the philanthropic nature of Thiel's actions: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/145205211401/billionaire-brandi...

"I can't believe Scott Adams holds such a crazy opinion!" -- said nobody ever.

I see no reason to take sides on this debacle. Both Nick Denton and Peter Thiel are guilty of absolutely awful behavior. Denton for outing people and publishing private videos; Thiel for Paypal (and its horrible practices) and using his wealth to bankroll personal vendettas. Both are happy to exploit others for their own personal gain. They deserve each other.

What exactly is the difference between "bankroll personal vendettas" and "fight against what you believe is bad"? The latter has to be broke and the former isn't?

Funding a secret lawsuit against a company to try and destroy them for outing you as being gay is not good behavior. This has dangerous precedent for freedom of speech in journalism. If what Gawker did was illegal in outing him, he should have sued for that. If it were just morally objectionable, he should have called them on it and let the public decide how to respond.

What this lawsuit says is, "say something about a rich person that they don't like (even if it's perfectly legal or maybe even in the public's best interest to know), and they'll fund covert lawsuits against you to destroy your entire business." That's not a world I want to live in, regardless of what I think of Gawker (they're the internet equivalent of The National Enquirer in my eyes.)

We're taught this as children, "two wrongs don't make a right."

Do you believe it was wrong for rich people to fund (via the Southern Poverty Law Center intermediary) Keenan vs Aryan Nations, on the basis of hating Aryan Nations?

https://www.splcenter.org/seeking-justice/case-docket/keenan...

If not, why not?

"Funding a secret lawsuit against a company to try and destroy them for outing you as being gay is not good behavior."

Maybe, but I can't say it's bad behavior, either.

"What this lawsuit says is, "say something about a rich person that they don't like (even if it's perfectly legal or maybe even in the public's best interest to know), and they'll fund covert lawsuits against you to destroy your entire business.""

You're gonna have to point out what, if anything, the public's interest is in knowing that Peter Thiel was gay, or that Hogan made a sex tape.

"We're taught this as children, "two wrongs don't make a right.""

Yeah, but when we're children, the world is pretty black and white. As adults, things tend to be gray.

Maybe I am not understanding something about the situation, but I don't see the danger.

Thiel is killing gawker via a meritorious lawsuit. I don't see whats problematic about that. If he was throwing frivilous lawsuits at I might agree, but that it isn't the case.

If anything, isn't what Thiel is doing a positive good? We had a victim who didn't have the funds to bankroll his own case, Thiel stepped into do so. Gawker is only in this position because they violated people's rights.

What this lawsuit says is "Say something about rich people they don't like, and they will start funding lawsuits from people you victimize."

If anything, the problem here is that the victims of Gawker need the support of the ridiculously wealthy to take them down.

In an ideal world, what you say is probably correct.

In the real world, the Streisand Effect comes into play.

if Mr Thiel wants to raise journalistic integrity standards when it comes to outing people, then the right things to do would be something like opening a public discussion, advocating some change in the law, etc. or perhaps, if he must use litigation, then focusing on suing all media that out people recklessly in this way. that would be a way more admirable approach. but this is not what Mr Thiel is doing. he is instead attacking just Gawker, for >10 years now, supporting any suit against them, and to top it all of, he is doing it secretively.

the lesson the media are going to take away from this is not "we must behave morally", but rather, "we must be careful not to get any rich guy pissed at us". which is where these arguments about how Mr Thiel is hurting the freedom of the press are coming from.

I don't understand why people cite Dilbert. He is smart, but out of touch. He is also petty so it's not a surprise he supports vindictive behavior. [1]

Personally, I despise Gawker and disapprove of Thiel, but if I were rich and displeased then I would do the same. How many can claim otherwise? Even a small mount of money changes people.

[1]https://www.reddit.com/user/plannedchaos

Another Gawker victim issues a Good vs Evil argument to justify disproportional attack on unwanted (by the victims) speech. Not surprising.

