Peter Thiel vs Gawker

[Jacob]

Turns out it's Peter Thiel who's been secretly bankrolling suits against Gawker. Good times. And, apparently, he considers it to be "philanthropy".

Here's the original article from the NYT:

Peter Thiel, Tech Billionaire, Reveals Secret War With Gawker

A billionaire Silicon Valley entrepreneur was outed as being gay by a media organization. His friends suffered at the hands of the same gossip site. Nearly a decade later, the entrepreneur secretly financed a lawsuit to try to put the media company out of business.

That is the back story to a legal case that had already grabbed headlines: The wrestler Hulk Hogan sued Gawker Media for invasion of privacy after it published a sex tape, and a Florida jury recently awarded the wrestler, whose real name is Terry Gene Bollea, $140 million.

What the jury — and the public — did not know was that Mr. Bollea had a secret benefactor paying about $10 million for the lawsuit: Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and one of the earliest investors in Facebook.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/business/dealbook/peter-thiel-tech-billionaire-reveals-secret-war-with-gawker.html?_r=0

Gawker has replied to the revelations with an open letter here:

An Open Letter to Peter Thiel

You told the New York Times that you are motivated by friends who had their lives ruined by Gawker coverage, and that your funding is a "philanthropic" project to help other "victims" of negative stories. Let us run through a few examples so that people can actually read the articles you find so illegitimate, and make their own judgment about their newsworthiness.

http://gawker.com/an-open-letter-to-peter-thiel-1778991227?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_twitter&utm_source=gawker_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

Wired presents some commentary:

How Can We Make You Happy Today, Peter Thiel?
Peter Thiel! Love that guy. Who wouldn't? What a fine, fine fella. Just look at those eyes—talk about a chilling effect!

If you don't know who Peter Thiel is, set your swoon-sockets to Stun, because Peter Thiel is the best—just an awesome, handsome, awesome guy—and we would never want to give the impression that we think otherwise. See how happy he is in this picture below? That's how we want him to look every time he thinks about his ol' buddies at Wired: "Great, great team. Total pros. Definitely not gonna get mad and team up with a former wrestler to secretly bankroll a lawsuit against them, and all because I didn't like what they said about me."

Three cheers for Peter Thiel!

And here's dome commentary that's a little more earnest:

Peter Thiel just gave other billionaires a dangerous blueprint for perverting philanthropy

Funding Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker? That's not cool. Actively going out to find potential plaintiffs who might have cases against Gawker and then giving them the money to bring those cases? Even that's not cool.

You know what's cool? Reinventing the concept of philanthropy so as to include weapons-grade attacks on America's free press, and doing so from the very heart of The New Establishment.

This is the big story, which a lot of people are missing about the news that Peter Thiel secretly funded a series of lawsuits against Gawker: the Facebook board member and Silicon Valley demigod just gave the world a master class in how a billionaire can achieve enormous ends with a relatively modest investment. That's a lesson many of his friends are eager to be taught—not least his protégé, Mark Zuckerberg, who is just beginning to try to reinvent philanthropy for the 21st Century.

Thiel's interview with the New York Times about his legal campaign, in which a $10 million investment on lawyers managed to bring an entire media company to the brink of disaster, is the new required reading in Silicon Valley, especially the bit where he says that it's "one of my greater philanthropic things that I've done."

... it'll be interesting to see how it turns out.

[Malthus]

There used to be prohibitions against that sort of thing: "champerty and maintenance". "Maintenance" was a stranger supporting a lawsuit; "champerty" was "maintenance" with the object of taking a share of the proceeds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champerty_and_maintenance

This seems to be "maintenance" rather than "champerty" (from what little I'vre read, his motive was to encourage litigation against Gawker, not to make money from it).

Those prohibitions have been significantly eroded over time (what is a contingency fee, but a sort of champerty?). No idea whether they even exist in the US any more.

[The Brain]

I don't use Gawker.

[LaCroix]

you remove thiel's ability to pay for someone else's lawsuit, and you hurt civil rights organizations all across the nation. non-orgs that search for especially sympathetic victims to back all the way to the supreme court set the background for a lot of cases where constitutional law developed. that's what the fusion article doesn't get. thiel didn't do anything that hasn't been done many times before; also, liberty is made or broken at the supreme court, not by billionaires funding lawsuits. at the end of the day, gawker overstepped its bounds and got slapped with a $140 mil judgment.

[grumbler]

I agree with LaCroix.  This isn't about freedom of the press, this is about Gawker fucking up and getting hammered for it.

The award amount is absurd, of course, but we know that's how jury awards work.

[Martinus]

gawker can go and hang. Freedom of press should not mean you can publish any lie with impunity.

[The Brain]

Gawker people sound like retarded scum.

[Martinus]

Gawker people sound like retarded scum.

Yeah. Freedom of speech is important but journalists these days think they are gods.

[The Minsky Moment]

Gawker people sound like retarded scum.

Yeah. Freedom of speech is important but journalists these days think they are gods.

"Liberal" opinion weighs in.
We can't have journalists blaspheming and all.

[The Minsky Moment]

Those prohibitions have been significantly eroded over time (what is a contingency fee, but a sort of champerty?). No idea whether they even exist in the US any more.

They exist in a shadow sort of way, as common law doctrines that have been allowed to wither away, for mostly good reasons.

But even the common law didn't anticipate the possibility of extremely wealthy people forming vendetta funds against disfavored media organizations.

It's fine to say gawker deserved what they got in this particular case.  But apparently Thiel has spent years trying to find a case to take them down.  I don't think it's a great development that media orgs may have to look over their shoulder every time they offend the "wrong" person.

[celedhring]

Dunno, this kind of situation is "fine" when it's a clear-cut case like Hogan's. Gawker even refused to comply a court order... however, I can see this used as a tool to silence media, who might be fearful to be hit by a barrage of lawsuits from people with endless pockets, even if the media is ultimately in the right. Can easily be death by a thousand cuts if you just can't afford to lawyer up.

Can't come up with an easy answer to protect everybody's rights and prevent abuse, so I guess I have nothing useful to contribute.

[The Brain]

I don't think it's a great development that media orgs may have to look over their shoulder every time they offend the "wrong" person.

If everyone else can live like this I'm sure media orgs can too.

[Sheilbh]

Also weird that a billionaire enemy of Thiel is now funding Gawker's legal fees.

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

[garbon]

Gawker people sound like retarded scum.

Yeah. Freedom of speech is important but journalists these days think they are gods.

"Liberal" opinion weighs in.
We can't have journalists blaspheming and all.

I think he's just echoing Trump, yet again.

[Legbiter]

Eh, fuck Gawker. The world is a better place without their sociopathic clickbait.