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BuzzFeed Unmasks Mastermind Who Urged Peter Thiel To Destroy Gawker (buzzfeed.com)
One day in 2011 a 26-year-old approached Peter Thiel and said "Look, I think if we datamined Gawker's history, we could find weak points that we could exploit in the court of law," according to the author of a new book. An anonymous reader quotes BuzzFeed News:
Peter Thiel's campaign to ruin Gawker Media was conceived and orchestrated by a previously unknown associate who served as a middleman, allowing the billionaire to conceal his involvement in the bankrolling of lawsuits that eventually drove the New York media outlet into bankruptcy. BuzzFeed News has confirmed the identity of that mystery conspirator, known in Thiel's inner circle as "Mr. A," with multiple sources who said that he provided the venture capitalist and Facebook board member with a blueprint to covertly attack Gawker in court. That man, an Oxford-educated Australian citizen named Aron D'Souza, has few known connections to Thiel, but approached him in 2011 with an elaborate proposal to use a legal strategy to wipe out the media organization. That plot ultimately succeeded... D'Souza was aware of Thiel's public comments likening Valleywag to al-Qaeda, and presented a brazen idea: Pay someone or create a company to hire lawyers to go after Gawker.
TechCrunch reported earlier this month that Gawker's old posts "will be captured and saved by the non-profit Freedom of the Press Foundation," which was co-founded in 2012 by the late John Perry Barlow. But in addition, the Gawker estate "continues to threaten possible legal action against Thiel, and hopes to begin discovery to examine the billionaire's motivations for secretly funding his legal war," the article concludes. If a New York bankruptcy court approves, and if the process "unearths anything of meaning, the estate may have grounds to sue Thiel on the grounds of tortious interference, the use of legal means to purposely disrupt a business.
"To head that off, Thiel bid for the remaining Gawker assets -- including the flapship domain Gawker.com, its archive, and outstanding legal claims, like those against himself -- though Holden has made it known that he may block any sale to Thiel, no matter how much the venture capitalist is willing to bid."
TechCrunch reported earlier this month that Gawker's old posts "will be captured and saved by the non-profit Freedom of the Press Foundation," which was co-founded in 2012 by the late John Perry Barlow. But in addition, the Gawker estate "continues to threaten possible legal action against Thiel, and hopes to begin discovery to examine the billionaire's motivations for secretly funding his legal war," the article concludes. If a New York bankruptcy court approves, and if the process "unearths anything of meaning, the estate may have grounds to sue Thiel on the grounds of tortious interference, the use of legal means to purposely disrupt a business.
"To head that off, Thiel bid for the remaining Gawker assets -- including the flapship domain Gawker.com, its archive, and outstanding legal claims, like those against himself -- though Holden has made it known that he may block any sale to Thiel, no matter how much the venture capitalist is willing to bid."
The same basic concerns are the same as at the beginning of this process. On the one hand, Gawker was terrible, and we haven't really lost much by losing them. On the other hand, a world where billionaires can functionally drive media sources into bankruptcy by proxy lawsuits is potentially incredibly chilling on free speech. And in the case of the Hulk Hogan lawsuit, the jury should at least have been made aware that Hogan was being bankrolled by Thiel (since it goes to Hogan's credibility and sincerity as a witness), although I imagine that that wouldn't have actually impacted that decision at all since Gawker's behavior was unambiguously terrible. But, a general rule that people should have to disclose in a lawsuit when they are being paid by someone else to run it isn't crazy.
Also the idea that Gawker didn't know why Thiel doesn't like them( as sort of implied in the summary) is ridiculous. Thiel doesn't like Gawker because they wrote articles outing him as gay and then repeatedly writing more articles with it in the headline: http://gawker.com/335894/peter-thiel-is-totally-gay-people.
Stop defending gawker. They were wrong and the courts agreed they were wrong. No one needed to "find weak points to exploit".
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
With the crap on buzzfeed on your average day it seems like they may be poking the bear a little bit here.