To me, part of the problem with some of these new Gilded billionaires is this (apparent) principle of the "Good vs Evil" argument. Google used it as company mission. It sounds... immature. It sounds irrational. It sounds like something out of comic books. Maybe Thiel thinks he's bruce wayne who needs to act in the shadows to "do good".

I don't think Dilbert is a Gawker victim. He has admitted multiple times that he tries to get them to react and enjoys it.

Scott Adams is entitled to his opinion and views. But his last paragraph is way off mark and (possibly) intentionally ignorant. Pierre Omidyar is the founder of Omidyar Networks, which funds and supports many worthy causes globally.

If Gawker were something other than tabloid trash, maybe it'd get more support from us non-robber-barons.

Do you think Gawker would spare you, if they thought humiliating you would be popular? Could you do anything about it?

Well, apparently they were stupid enough to humiliate someone who could do something about it. And I'm fine with the results we're seeing.

Saying all the tech titans are just like Thiel is a pretty obvious fallacy.

What I don't get is if Peter truly feels he was doing a public good by shutting down Gawker, why must he do so in secret?

Would the mission be impaired if the sponsor were revealed or is Peter an underhanded snake?

I doubt the decision in the Gawker case was made in complete isolation from the public opinion, and public favour these days is significantly based upon who can depict themselves as the underdog/victim and therefore claim the moral high ground. Presumably, being financially supported by Thiel would not exactly have earned Hogan underdog points.

Maybe he doesn't want to be in the spotlight. "Do good without bragging about it."

Also, even if it was a good thing to do, it doesn't mean that the public has the same opinion.

I think this could be a legitimate explanation in his mind- unfortunately for him it became a high profile case and now he has to go on the defensive.

Gawker is utter shite and it's a dangerous tabloid. I have no idea why anyone with a sane mind would be on their side in this issue. this is just a revenge story, let it go!

Because I am free speech absolutist which means defending speech that I don't like.

There were other ways to nail gawker - copyright infringement comes to mind.

Gawker was allowed to say whatever they wanted about the sex tape. No one has ever questioned that. They were not allowed to publish it. That is what they were sued over. I'm pretty absolutionist about free speech myself, which is why it's pretty disappointing that a lot of people are missing this key point.

Exactly. The story and "news" surrounding this incident still exists without publication of the stolen video. Coverage without the video does not deliver as many clicks so they rolled the dice with that one and have so far lost.

I don't understand how a free speech absolutist supports a copyright-based retribution approach. "Absolutist" may not mean what you think it means.

So you believe that publishing private citizen's sex tapes falls under free speech? That outing others as gay falls under free speech?

Yes. Despicable but still free.

Money alone doesn't win a lawsuit. The reporter who wrote this probably doesn't agree with the court's decision, but that decision wasn't written by Thiel or Silicon Valley. Also, people have crowd-funded legal fees previously. That isn't new. That Thiel chose to fund a lawsuit against a publication that outed him as gay doesn't seem very surprising or devious. They still had to convince the court they had a claim in this case.

The media backlash feels more like a disingenuous and thinly veiled attack on Thiel's political views.

Ask yourself - would there be all this hand-wringing if Soros had funded the case?

Gawker Media is a Cayman Island corporation founded by a foreign national. It does not engage in journalism. It is a blog designed to shift the Overton Window for Jon Stewart's fanbase into normalizing extreme political agendas.

Are there any cases that show foreign companies that exist 100% as a tax shelter, founded by a foreign national, have first amendment rights?

>It is a blog designed to shift the Overton Window for Jon Stewart's fanbase into normalizing extreme political agendas.

Like Jezebel being pro-feminism. What an extreme political agenda!

Only privileged white people think Jezebel represents feminism. Let me know when they give full-time coverage of the challenges of poverty that routinely face WoC instead of hyperventilating about how sexist a handful of pixels are.

