Tech Billionaire Peter Thiel Secretly Bankrolled Hulk Hogan's Lawsuit Against Gawker: Reports (gawker.com)

If you're a powerful Silicon Valley billionaire, and there's a media house which actively points out flaws in your investments, can you do something about it? If you're Peter Thiel, you certainly can. The New York Times and Forbes magazine have independently reported that Thiel has been funding a steady stream of lawsuits -- including three different ones filed by Hulk Hogan -- to destroy Gawker Media. Gawker reports: Gawker and Valleywag, Gawker Media's defunct tech gossip vertical, have often written critically of Thiel, a self-identified libertarian (and, it turns out, a California delegate for Donald Trump) and his investments, covering the failure of his hedge fund Clarium Capital, his right-wing politics, and his personal life. In just the last month, Gawker Media's tech site Gizmodo published a series of stories on Facebook's use of "news curators" to manipulate the site's "trending" module, sparking a congressional investigation into the social network's practices.Jay Rosen, media critic and a professor of journalism at New York University, said: Trying to kill a publication you don't like by funding lawsuits against them isn't very libertarian, is it?

Comments

Actually it's VERY Libertarian to sue

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Back in the latter part of the 1990s I worked with a guy who was Libertarian and very vocal about it. So I asked him to explain exactly what Libertarianism was and what his beliefs were. Two things in particular came out of that conversation. One was that I realized that while a lot of what he supported sounded really good on the surface, the whole philosophy seemed like a house of cards to me where one bad actor could make out like a bandit after basically gaming the system to take advantage of it since Libertarianism working relies on people "doing the right thing" and it all collapses when one guy doesn't. The other thing I took out of it was that I asked him since the government under his Libertarian ideals was incredibly weak and small, what did you do when you had problems, like for example, some manufacturer sells you bad medicine? Simple - you sue. So instead of the government being your big stick the legal system is. So yes, I think it's very much in keeping with Libertarian principles to simply sue people you don't agree with.

Re:The enemy of my enemy is my friend

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Gawker is the victim here. It's a filthy marxist propaganda paper that fuel racism and sexism.

Actually, they are all of those things. And you should defend their right to be those things, lest you end up on the receiving end of a similar, but less-well-founded complaint.

This is what people are talking about when they repeat that old phrase-turned-snowclone, "first they came for X, but I was not X, so I didn't speak out, then they came for Y, but I was not Y, so I didn't speak out, then they came for Z, and I'm Z, but there was no one left to speak out for me."

To put it more bluntly: First they came for Gawker The Marxist Propaganda Publisher, but I was not a marxist propaganda publisher, so I didn't speak out to defend their right to free speech. Where does it go next? I'm sure you can figure it out. If this situation is left unchecked, eventually you won't have any free speech either, and it will be indirectly your own damned fault.

Someone explain the Gawker mentality to me

[DNS-and-BIND]

Years ago, I started reading deadspin.com because it seemed cool, it had all this behind-the-scenes information about sports, it was a good way to avoid work for a few minutes. But I soon became aware there was a real nasty streak in the website. They didn't just report things that happened, they went out of their way to hurt people and say vicious things. Even when it wasn't warranted...sometimes it was warranted because some sports figures are real human trash. But every day there was this nasty, hurtful personality of the site, just ready to put the hooks into anyone who got in their way. I eventually had to stop reading because I was afraid this kind of thing was going to rub off on me. When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares into you, that sort of thing.

In the years since, I have come to know that pretty much every website Gawker has is the same way. They are petty, cutting, severely biased, and often wrong. It's their bias and hurtful nature that leads them to make so many factual mistakes, they are so ready to unload on anyone. Even good people who mean well...especially good people who mean well, they get the extra treatment.

Can someone explain the mentality of the people who work for these websites? I just don't get it. How can journalists heartily enjoy such blackhearted behavior? Hulk Hogan is no hero but what they did to him was clearly wrong and clearly deserved a vicious legal smackdown. What turns these journalists into such lowlife scum, even more than the typical journalist?

Re:The enemy of my enemy is my friend

[DNS-and-BIND]

Well, this relies on the Press being free enough to criticize the government, and be clever enough to realize when they government is lying to them and investigate to reveal the truth. Suing the media for lying isn't nearly the same level of problem, particularly when the media is 100% in the wrong as in the Hulk Hogan case.

Rhodesâ(TM)s war room did its work on Capitol Hill and with reporters. In the spring of last year, legions of arms-control experts began popping up at think tanks and on social media, and then became key sources for hundreds of often-clueless reporters. âoeWe created an echo chamber,â he admitted, when I asked him to explain the onslaught of freshly minted experts cheerleading for the deal. âoeThey were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.â

When I suggested that all this dark metafictional play seemed a bit removed from rational debate over Americaâ(TM)s future role in the world, Rhodes nodded. âoeIn the absence of rational discourse, we are going to discourse the [expletive] out of this,â he said. âoeWe had test drives to know who was going to be able to carry our message effectively, and how to use outside groups like Ploughshares, the Iran Project and whomever else. So we knew the tactics that worked.â He is proud of the way he sold the Iran deal. âoeWe drove them crazy,â he said of the dealâ(TM)s opponents.

The Presidency played the Press like a fiddle and they fell for it hook, line and sinker. They lied, lied, and lied some more and no reporter bothered to investigate. THAT is more destructive to democracy than a lawsuit against clear Press misconduct.