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Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

119 points by paulsutter 10y ago

api 10y ago
I'm afraid I kind of agree. What brought me over to Thiel's side on this particular issue (at least mostly) was when I realized that Gawker's publication of a sex tape in this way would be considered a sex crime if the victim were female. While I still understand the problem with outsiders bankrolling lawsuits, I can't bring myself to have much sympathy with Gawker here. I don't agree with Thiel on a lot of things but on this one I see his point.
- raldi 10y ago
  > publication of a sex tape in this way would be considered a sex crime if the victim were female. Can you elaborate on that? What crime are you referring to where the victim's gender is significant?
  - api 10y ago
    I was referring to the popular reaction, not legal implications or moral realities. The general public tends not to see this as being as serious when the victim is male.
    - raldi 10y ago
      Aren't you forgetting there was a second person in the video?
      - Kalium 10y ago
        I suspect parent isn't. Just that nobody seems to care about her. The publicity surrounding the video has been entirely about Terry.
- LA_Banker 10y ago
  I don't think one needs to necessarily choose a side. I'm of the opinion that what Gawker did is wrong, but surreptitiously funding lawsuits to bankrupt the company is a perversion of the justice system. The tension between privacy and speech is a discussion that needs to be had. Litigating it in a Pinellas County courtroom is an odd way to go about having that debate. Thiel has now demonstrated that those with deep enough pockets can now use the courts to exact revenge in a roundabout way. Yes, Gawker is tawdry but one can't help pondering a chilling effect here on more worthy stories. Were I a journalist, I'd certainly think twice now of pursuing an investigative piece that might offend a billionaire, given that my own financial livelihood could become fair game.
  - erics32 10y ago
    Consider the way things were before Thiel showed up. Gawker destroyed lives[1] with impunity because their victims didn't have deep enough pockets to fight back in court. Thiel is just leveling the playing field. [1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3488027/Gawker-editor-AJ-Daulerio-refused-college-girl-s-pleas-possible-rape-video.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3488027/Gawker-edito...
    - LA_Banker 10y ago
      I'm not defending Gawker; I'm saying there's a better way to have this debate. We don’t have to accept or excuse Gawker’s worst stories to protest Thiel’s dangerous playbook for attacks on institutions of civil society.
      - Natsu 10y ago
        You're free to propose that we outlaw the funding of lawsuits by non-parties, as was done historically (google 'maintenance' and 'champerty' if you want more history on that) but you're going to shut down the ACLU and company when you do so. So it's a matter of which is more important to you, really.
        LA_Banker 10y ago
- ElComradio 10y ago
  If you read Gawker apologia, you continually see the claim that this is going to stifle journalism. Some people aren't able to distinguish between writing a story about a sex tape and actually showing the sex tape, when the latter behavior is the crux on which this whole thing is based. As far as gender goes, one only has to consider that if the rule is going to be "Public figure + sexual aspect to the person's persona (e.g. Hogan talking about sex on Stern) = unlimited right to broadcast sexual material", then no porn star ever has the right to private sex again. Since that is clearly unacceptable, the error must be with the proposed rule.
blintz 10y ago
Peter Thiel is all for radical freedom and libertarianism as long as the free speech that he protects isn't critical of himself. He vehemently defended his friend's right to yell "Faggot! Faggot! Hope you die of AIDS!" outside an instructor's residence. As he explains in his book, "His demonstration directly challenged one of the most fundamental taboos: To suggest a correlation between homosexual acts and AIDS implies that one of the multiculturalists’ favorite lifestyles is more prone to contracting the disease and that not all lifestyles are equally desirable." How can someone be so radically opposed to encroachments on free speech, and yet so quick to quietly fund lawsuits against those who criticize you?
- serge2k 10y ago
  > long as the free speech that he protects isn't critical of himself > He vehemently defended his friend's right to yell "Faggot! Faggot! Hope you die of AIDS!" He's gay. This all started because Gawker outed him years ago.
  - CPLX 10y ago
    So was the guy yelling in that story. Both of them are very powerful people in the valley today. Google it, it's hardly a secret.
- remarkEon 10y ago
  Forgive me if I missed it, but has Gawker been "critical" of Thiel in the traditional sense? I'm tracking that they outed him - not that they've been publishing anti-Thiel business editorials - and that they published a sex tape without the permission of those who made it. It appears that we're starting to conflate protected free speech with invasions of privacy. It's not immediately clear that shouting "Faggot! Faggot! Hope you die of AIDS!" falls into the latter category, so I don't really see how that's relevant.
  - blintz 10y ago
    If being homosexual is not societally acceptable, or carries a stigma (as it did at the time, as evidenced by Thiel's own criticism of it as an unhealthy "lifestyle"), then isn't yelling "Faggot!" at someone rather privacy-invading? As Thiel would himself know from Gawker's outing of him?
BinaryIdiot 10y ago
