8 ms·
The Stunning and Expected End of Gawker
- jamesblonde 10y agoThis piece smacks of astro-turfing on behalf of Peter Thiel. The fact it's showing up on the front page of HN also smacks of astro-turfing.
- jblow 10y agoIt seemed even-handed to me.
- current_call 10y agoYes, but if you're reading it, it's for you.
- wpietri 10y agoI take it you're a fellow former reader of The Last Psychiatrist? There's an author I miss.
- current_call 10y agoHe still puts up new stuff, doesn't he? I thought he was just very slow.
- jasonmcalacanis 10y agoI think the whole situation is ugly and none of us want a future defined by how these two parties have acted. I do know both parties, but certainly not astroturfing for Peter
- current_call 10y agoWhat does Jason Calacanis or the site this article was written for[0] gain from this? [0] https://www.inside.com/ https://www.inside.com/
- jasonmcalacanis 10y agowe are doing direct to consumer publishing via email (after failing to get our App to reach critical mass). Basically .0X% of people who downloaded our app opened it every day... now, 40-60% of people who signed up for our email lists open them every day. plus... we don't need a 12 person tech team. I wrote about this here: http://calacanis.com/2016/02/14/knowing-when-and-how-to-pivot-or-why-didnt-news-apps-work/ http://calacanis.com/2016/02/14/knowing-when-and-how-to-pivo... tesla.inside.com is a good example of a 60%+ open rate email we do.
- current_call 10y agoI think you misunderstood my question. Is it good that Gawker failed because you're a competitor and the article was written to suggest your own journalism is held to a higher standard? The article is a way of pushing an agenda. (Isn't all communication?) I enjoyed your blog post. It's a great example of making decisions based on evidence. I just wished you hadn't had to spend so much time figuring that out. The two years of head to wall sound unpleasant.
- strathmeyer 10y agoIt's not astroturfing when we all admit that we like Peter Thiel. We're not hiding it.
- zimpenfish 10y ago> when we all admit that we like Peter Thiel Careful with your generalisations. Some of us do not.
- dang 10y agoAccusations of astroturfing without evidence are not allowed on Hacker News. An opposing view does not count as evidence.
- current_call 10y agoNick Denton’s incendiary publishing empire, Gawker Media, collapsed under the weight of his excessively cruel and cutting philosophy today, an outcome many predicted, but that Denton miraculously dodged for a decade, as subjects chose to thicken their skin rather than get into protracted and destructive litigation, until Peter Thiel anonymously bankrolled them. an outcome many predicted If it wasn't an outcome that many stakeholders expected, it wasn't expected. Were there any people trying to cash out while the trial was happening?
- wutbrodo 10y agoThat quote is perhaps better understood as "something many thought would happen eventually". That doesn't mean they'd know which time in particular well enough to cash out. I (and many others) can predict with some certainty that the stock market will have a one-day drop of more than X% eventually. That doesn't mean I know when that will be well enough to "cash out".
- current_call 10y agoMy point is that "something many thought would happen eventually" doesn't contain any information.
- aetherson 10y agoMost of the commentary on this case has revolved around whether it is just for Peter Thiel to fund the litigation, but can we just pause and say that $140 million for invasion of privacy is kind of out of control?
- bogomipz 10y agoIs it? Please tell us what's the going rate for privacy then since you seem to know that that figure is not correct. What if it were you privacy? How much would it be?
- lmm 10y ago$3 million in the general hypothetical. In the case of a single sex tape, probably more like $750k.
- Retra 10y agoYou can't safely put a price on rights at a level that wealthy organizations can easily afford.
- aetherson 10y agoDude, you can publish all the sex tapes of me that you want for, say, $10M. Probably a lot less if you're a decent negotiator.
- Animats 10y agoJournalistic "Outing" started with OutWeek, a gay publication of the 1990s which pushed the gay agenda by finding public figures who were closeted gays and publishing stories about them. But the big change was in 1995 when the Wall Street Journal did it to the publisher of Rolling Stone magazine.[2] After that, it was almost mainstream journalism. This issue seemed to be over; the "outing" side had won. Are we seeing a reversal of that? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OutWeek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OutWeek [2] http://articles.latimes.com/1995-03-10/news/ls-41090_1_jann-wenner http://articles.latimes.com/1995-03-10/news/ls-41090_1_jann-...
- wpietri 10y agoViews differ, but personally I don't think this counts as "outing". Thomas's article was mainly about Valley culture's implicit support for homophobia; Thiel was just an example. And many people around in that era say that Thiel's sexual preference was widely known at the time in the Valley. Since Thiel wasn't closeted, I think "outing" is the wrong term here.
- cm2187 10y agoIt feels like publishing lists of jews...
- internaut 10y agoI have always found it immensely irritating that a certain portion of the left of center camp adopted blacks, homosexuals and native americans as being members by default. It is kind of creepy. Imagine if I went about assuming all white people agreed with the ideals of Christianity or private property ownership.
- dandare 10y agoAm I the only one who thinks Thiel should be left out of the story of Gawker and HH sextape? In the light of a lawful verdict his motive of bankrolling the lawsuit is completely irrelevant. The only discussion where Thiels involvement is relevant is the one about how a commoner (or millionaire in the case of HH) needs a help of a samaritan/avenger billionaire to get justice.
