But why should Peter Thiel absorb these blows for nothing? And his response? To fund somebody in a civil claim, because Gawker was depending on the fact that people are too weak to sue them. Gawker gambled wrong. The sad part isn't that Peter Thiel could choose which horse to back -- the sad part is that you need a financial backer to get justice.
It's also privacy, basic human decency, and their choice to disclose or not, which are just as important.
You can't just shit on them because someone is "super-rich" and wont lose their job.
You can see it the other way: why would gawker reveal this if not to cause a but of malice.
It's not inconsistent to think that Gawker was a bad site which did a bad thing for which they should be punished and that suing them into oblivion was a worse thing with worse effects for society.
No, but I'm OK with suing them to bankruptcy.
[1] To repeat: what Gawker did was awful. But silencing the whole organization for one sin is not what you want.
They didn't have to violate the law and expose themselves to a lawsuit for damages. Even then, they didn't have to spend themselves into bankruptcy fighting the lawsuit. They could have saved all the legal costs and accepted a judgement. Of course they could have not violated the law and avoided the lawsuit altogether. It seems to make sense the person who was damaged by the organization personally dislikes them, but that has nothing to do with the company going bankrupt, their own behavior is what lead to them going bankrupt.
Did you know that Peter Thiel, in his own words, decided to "create a shell company to hire former investigative reporters and lawyers to _find_ causes of action against Gawker", and to then give it a starting timeline and budget of "three to five years and $10 million"?
Cool.
As I said, you can point the finger at the "Billionaire" but at the end of the day Gwaker's is liable for their unlawful behavior resulting in damages, that can't be blamed on Thiel. A Jury found Gwaker liable and awarded Hogan $140M, that bankrupted Gawker, not Thiel.
If Gawker didn't willfully publish stolen sex tapes of Hulk Hogan in violation of his rights, then Thiel would have wasted $10M and 3-5 years looking for something that doesn't exist, and they would still be in business.
Most small businesses would suffer no harm at all from an adversary with an initial $10MM allocated toward an attack. After all, most businesses have no employees who have ever done anything even remotely questionable. And besides, it's super cheap and easy to win in court if truth and justice are on your side. (and the same in print; there's no way to for an investigative journalist to create disproportionately bad press)
You're definitely correct, right, and very smart. I agree with all of your points.
If those small businesses had done shitty things like Gawker, then let them suffer!
They thought they could stomp on people with impunity because nobody would care / have the money to take them to court for doing so. They thought wrong.
I'm sure that money helped Hogan mount the best case possible, but it didn't determine the outcome of the trial.
How do you know without mind reading?
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/15/why-silicon-val...
EDIT
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/technology/peter-thiel-do...
$1.25M is fairly sizable
2 weeks before the election is timely
For sure Trump is probably indifferent to sexuality, but his voters are not.
Trump is also for X other things one might agree with and Y they might disagree. People vote wholesale, not on individual matters, so other attributes might matter more to Thiel (or any voter). And similarly, X or Y pros or cons on the other side might also matter more (negatively in this case).
Besides, if Trump is indifferent to sexuality, what's the argument? Not to give his supporters (some of which might not be) the pleasure of seeing their candidate becoming president?
[1] https://thinkprogress.org/facebook-privacy-policy-outs-lgbt-...
Or does FB go out of its way to expose LBGT people for some profit of its own?
But him using his money to take down a website that thought it was ok to out people? I never heard about it before, but I find that damn cool.
That's not super-villain rich but Batman-level good.