I'm having trouble reconciling the following two quotes > I am proud to have contributed financial support to his case. I will support him until his final victory — Gawker said it intends to appeal — and I would gladly support someone else in the same position. > A free press is vital for public debate. Since sensitive information can sometimes be publicly relevant, exercising judgment is always part of the journalist’s profession. It’s not for me to draw the line So this makes me think that, if Peter Thiel considers a journalist's particular article morally wrong, he will help the supposed victim to sue them. In the case of Gawker it's hard to say Gawker was innocent but at the same time what if the next case is something more grey? Peter says he wants a free press but it sounds more to me like he wants a free press by his own judgement. I'm not a fan of Gawker at all but having a billionaire bankroll lawsuits against publications when his opinion is that they're doing something morally wrong...worries me that it'll stifle.
- serge2k 10y ago
  Gawker pissed off Thiel by doing their standard trashy tabloid garbage and invading his personal life. He took the opportunity to get even when they went too far with someone else. Good for him. He's not taking part to cover up anything, or for revenge because they exposed some wrongdoing on his part. He's doing it because Gawker is a trashy worthless site.
  - swang 10y ago
    lol yeah this is definitely not about revenge. lies in wait for 7 years
    - serge2k 10y ago
      revenge for wrongdoing on his part. Far as I know they outed him as a homosexual. That's not wrongdoing on his part.
      - swang 10y ago
        okay thats just kinda semantics then. he didn't get revenge because he did something wrong. he got revenge because he felt someone else did something wrong. so this is still all about revenge for thiel at the cost of chilling free speech. thiel saying he is defending free speech is disingenuous when the supreme court has given the press considerable latitude to write about someone's sexual orientation. he is mad about something that was completely legal for gawker to do. now it is a really shitty thing to do to out someone as gay. but let's not pretend this wasn't thiel's payback. > He was so paranoid that, when I was looking into the story, a year ago, I got a series of messages relaying the destruction that would rain down on me, and various innocent civilians caught in the crossfire, if a story ever ran. - Nick Denton's comment in original Thiel is gay article on Gawker [0] http://gawker.com/335894/peter-thiel-is-totally-gay-people?comment=3414140#comments http://gawker.com/335894/peter-thiel-is-totally-gay-people?c...
Analemma_ 10y ago
The balls on this guy. The sheer cynical audacity of trying to market yourself as a "defender of privacy" when you serve on the board of a company so antithetical to privacy that they're under federal supervision for twenty years [1] is breathtaking. Please tell me no one on Hacker News is dumb enough to fall for this. My Google-fu is failing me on the exact link (can someone help?), but Marc Andreessen once penned some breathless, excited editorial about "the future of media", and at one point he talked about the editorial/advertising firewall as a relic that needed to be abandoned. It was so slickly inserted that you could almost forget what he was really saying: that news desks need to be prevented from reporting things that companies rather they didn't. Every time a VC tries to tell me "what's wrong with the media", I reach for my gun. Everyone: they're not your friends. They're not trying to help you. Their overriding concern is nurturing the value of their investments, and that sometimes means silencing people who report inconvenient truths. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/technology/facebook-agrees-to-ftc-settlement-on-privacy.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/technology/facebook-agrees... (reposted from other submission)
- yabatopia 10y ago
  Maybe he's just being sarcastic, like his buddy Trump.
- dominotw 10y ago
  do you have anything to say about the content of the article or just ad hominem attacks on the author.
  - mmanfrin 10y ago
    Is the author, who financed the lawsuit on behalf of Bollea, not part of the content?
  - m3rc 10y ago
    I don't see the OP laying out a case for the article's content, I see them mentioning how it's absurd for anyone to take the author of this article seriously on privacy issues.
aaronbrethorst 10y ago
FTA: I’m glad that an arena full of Republicans stood up to applaud when I said I was proud to be gay, because gay pride shouldn’t be a partisan issue. All people deserve respect, and nobody’s sexuality should be made a public fixation. From the 2016 party platform[1] of that arena full of Republicans[2]: In Obergefell, five unelected lawyers robbed 320 million Americans of their legitimate constitutional authority to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. And, to the people who will say 'Obergefell is simply antithetical to Republicans because it's a states' rights issue,' you're not fooling anyone. ---- [1] "A party platform is sometimes referred to as a manifesto[1] or a political platform. Research on American politics suggests that platform positions offer an important clue to the policies that U.S. parties will enact." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_platform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_platform [2] https://prod-static-ngop-pbl.s3.amazonaws.com/media/documents/DRAFT_12_FINAL[1]-ben_1468872234.pdf https://prod-static-ngop-pbl.s3.amazonaws.com/media/document...
- nikcheerla 10y ago