- lifeisstillgood 10y agoErr, yes. Thiel was completely out of order backing legal suits in order to achieve a "political" end. If he was not suing an unsavoury gossip-monger the discussion around this would be vastly different. Irrespective of the legality this was a spiteful campaign at odds with the stated case(s) involved. Yes he should be held to account for it. Edit: change to clarify middle paragraph. Is this a UK/US thing? Being outed in the UK was a political action for sometime in the 80s but has more or less had its time - it has no shock value and little political value. Or is the focus on the supposed cause of thiels actions the irrelevant part?
- nier 10y agoCan’t find the source, but I read somewhere that it was also about investor relations in the Middle East.
- icebraining 10y agoImagine that Gawker owners and editors hated, say, puppies and out of spite Thiel funded a bunch of puppy shelters. Would you say he should be held in account for it? Probably not, because despite the bad motivation, funding shelters is considered a Good Thing. To me, the problem when we say Thiel should be held in account for funding the lawsuit is that we're implicitly admitting the court can be used as a weapon, and we're putting the onus on him not to use it, instead of putting it on the court not to allow itself to be used as such. Funding a lawsuit should, at worst, cost some time and maybe some money in legal fees to the defendant, and at best it should help to achieve justice.
- ferrari8608 10y ago
- jblow 10y agoI think the problem goes deeper than "don't publish sex tapes". I have had a substantial number of news blog stories written about me, and I think among the general population of news bloggers there's a lack of professional ethics of the kind journalists supposedly used to have. Certainly not all bloggers are bad; some of them are upstanding, but really the majority are not. When the incentive is just to get the most hits, it is very easy for a blogger to present a quote or situation out of context, or even for an editor to slant a headline in a certain way, in order to make the maximally inflammatory result. When this happens, it is parasitic behavior -- they are degrading your reputation in order to make money. But the amount of money they make off that article is small compared to how much you value your reputation, so the result is massively net-negative to the world. This has happened to me A LOT so I have a pretty well-tuned sense for how it happens. I also have a pretty long list of journalists and outlets I won't do interviews with ever again. The issues get pretty subtle. For example, it is common for them to take a one-or-two-sentence aside from an interview and write a ehole article about it, making it seem like you called a press conference just to say that one thing -- which is a massive distortion of your intent (and usually your personality). Because they want the most hits and people being enraged makes hits, it is usually a negative distortion. And it's intentional -- they are trained to look for these opportunities. I think it is very unethical, though of course there is nothing illegal about it -- you did say that exact thing. I think as long as that is happening, it is hard to take these sites seriously as producing "journalism".
- lifeisstillgood 10y agoI was listening to Jake Tapper on On The Media today - and he said something that struck me. Trump had attacked Cruz's father and the news cycle covered this as "Trump levels charge - Cruz denies charge". Tapper's line stuck with me - "that's not journalism, that's stenography". Journalists need to be somewhere between our ears and eyes and our conscience. It is a hard line to walk. Most fail.
- grossvogel 10y agoI don't know who originally voiced that critique, but Glenn Greenwald has been harping on 'stenographer jounalism' for a long time. https://www.google.com/webhp#q=glenn%20greenwald%20stenography https://www.google.com/webhp#q=glenn%20greenwald%20stenograp...
- paulbjensen 10y agoThe trial has been fascinating in its own right for the debate around the principle of freedom of the press vs a person's right to privacy, regardless of everything that has happened since and the other issues surrounding the trial. Sex tapes seem like a clean cut invasion of privacy, but what if the material in question wasn't a sex tape but a phone call being taped (such as the audio from the tape which revealed that Hogan had made racist comments)? Are the contents of that audio in the public interest? I think everyone who knows what Gawker are like feel like they played with matches and got their fingers burnt. Whether an invasion of privacy is worthy of a $140m fine is questionable, but it will definitely deter other press organisations from making similar moves to what Gawker did. The implications of that for the press aren't necessarily good, but if the guidance is clear that Sex tape are a no no then I think we can find a sensible middle-ground to the whole issue of the freedom of press and the right to privacy.
- cm2187 10y agoSome other went to jail for making a business out of publishing sex tapes without victims' consent: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/04/revenge-porn-website-operator-jailed http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/04/revenge-porn-... I think gawker got away pretty well with just a fine.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- adekok 10y agoGawker's attitude seems contradictory: http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/robyn-urback-why-is-hulk-hogans-sex-tape-news-but-nude-photos-of-jennifer-lawrence-an-invasion-of-privacy http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/robyn-urback-why-i... Or a shorter summary: http://imgur.com/gallery/CQ5qgvu http://imgur.com/gallery/CQ5qgvu
- forgottenpass 10y agoThe more telling thing about that apparent surface level contradiction is that it's entirely expected behavior to anyone who knows what Gawker Media is. Jezebel's tagline might as well be "Narcissism and benevolent sexism dressed up as gender issues."
- caycep 10y agoWhat would an equivalent "litmus test" be for appropriate free speech in this day and age? The often quoted example in the school textbooks is the Oliver Wendell Holmes decision regarding "falsely shouting 'Fire!' in a crowded theater" example