Or are feminists only those who have minable consumer behavior?

Looks like the Overton window shifting worked on you.

Definitely agree that Jezebel and many other publications in general don't give provide enough perspective of feminism and LGBT issues from PoC (for what its worth, I'm a PoC), but I disagree with the fact that Gawker does not provide some legitimate journalism. Does Gawker have an issue here? Yes. Does Gawker produce a bunch of drivel around issues that are probably trivial in the grand scheme of things? Yes, but I think you could apply the same critique to almost every major liberal news publication. The difference for me is that Gawker has reach and is willing to take on very powerful people (for better or for worse), unlike other publications.

A fun discussion but this case isn't about the first amendment.

I have a feeling that these recent attacks on Thiel have more to do with who he is backing politically rather than this lawsuit.

Or, you could spin this as ethical investing. Presumably, Thiel backed Hogan with an expectation of being compensated if Gawker lost the suit and had to pay damages. So, from an investment perspective, this was a good deal that paid off. It also punished a bad actor that invaded a celebrities private life. Smells like a win-win to me.

The conclusion of the article (I think) we are (still) discussing here, however, appears to be "Thiel is a robber baron and we the poor public should be wary of these new rich", when in fact the conclusion should be "Our system of justice is broken because rich people can get different outcomes than poor people."

Clearly, the author of the article does not want the poor people to come to the conclusion that the justice system is broken, presumably, because then the rich and powerful establishment, would not be able to use it themselves. Instead, they want to put upstart newcomers like Thiel in their place.

Are there any other areas where the establishment may need public backing to take down the "robber barons of silicon valley"? Anyone having the nerve to fight back on issues of privacy, national security, encryption, copyright, basic human rights in general? No?

In other news a rich person used the law to their advantage.

perhaps this is off-topic, but what personally bugs me most, as a gay man, is that Mr Thiel can hold such a huge grudge for so long about being outed. is it so humiliating for you that other people know you're gay, Mr Thiel?

i must add a disclaimer, of course: i am strongly against outing people like that (barring some exceptions, like anti-gay politicians). it is wrong, and Gawker should be punished for it. but i would expect that Mr Thiel feels at least some relief that the secret is out. and that this would enable some degree of letting go, and that the whole thing would die down. but, no. instead, 10 years of litigation...

alternatively, Mr Thiel could just be prone to extreme grudges, and just generally can't let anything go (?)

What? People view Silicon Valley as idealistic and almost utopian?

Give me a break. Stupid article.

When I look at all the evil that the Economic Royalty have done to the world since the beginning of the Enlightenment, the funding of a law suit seems like nothing in comparison.

The situation with Thiel and Hogan shows that lawyers are are ever the robber barons. Who grabs all that money from Thiels' funding of the lawsuit? Follow the money, and that's where the barons are.

    And in this state she 'gallops night by night
    Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
    O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on cursies straight;
    O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees; [...]
         ^^^^^^^^                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

-- Mercutio's "Queen Mab" speech, Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene IV.

There's a deep tragedy in Thiel financing the lawsuit. The tragedy is that you apparently need a billionaire's backing to get any sort of justice against something like Gawker.

What do people expect? They are humans with a lot of money and power.

Thiel get sniped by The Economist here: http://www.economist.com/news/business/21699954-tech-billion...

The media industry sees this as a threat to their industry/tribe and does a circle the bandwagons reaction using their convenient tool at hand. Writing articles in widely published publications. On top of it, these people are probably friends-of-friends publishing these articles.

That is why it gets more attention than many other instances of similar behavior in similar situations.

Billionaires being in control and being somewhat held in check by regulations and laws is infinitely better than regulators and lawmakers being in control (read: having all the power and money) and being held in check by no one.

See North Korea.

How is it that weeks have gone by and the css on Reuters mobile site is still broken?