  Why exactly do you think those two positions are necessarily in opposition? You can be proudly gay while still believing that 'marriage' is only between men and women. AFAIK this is a pretty common belief among those who are both Christian and gay.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > You can be proudly gay while still believing that 'marriage' is only between men and women. AFAIK this is a pretty common belief among those who are both Christian and gay. Is there any reason to believe this is a common alignment of views? While I haven't seen things broken out at that detail level (e.g., gay marriage views of gay Christians), in general, belief that society should accept homosexuality tracks pretty well with belief that gay marriage should be allowed; I'd be very surprised if, even among, say, Evangelicals (the Christian religious subgroup polling shows most opposed to gay marriage), the share of that population that is gay isn't mostly part of the 27% (from Pew earlier this year [0]) of that group that says that gay marriage should be accepted. [0] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/05/12/support-steady-for-same-sex-marriage-and-acceptance-of-homosexuality/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/05/12/support-stea...
jonathankoren 10y ago
I love how he's trying to make his personal vendetta against Gawker Nobel, by trying to dub the IPPA as "the Gawker Bill." From https://www.buzzfeed.com/nitashatiku/peter-thiel-gawker-new-york-times https://www.buzzfeed.com/nitashatiku/peter-thiel-gawker-new-... : "It's the Intimate Privacy Protection Act or IPPA," a spokesperson for Rep. Jackie Speier, one of the bill's sponsors, told BuzzFeed News. "I have no idea where 'the Gawker Bill' name comes from, but it's incorrect."
- randomname2 10y ago
  It had been called that, informally. From a few weeks ago: http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/07/gawker-bill-criminalize-revenge-porn/ http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/07/gawker-bill-criminal...
elevensies 10y ago
Seeing Hulk Hogan force Gawker into bankruptcy has been so satisfying. After all the sanctimonious nattering after the huge iCloud celebrity nudes leak, and then all the hand-wringing while Gawker gets punished for getting waist deep in the exact same thing has been galling. But after dozens of think-pieces about the troubling implications, bankruptcy court grinds on, impervious.
zorpner 10y ago
The fact that Thiel is still involved with Y Combinator should tell you everything you need to know about the disingenuity of their "commitment" to equality and diversity.
- Bahamut 10y ago
  Can you explain what is meant by this comment (I'm ignorant as to what this is referring to)?
- kafkaesq 10y ago
  I'd also like to know what you're getting at.
- vanattab 10y ago
  Does tolerance mean no Republicans/Libertarians allowed in any of our social/work circles? Is that where we're going as Democrats? If so I will be putting the Kool Aid down and jumping off the wagon at the next stop.
  - jshevek 10y ago
    Yes, it appears to me to be increasingly popular among liberals (esp. among the younger generation) to use any tactic they can to silence, ostracize, and censor dissenting opinions. It also seems to me that this has the effect of driving moderates to the right.
- tomjen3 10y ago
  Yeah ycombinator should really improve their diversity by kicking out gay people.
- nikcheerla 10y ago
  Seriously?
shklnrj 10y ago
I am actually in favour of Peter Thiel. What Gawker did was illegal and hence it is facing this backlash by the LAW. Many people committed suicides because of the way Gawker brought their private life in public. http://www.vox.com/2015/7/17/8992155/gawker-outing-gay-people http://www.vox.com/2015/7/17/8992155/gawker-outing-gay-peopl... As far as he being the investor in Facebook which uses your data to advertise to you - You actually agree to Facebook's terms when you sign up for it! In case of Gawker, it was someone who was feeding on destroying the private life of people in order to sell ads. * Whether this sets a precedent or not - That is another question and can be resolved in future. That does not mean we should support a publication which is just gossiping about the private life of a person.
- DINKDINK 10y ago
  >What Gawker did was illegal I didn't follow the case. What did Gawker do that was illegal?
  - shklnrj 10y ago
    I mean the lawsuit with Hulk Hogan. Gawker published a sex tape of Hulk Hogan. Now Gawker has been slapped with a penalty by the court in that case. It is not Peter Thiel who is collecting the penalty using a gun. Clearly since the court has decided at this level, the courts think that Gawker's action is against law. Of course courts could be wrong and Gawker could appeal to higher courts. But since I have limited knowledge of law, I definitely think I know less than the current level of court and hence think that Gawker was breaking the law by publishing the private sex tape of Hulk Hogan in order to sell advertising.
- omphalos 10y ago
  Privacy-wise Palantir is even scarier than Facebook.
- incogitomode 10y ago
  Except that the incident was found to be newsworthy and not illegal in two previous cases, once in federal court and another attempt in Florida state court [1]. Shopping for a favorable venue, and convincing one jury in a civil case does not make for a very compelling argument of "illegality." [1] https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/hogan-v-gawker/ https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/hogan-v...
shanusmagnus 10y ago
Implying that objections to Trump's narcissism and probable sociopathy amount to "culture war" is a staggering re-framing of reality. That combined with the gay-conservative-Christian thing suggest that the amount of cognitive dissonance Thiel can endure must truly be Olympic calibre.
- tertius 10y ago
  The Goldwater rule removes the strength of your statement regarding him being a sociopath.
  - r00fus 10y ago
    Had to look that one up [1] So is it your understanding that shanusmagnus is a psychiatrist, or am I missing something? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldwater_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldwater_rule