Gawker deserves to be utterly destroyed. They've been on my shit list ever since the stunt that got the gizmodouches banned from CES, and I really wish Apple had landed some of them in jail when they stole that iPhone prototype and tried to destroy the career of the guy they stole it from.
Whatever else Thiel may do in his life, bringing an end to Gawker is something I will always thank him for.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
is there any link with a certain "Dinesh D'Souza" ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Typically if your going to mastermind the end to something. It doesn't take years to do so. Maybe Gawker just failed like many things on the web do. People just move past it and go on to something. Of conspiracy people will believe what they will, they usual do.
Somewhat unclear at times
Bravo! If you run a journalistic organization to journalistic standards, lawsuits against you will be dismissed or non-existent. But if you don't watch what you're doing, you leave yourself open to getting Gawked. Gawker earned its fate.
Thank you for your contribution, Ivan.
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Show trials are a common thing in this world. They get the plaintiff publicity and sympathy to help them relaunch a career in show biz and the defendant sells papers/clicks. I suppose you could complain the courts shouldn't be used for this, but it's popular enough with the masses that it's allowed and it's mostly harmless. Gawker's mistake was not knowing Thiel was gunning for them. .
I keep saying this, but Theil didn't hate Gawker for outing him (he's a billionaire, at his level there are no consequences actual crimes let alone legal behavior), he hated them for writing stories about his shady business dealings. Gawker did a lot of tabloid journalism but they used it to fund a lot of real journalism; a tradition as old as journalism itself. What we old folk used to call muckracking.
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Everyone who disagrees with me is a Russian spy, eh Billy?
A tortious interference claim is for wrongful and improper actions. Funding a lawsuit can hardly be considered wrongful or improper. Close all the courthouses forever if it is.
Gawker's conduct was wrongful and improper. That's why they lost.
Also, in a bankruptcy you can't just decide not to sell to someone you’re prejudiced against. There's are legal responsibilities. If he bid the highest and has the most credible plan for the assets, it will be very hard to justify (in court) not selling them to him.
We've seen this play out before. Cult Awareness Network was legally "slapped" into bankruptcy by Scientology, which did not like the group's open explanations of Scientology's inner secrets to new members, or the exposure of the secrets about the god Xenu and how all your bad thoughts and inner demons are the rejoined souls or "thetans" of slaughtered citizens of the Galactic Federation, killed by a thermonuke dropped on Hawaii millions of years ago. So Scientology sued them to death with money from Lisa Marie Presley and bought up the assets, the name, the phone numbers, and the membership lists. If you call or see anything from Cult Awareness Network these days, it's a Scientologist answering the email or handling the phone who will guide you to the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard to solve your problems.
It's not that death by lawsuit does not have valid uses. But its a dangerous tool, one to think about carefully before using it.
Thank you for your contribution, Ivan.
We value everyones opinion here, both his and yours Adolf.
No, not a spy, a paid troll. I'd never mistake you for a spy. It take balls to be a spy.
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So a Bad Thing happened to Gawker. It just so happens that Bad Thing occurred in a court of law, which means it was a Legal Bad Thing. Thiel's- or any citizen's- motivations are 100% irrelevant, as are the actions of Mr. A and any other out-of-the-view-of-Gawker machinations.
Gawker tawks and tawks and tawks as though some crime had been committed against them.
Sometimes it just *feels* like a crime, you know, like what those hapless people felt whose personal lives and private affairs became subjects of their exposes.
The Good Guys won this time. Eat it, Gawker, and don't miss any crumbs.
> Gawker deserves to be utterly destroyed.
That's not the point. The point is that if every rich asshole is capable to run a media company into the ground "just because", we are in deep trouble.
But knowing your other posts, I guess you have no qualms yourself with "money rules everything". Well, I have. I wish for another world than your Mafia world.
Jian Yang.
Taking down Erlich Bachman was just the warmup act.
Buzzfeed is at least as bad as Gawker, so consider the source is incredibly biased and untrustworthy. Also they are probably next in line to be taken down so this is probably a shot across the bow.