What Gawker did was disgusting, but what irks me about Thiel's actions is the fact that most of his wealth was created by investing in businesses that have significantly reduced consumer privacy (i.e. Facebook, Palantir, etc..). How many people have been accidentally outed due to Facebook's poor privacy practices?

Gawker is a by-product of the current ecosystem that Silicon Valley has created. The rise of click bait journalism was a by product of incentives created by social media companies like Facebook. And Thiel sits in the center of this universe. If he really wants to be 'philanthropic' he should focus his efforts at the root causes of these issues. But he won't, because that is where his net worth comes from.

How about one who really is dangerous - George Soros.

“I admit that I have always harbored an exaggerated view of my self-importance—to put it bluntly, I fancied myself as some kind of god” or “I carried some rather potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood, which I felt I had to control, otherwise I might end up in the loony bin.”

http://humanevents.com/2011/04/02/top-10-reasons-george-soro...

Oh are we figuring this out now? Is this a thing? I thought we knew this back when Bill became the richest man.

This is why I find myself firmly on Team Thiel.

Gawker are using the historical precedent of freedom of the press in order to exploit the private lives of people, illegally, for profit. It is this corrupted pursuit of salacious gossip which led to the hacking of thousands and thousands of voicemails in the United Kingdom by News International. Not just celebrities but political figures and most chillingly, victims of crime. Parents whose children had been abducted and/or murdered had their private lives hacked by an international news agency to churn out sordid headlines.

So yeh, I am Team Thiel until the press learn to wield their authority with respect and deference.

> until the press learn to wield their authority with respect and deference.

I think the last thing I would want is for the press to act with "respect and deference" at all times. That sounds like a recipe for burying your head in the sand and assuming everything is just fine. There can indeed be a fine line between "muckraking" and "investigative reporting" but I think it is important for someone/something to be toeing that line, even if it isn't something I personally care for.

> So yeh, I am Team Thiel until the press learn to wield their authority with respect and deference.

A good/free press does not and should not exhibit respect and deference to those in power. For a counter-example, see the Russian press, which does show a lot of respect and deference to the Russian ruling class.

A good press also does not do things like publish illegally obtained sex tapes simply because someone was famous, or out someone as gay simply because they can.

Who said deference to those in power?

I would hope a free press has the respect not to invade the privacy of private citizens.

Do you honestly think the videotape of the sexual exploits of a private citizen is somehow worthy of protection under freedom of the press?

Not to mention the tape was illegally procured and Gawker continued to act in flagrant violation of the court ordered redactions.

You hear deference and you immediately go to despot or dictator. The truth is, the press is far more damaging to private citizens than it has ever been to the establishment.

You show me one piece of great investigative journalism and I will show you 10 celebrity reporters lying in the gutters getting upskirt shots of a teen celebrity.

Team Thiel until they learn not to hack voicemails and generally become decent members of society.

> Who said deference to those in power?

You didn't specify who the press is supposed to defer to. So the obvious assumption is "everybody including those in power", especially since we're talking about Peter Thiel who has a not insignificant amount of power due to his wealth.

I don't understand why you keep bringing up the News International voicemail hack which has nothing to do with Gawker and was almost universally condemned because it targeted victims and those with almost no power.

The actions[1] of the Bollea legal team make it clear that this isn't about getting justice for Hulk Hogan, but about destroying Gawker.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/business/dealbook/peter-th...

"Speculation that a secret benefactor was backing Mr. Bollea’s case was whispered during the trial but largely dismissed as a conspiracy theory. It gained currency in large part as a result of an unusual decision Mr. Bollea’s legal team made: It purposely excluded a claim that would have allowed Gawker’s insurance company to help pay for its defense as well as damages. The move struck observers as odd because most plaintiffs seeking damages usually hope to settle the case by leveraging the deep pockets of an insurer."

How can you be Team Thiel and have these opinions when Thiel financially supported the person who made the acorn videos? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_O%27Keefe

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