    - shanusmagnus 10y ago
      I didn't know the term either, so thanks for digging it up. I'm close to, but not quite a psychiatrist, so I think I squeak through on a technicality :)
- stcredzero 10y ago
  Implying that objections to Trump's narcissism and probable sociopathy amount to "culture war" is a staggering re-framing of reality. How about this? The degree of disconnect between the lower middle-class and below versus the upper middle class and ruling economic elites in the US has become a rift large enough to drive a semi-truck through. So how were we surprised when in comes Donald Trump's semi-sized narcissism and sociopathy? The thing to ask yourself, as a member of the educated elite from either the left or right side of the political spectrum in the US: Have I understood and served all of those who have lost ground economically, or only "my side" while declaring the "other side" to be somehow unworthy and deficient? Trump and Sanders both demonstrate that for many in the US, the answer is the 2nd choice!
- 10y ago
swang 10y ago
if we're talking about free speech here. gawker did not do anything illegal to out peter thiel. a shitty thing to do? yes. illegal? no. so essentially thiel planned revenge because they did something shitty and he did not like it. again pretty shitty of gawker to out him, also pretty shitty of thiel to chill free speech. not sure there are any real winners to root for here. bringing down gawker did bring down a lot of the satellite sites that were actually doing really good reporting. very few sports websites were talking at all about the sexual assaults going on in colleges, deadspin (a gawker blog) was probably the foremost site posting about it (and other violations by schools).
- fredgrott 10y ago
  let me explain free speech to you... I am free to speak but not free to incite illegal acts or acts that result in violence..for example I cannot shot fire in a crowed theater..its NOT FREE SPEECH. The court ruling stated it was not protected free speech..read it
  - swang 10y ago
    what does any of that have to do with any of this case? did any of this incite illegal acts or acts that resulted in violence? no. that part of your post has zero relevance to either my post or to the current situation (did someone kill someone? did someone make someone cause someone else to commit an illegal act?) i said outing peter thiel is not illegal. and in fact the supreme court has ruled that reporting facts is permissible. _but_ it is a really shitty thing to out people. and the saying is "falsely shout fire in a crowded theater" not just "shout fire in a crowded theater" read up son. you should also read up because that saying is not "law" and the court case that it originated from was overturned because of its gross ignorance of the first amendment. read up son x2.
    - vanattab 10y ago
      >i said outing peter thiel is not illegal. and in fact the supreme court has ruled that reporting facts is permissible. _but_ it is a really shitty thing to out people. What does this have to do with the case? The case is about a sex tape not outing thiel.
pessimizer 10y ago
This has nothing to do with online privacy or the internet, stills and transcripts could have just as easily been published in the Enquirer (where they probably would have been protected), and an article outing somebody could have been in print anywhere. This "Gawker Law", has little or nothing to do with the Gawker-Hogan case. In the courts, the privacy of public figures has always been dealt with differently; if anything, this law will blur that distinction, and you won't be able to publish things about your Senator that you wouldn't be able to publish about your ex-wife. Also, it's another sex law. If anything, the publication of the video without the consent of the people who made it was a copyright violation, and we already have laws for that that levy tens of thousands of dollars in fines on private citizens for republishing an albumful of music to dozens of people. Peter Thiel is a terrible person who made his entire fortune from knowing the right rich people at the right time. I hope he doesn't find somebody who thinks I may have slandered them in the mid-90s and finance a normally hopeless legal case in order to make sure that nobody who has less than a billion dollars in the bank says anything he doesn't like about him, or anyone he likes, or anyone he may be considering doing business with, ever again. We can call it the Peter Thiel Line of No Good Reason.
swagv 10y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12292973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12292973
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
guelo 10y ago
In Hulk Hogan's sex tape he goes off on a racist rant. That's the reason the WWE fired him. I'm glad my kids won't be exposed to that racist and I'm thankful for Gawker's public services on that issue. Also, Hogan was never going to earn $140million for the rest of his life. That judgment was ridiculous.
josephdviviano 10y ago
Gawker played dirty, then Peter Thiel played dirty. Peter won. Nothing of value was lost. We're not talking about Reuters here.
emblem21 10y ago
Suicide queens.
maverick_iceman 10y ago
If a conservative site was outing gays on a regular basis it would have been shut down long ago. But liberal sites outing gay conservatives is considered totally acceptable and even commendable in today's society. Thus the vitriol towards Thiel.
kyledrake 10y ago
I posted a link to the "Revenge Porn" bill, incase anyone wants to talk about the topic at hand instead of Peter Thiel. The bill is actually a pretty significant one with some big implications for service providers https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12295410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12295410