Now if we could only remove Twitter, Facebook, and cable news entertainment we might actually have functioning journalism again. Every media person who quotes something from Twitter or even posts there has lost credibility.
I see you're now hosted on Amazon, anything we should know? Was Gawker quietly funding Slashdot or do you just have a hard on for them?
Gawker got nailed by ignoring a judge.
end of story.
This tries to make Gawker sound innocent. They were far from it. The manipulation of fiction into fact, zero responsibility for ruining people's lives with their claims and posing as journalists when they're paid shills... good riddance. Thank you Peter Theil and Mr. A for your contributions to society.
the Saudis would have moved against an American billionaire? You're simply not allowed to be that naive about how the world works. Laws apply differently to the ultra rich.
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normally around that time the case is withdrawn, the two settle out of court and problem solved. Gawker knew what they were doing. It was a huge part of their job. Again, what they _didn't_ know is that Thiel was out for blood. If they had they would have shut the whole thing down and played nice with the judge.
Again, they thought it was a standard show trial. It wasn't. It was a well planned hit piece against one of the largest muckrackers in the business. Those muckrackers are generally the only ones that bring to light actually corruption. You think that bunch of milktoasts over at CNN would do that kind of work? MSNBC? They can't stop blathering about Russia. Fox had decades of _real_ corruption by Hillary Clinton they could have talked about but they waste their time with a pointless email scandal and crackpot conspiracy about Uranium that's easily disprove.
There's a reason the main stream media is basically useless for shining light on the cockroaches that run this joint. They're owned by those same cockroaches. Unless you can somehow get people to pay for investigative journalism without the muckracking (good luck with that) then this is how the sausage is made.
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Keep going. Each of your posts weakens your side.
Neither is bankrolling a lawsuit against the media company that outed you.
As much as I detest gawker, I disagree that the law defines morality. It's the other way around.
No really, I have had sex with most of my family.
-PopeRatzo
Said nothing, because pieces of shit can't speak.
I suck cocks.
- jcr
That stopped being funny about a year ago when everyone should have realized it's true.
Apparently there are people who want to make sure he keeps spending. And spending.
So it's all good. He has lots of money, they should be able to keep him at it for years.
You fuckers are masturbating to witchhunting. Stop
Smart move, Freedom of the Press Foundation. By announcing that you willfully copied Gawkers IP, you've just set yourself up to be DMCA'd by whoever ends up buying Gawker. Hope the FPF gets taken for millions for betraying Assange.
But thank you for strenghtening it with this nice example of your stupidity.
The "editors" have time to post Democrat Party propaganda but apparently no time to clean up all the vulgar flame comments.
when a lawsuit was used to accomplish the deed? The fact remains that the American legal system was engaged to crush someone's speech. Yes, there's lots of extenuating circumstances here, but ultimately the sex tape isn't what got Gawker shut down, Peter Thiel did.
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If he is successfully sued.
Thiel has skin so thin that he can't be trusted with control of any organization, he'll ruin it with his puerile pursuits.
Well I don't know. Maybe one of the weak points they found was "this guy will totally defend publishing child pornography if the child is a celebrity"?
This is the country that thinks nothing of kidnapping a sitting prime minister of another country and forcing him to read a pre-written confession. If you were gay in the head-chopping capital of the word, you'd be shitting your pants if you got outed no matter how many billions you had, or how chummy Tim Cook is with some of the royals.
A lot of the repub idiots I know are finally realizing they've been had.
Spring should be Awesome this year...
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
I would think he went there for business; if he went there for other things, well, that would be something for a different publication, or headlines for al jazeera.
Whoops the whole environmental activism community just went bankrupt.
With only 141 comments?
Um...
because the opposition was actively hiding itself. Did you even RTFS much less TFA?
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I can't believe this once fine website is quoting Buzzfeed. FFS....
But hey, the NSA leaks weren't real and the corporations are the good guys and nobody ever did anything sinister in the history of mankind. And anyone who disagrees, hates "Murica".
Without Buzzfeed, how would we know about the weird tricks banks/manufacturers/service companies don't want you to know?