119 points by paulsutter 10y ago

api 10y ago

I'm afraid I kind of agree. What brought me over to Thiel's side on this particular issue (at least mostly) was when I realized that Gawker's publication of a sex tape in this way would be considered a sex crime if the victim were female. While I still understand the problem with outsiders bankrolling lawsuits, I can't bring myself to have much sympathy with Gawker here. I don't agree with Thiel on a lot of things but on this one I see his point.

raldi 10y ago
> publication of a sex tape in this way would be considered a sex crime if the victim were female. Can you elaborate on that? What crime are you referring to where the victim's gender is significant?
- api 10y ago
  I was referring to the popular reaction, not legal implications or moral realities. The general public tends not to see this as being as serious when the victim is male.
  - raldi 10y ago
    Aren't you forgetting there was a second person in the video?
    - Kalium 10y ago
      I suspect parent isn't. Just that nobody seems to care about her. The publicity surrounding the video has been entirely about Terry.
LA_Banker 10y ago
I don't think one needs to necessarily choose a side. I'm of the opinion that what Gawker did is wrong, but surreptitiously funding lawsuits to bankrupt the company is a perversion of the justice system. The tension between privacy and speech is a discussion that needs to be had. Litigating it in a Pinellas County courtroom is an odd way to go about having that debate. Thiel has now demonstrated that those with deep enough pockets can now use the courts to exact revenge in a roundabout way. Yes, Gawker is tawdry but one can't help pondering a chilling effect here on more worthy stories. Were I a journalist, I'd certainly think twice now of pursuing an investigative piece that might offend a billionaire, given that my own financial livelihood could become fair game.
- erics32 10y ago
  Consider the way things were before Thiel showed up. Gawker destroyed lives[1] with impunity because their victims didn't have deep enough pockets to fight back in court. Thiel is just leveling the playing field. [1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3488027/Gawker-editor-AJ-Daulerio-refused-college-girl-s-pleas-possible-rape-video.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3488027/Gawker-edito...
  - LA_Banker 10y ago
    I'm not defending Gawker; I'm saying there's a better way to have this debate. We don’t have to accept or excuse Gawker’s worst stories to protest Thiel’s dangerous playbook for attacks on institutions of civil society.
    - Natsu 10y ago
      You're free to propose that we outlaw the funding of lawsuits by non-parties, as was done historically (google 'maintenance' and 'champerty' if you want more history on that) but you're going to shut down the ACLU and company when you do so. So it's a matter of which is more important to you, really.
      - LA_Banker 10y ago
ElComradio 10y ago
If you read Gawker apologia, you continually see the claim that this is going to stifle journalism. Some people aren't able to distinguish between writing a story about a sex tape and actually showing the sex tape, when the latter behavior is the crux on which this whole thing is based. As far as gender goes, one only has to consider that if the rule is going to be "Public figure + sexual aspect to the person's persona (e.g. Hogan talking about sex on Stern) = unlimited right to broadcast sexual material", then no porn star ever has the right to private sex again. Since that is clearly unacceptable, the error must be with the proposed rule.

blintz 10y ago

Peter Thiel is all for radical freedom and libertarianism as long as the free speech that he protects isn't critical of himself. He vehemently defended his friend's right to yell "Faggot! Faggot! Hope you die of AIDS!" outside an instructor's residence. As he explains in his book, "His demonstration directly challenged one of the most fundamental taboos: To suggest a correlation between homosexual acts and AIDS implies that one of the multiculturalists’ favorite lifestyles is more prone to contracting the disease and that not all lifestyles are equally desirable." How can someone be so radically opposed to encroachments on free speech, and yet so quick to quietly fund lawsuits against those who criticize you?

serge2k 10y ago
> long as the free speech that he protects isn't critical of himself > He vehemently defended his friend's right to yell "Faggot! Faggot! Hope you die of AIDS!" He's gay. This all started because Gawker outed him years ago.
- CPLX 10y ago
  So was the guy yelling in that story. Both of them are very powerful people in the valley today. Google it, it's hardly a secret.
remarkEon 10y ago
Forgive me if I missed it, but has Gawker been "critical" of Thiel in the traditional sense? I'm tracking that they outed him - not that they've been publishing anti-Thiel business editorials - and that they published a sex tape without the permission of those who made it. It appears that we're starting to conflate protected free speech with invasions of privacy. It's not immediately clear that shouting "Faggot! Faggot! Hope you die of AIDS!" falls into the latter category, so I don't really see how that's relevant.
- blintz 10y ago
  If being homosexual is not societally acceptable, or carries a stigma (as it did at the time, as evidenced by Thiel's own criticism of it as an unhealthy "lifestyle"), then isn't yelling "Faggot!" at someone rather privacy-invading? As Thiel would himself know from Gawker's outing of him?

BinaryIdiot 10y ago

I'm having trouble reconciling the following two quotes > I am proud to have contributed financial support to his case. I will support him until his final victory — Gawker said it intends to appeal — and I would gladly support someone else in the same position. > A free press is vital for public debate. Since sensitive information can sometimes be publicly relevant, exercising judgment is always part of the journalist’s profession. It’s not for me to draw the line So this makes me think that, if Peter Thiel considers a journalist's particular article morally wrong, he will help the supposed victim to sue them. In the case of Gawker it's hard to say Gawker was innocent but at the same time what if the next case is something more grey? Peter says he wants a free press but it sounds more to me like he wants a free press by his own judgement. I'm not a fan of Gawker at all but having a billionaire bankroll lawsuits against publications when his opinion is that they're doing something morally wrong...worries me that it'll stifle.

serge2k 10y ago
Gawker pissed off Thiel by doing their standard trashy tabloid garbage and invading his personal life. He took the opportunity to get even when they went too far with someone else. Good for him. He's not taking part to cover up anything, or for revenge because they exposed some wrongdoing on his part. He's doing it because Gawker is a trashy worthless site.
- swang 10y ago
  lol yeah this is definitely not about revenge. lies in wait for 7 years
  - serge2k 10y ago
    revenge for wrongdoing on his part. Far as I know they outed him as a homosexual. That's not wrongdoing on his part.
    - swang 10y ago
      okay thats just kinda semantics then. he didn't get revenge because he did something wrong. he got revenge because he felt someone else did something wrong. so this is still all about revenge for thiel at the cost of chilling free speech. thiel saying he is defending free speech is disingenuous when the supreme court has given the press considerable latitude to write about someone's sexual orientation. he is mad about something that was completely legal for gawker to do. now it is a really shitty thing to do to out someone as gay. but let's not pretend this wasn't thiel's payback. > He was so paranoid that, when I was looking into the story, a year ago, I got a series of messages relaying the destruction that would rain down on me, and various innocent civilians caught in the crossfire, if a story ever ran. - Nick Denton's comment in original Thiel is gay article on Gawker [0] http://gawker.com/335894/peter-thiel-is-totally-gay-people?comment=3414140#comments http://gawker.com/335894/peter-thiel-is-totally-gay-people?c...

Analemma_ 10y ago

The balls on this guy. The sheer cynical audacity of trying to market yourself as a "defender of privacy" when you serve on the board of a company so antithetical to privacy that they're under federal supervision for twenty years [1] is breathtaking. Please tell me no one on Hacker News is dumb enough to fall for this. My Google-fu is failing me on the exact link (can someone help?), but Marc Andreessen once penned some breathless, excited editorial about "the future of media", and at one point he talked about the editorial/advertising firewall as a relic that needed to be abandoned. It was so slickly inserted that you could almost forget what he was really saying: that news desks need to be prevented from reporting things that companies rather they didn't. Every time a VC tries to tell me "what's wrong with the media", I reach for my gun. Everyone: they're not your friends. They're not trying to help you. Their overriding concern is nurturing the value of their investments, and that sometimes means silencing people who report inconvenient truths. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/technology/facebook-agrees-to-ftc-settlement-on-privacy.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/technology/facebook-agrees... (reposted from other submission)

yabatopia 10y ago
Maybe he's just being sarcastic, like his buddy Trump.
dominotw 10y ago
do you have anything to say about the content of the article or just ad hominem attacks on the author.
- mmanfrin 10y ago
  Is the author, who financed the lawsuit on behalf of Bollea, not part of the content?
- m3rc 10y ago
  I don't see the OP laying out a case for the article's content, I see them mentioning how it's absurd for anyone to take the author of this article seriously on privacy issues.

aaronbrethorst 10y ago

FTA: I’m glad that an arena full of Republicans stood up to applaud when I said I was proud to be gay, because gay pride shouldn’t be a partisan issue. All people deserve respect, and nobody’s sexuality should be made a public fixation. From the 2016 party platform[1] of that arena full of Republicans[2]: In Obergefell, five unelected lawyers robbed 320 million Americans of their legitimate constitutional authority to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. And, to the people who will say 'Obergefell is simply antithetical to Republicans because it's a states' rights issue,' you're not fooling anyone. ---- [1] "A party platform is sometimes referred to as a manifesto[1] or a political platform. Research on American politics suggests that platform positions offer an important clue to the policies that U.S. parties will enact." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_platform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_platform [2] https://prod-static-ngop-pbl.s3.amazonaws.com/media/documents/DRAFT_12_FINAL[1]-ben_1468872234.pdf https://prod-static-ngop-pbl.s3.amazonaws.com/media/document...

nikcheerla 10y ago
Why exactly do you think those two positions are necessarily in opposition? You can be proudly gay while still believing that 'marriage' is only between men and women. AFAIK this is a pretty common belief among those who are both Christian and gay.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > You can be proudly gay while still believing that 'marriage' is only between men and women. AFAIK this is a pretty common belief among those who are both Christian and gay. Is there any reason to believe this is a common alignment of views? While I haven't seen things broken out at that detail level (e.g., gay marriage views of gay Christians), in general, belief that society should accept homosexuality tracks pretty well with belief that gay marriage should be allowed; I'd be very surprised if, even among, say, Evangelicals (the Christian religious subgroup polling shows most opposed to gay marriage), the share of that population that is gay isn't mostly part of the 27% (from Pew earlier this year [0]) of that group that says that gay marriage should be accepted. [0] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/05/12/support-steady-for-same-sex-marriage-and-acceptance-of-homosexuality/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/05/12/support-stea...

jonathankoren 10y ago

I love how he's trying to make his personal vendetta against Gawker Nobel, by trying to dub the IPPA as "the Gawker Bill." From https://www.buzzfeed.com/nitashatiku/peter-thiel-gawker-new-york-times https://www.buzzfeed.com/nitashatiku/peter-thiel-gawker-new-... : "It's the Intimate Privacy Protection Act or IPPA," a spokesperson for Rep. Jackie Speier, one of the bill's sponsors, told BuzzFeed News. "I have no idea where 'the Gawker Bill' name comes from, but it's incorrect."

randomname2 10y ago
It had been called that, informally. From a few weeks ago: http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/07/gawker-bill-criminalize-revenge-porn/ http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/07/gawker-bill-criminal...

elevensies 10y ago

Seeing Hulk Hogan force Gawker into bankruptcy has been so satisfying. After all the sanctimonious nattering after the huge iCloud celebrity nudes leak, and then all the hand-wringing while Gawker gets punished for getting waist deep in the exact same thing has been galling. But after dozens of think-pieces about the troubling implications, bankruptcy court grinds on, impervious.

zorpner 10y ago

The fact that Thiel is still involved with Y Combinator should tell you everything you need to know about the disingenuity of their "commitment" to equality and diversity.

Bahamut 10y ago
Can you explain what is meant by this comment (I'm ignorant as to what this is referring to)?
kafkaesq 10y ago
I'd also like to know what you're getting at.
vanattab 10y ago
Does tolerance mean no Republicans/Libertarians allowed in any of our social/work circles? Is that where we're going as Democrats? If so I will be putting the Kool Aid down and jumping off the wagon at the next stop.
- jshevek 10y ago
  Yes, it appears to me to be increasingly popular among liberals (esp. among the younger generation) to use any tactic they can to silence, ostracize, and censor dissenting opinions. It also seems to me that this has the effect of driving moderates to the right.
tomjen3 10y ago
Yeah ycombinator should really improve their diversity by kicking out gay people.
nikcheerla 10y ago
Seriously?

shklnrj 10y ago

I am actually in favour of Peter Thiel. What Gawker did was illegal and hence it is facing this backlash by the LAW. Many people committed suicides because of the way Gawker brought their private life in public. http://www.vox.com/2015/7/17/8992155/gawker-outing-gay-people http://www.vox.com/2015/7/17/8992155/gawker-outing-gay-peopl... As far as he being the investor in Facebook which uses your data to advertise to you - You actually agree to Facebook's terms when you sign up for it! In case of Gawker, it was someone who was feeding on destroying the private life of people in order to sell ads. * Whether this sets a precedent or not - That is another question and can be resolved in future. That does not mean we should support a publication which is just gossiping about the private life of a person.

DINKDINK 10y ago
>What Gawker did was illegal I didn't follow the case. What did Gawker do that was illegal?
- shklnrj 10y ago
  I mean the lawsuit with Hulk Hogan. Gawker published a sex tape of Hulk Hogan. Now Gawker has been slapped with a penalty by the court in that case. It is not Peter Thiel who is collecting the penalty using a gun. Clearly since the court has decided at this level, the courts think that Gawker's action is against law. Of course courts could be wrong and Gawker could appeal to higher courts. But since I have limited knowledge of law, I definitely think I know less than the current level of court and hence think that Gawker was breaking the law by publishing the private sex tape of Hulk Hogan in order to sell advertising.
omphalos 10y ago
Privacy-wise Palantir is even scarier than Facebook.
incogitomode 10y ago
Except that the incident was found to be newsworthy and not illegal in two previous cases, once in federal court and another attempt in Florida state court [1]. Shopping for a favorable venue, and convincing one jury in a civil case does not make for a very compelling argument of "illegality." [1] https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/hogan-v-gawker/ https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/hogan-v...

shanusmagnus 10y ago

Implying that objections to Trump's narcissism and probable sociopathy amount to "culture war" is a staggering re-framing of reality. That combined with the gay-conservative-Christian thing suggest that the amount of cognitive dissonance Thiel can endure must truly be Olympic calibre.

tertius 10y ago
The Goldwater rule removes the strength of your statement regarding him being a sociopath.
- r00fus 10y ago
  Had to look that one up [1] So is it your understanding that shanusmagnus is a psychiatrist, or am I missing something? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldwater_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldwater_rule
  - shanusmagnus 10y ago
    I didn't know the term either, so thanks for digging it up. I'm close to, but not quite a psychiatrist, so I think I squeak through on a technicality :)
stcredzero 10y ago
Implying that objections to Trump's narcissism and probable sociopathy amount to "culture war" is a staggering re-framing of reality. How about this? The degree of disconnect between the lower middle-class and below versus the upper middle class and ruling economic elites in the US has become a rift large enough to drive a semi-truck through. So how were we surprised when in comes Donald Trump's semi-sized narcissism and sociopathy? The thing to ask yourself, as a member of the educated elite from either the left or right side of the political spectrum in the US: Have I understood and served all of those who have lost ground economically, or only "my side" while declaring the "other side" to be somehow unworthy and deficient? Trump and Sanders both demonstrate that for many in the US, the answer is the 2nd choice!
10y ago

swang 10y ago

if we're talking about free speech here. gawker did not do anything illegal to out peter thiel. a shitty thing to do? yes. illegal? no. so essentially thiel planned revenge because they did something shitty and he did not like it. again pretty shitty of gawker to out him, also pretty shitty of thiel to chill free speech. not sure there are any real winners to root for here. bringing down gawker did bring down a lot of the satellite sites that were actually doing really good reporting. very few sports websites were talking at all about the sexual assaults going on in colleges, deadspin (a gawker blog) was probably the foremost site posting about it (and other violations by schools).

fredgrott 10y ago
let me explain free speech to you... I am free to speak but not free to incite illegal acts or acts that result in violence..for example I cannot shot fire in a crowed theater..its NOT FREE SPEECH. The court ruling stated it was not protected free speech..read it
- swang 10y ago
  what does any of that have to do with any of this case? did any of this incite illegal acts or acts that resulted in violence? no. that part of your post has zero relevance to either my post or to the current situation (did someone kill someone? did someone make someone cause someone else to commit an illegal act?) i said outing peter thiel is not illegal. and in fact the supreme court has ruled that reporting facts is permissible. _but_ it is a really shitty thing to out people. and the saying is "falsely shout fire in a crowded theater" not just "shout fire in a crowded theater" read up son. you should also read up because that saying is not "law" and the court case that it originated from was overturned because of its gross ignorance of the first amendment. read up son x2.
  - vanattab 10y ago
    >i said outing peter thiel is not illegal. and in fact the supreme court has ruled that reporting facts is permissible. _but_ it is a really shitty thing to out people. What does this have to do with the case? The case is about a sex tape not outing thiel.

pessimizer 10y ago

This has nothing to do with online privacy or the internet, stills and transcripts could have just as easily been published in the Enquirer (where they probably would have been protected), and an article outing somebody could have been in print anywhere. This "Gawker Law", has little or nothing to do with the Gawker-Hogan case. In the courts, the privacy of public figures has always been dealt with differently; if anything, this law will blur that distinction, and you won't be able to publish things about your Senator that you wouldn't be able to publish about your ex-wife. Also, it's another sex law. If anything, the publication of the video without the consent of the people who made it was a copyright violation, and we already have laws for that that levy tens of thousands of dollars in fines on private citizens for republishing an albumful of music to dozens of people. Peter Thiel is a terrible person who made his entire fortune from knowing the right rich people at the right time. I hope he doesn't find somebody who thinks I may have slandered them in the mid-90s and finance a normally hopeless legal case in order to make sure that nobody who has less than a billion dollars in the bank says anything he doesn't like about him, or anyone he likes, or anyone he may be considering doing business with, ever again. We can call it the Peter Thiel Line of No Good Reason.

swagv 10y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12292973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12292973

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

guelo 10y ago

In Hulk Hogan's sex tape he goes off on a racist rant. That's the reason the WWE fired him. I'm glad my kids won't be exposed to that racist and I'm thankful for Gawker's public services on that issue. Also, Hogan was never going to earn $140million for the rest of his life. That judgment was ridiculous.

josephdviviano 10y ago

Gawker played dirty, then Peter Thiel played dirty. Peter won. Nothing of value was lost. We're not talking about Reuters here.

emblem21 10y ago

Suicide queens.

maverick_iceman 10y ago

If a conservative site was outing gays on a regular basis it would have been shut down long ago. But liberal sites outing gay conservatives is considered totally acceptable and even commendable in today's society. Thus the vitriol towards Thiel.

kyledrake 10y ago

I posted a link to the "Revenge Porn" bill, incase anyone wants to talk about the topic at hand instead of Peter Thiel. The bill is actually a pretty significant one with some big implications for service providers https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12295410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12295410