6 ms·

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 antithetic

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.
  - jdmichal 10y ago
    That's kind of what ad hominem is... Discredit the argument by discrediting the arguer. The thing is, that has zero effect on whether the argument is valid or not. The fact that I state 10 wrong facts about bananas does not mean that the next fact I state is wrong, even though I've far and away proven myself to not be a trusted expert on banana facts.
    - tertius 10y ago
      The correct response would be to ignore you and only listen to people who should be trusted. Regardless of your subsequent fact listing.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      >That's kind of what ad hominem is... Discredit the argument by discrediting the arguer. The thing is, that has zero effect on whether the argument is valid or not. In real life the content of an argument isn't the only think that matters. The motives of the arguer are also important -- what they're trying to achieve/sell by using it etc. That's because people don't only offer their arguments to have other people discuss them and assess their merits, but also to use them to influence people towards other stuff, often unrelated to the argument. E.g. "listen how right and eloquently I speak in favor of privacy -- and thus forgive my enormous contribution to privacy violations, or the fact that I killed an online outlet out of spite". >The fact that I state 10 wrong facts about bananas does not mean that the next fact I state is wrong No, but it means that pragmatic persons with limited time spans should do better than spend time listening you on bananas -- and thus are more right than wrong to dismiss anything else you have to offer beforehand. Sure, they might commit to a false negative this way, but it's statistically more likely that they wont (and being quick and mostly right to access stuff is more important than being 100% right but slow, again for people with limited life spans). Besides a hypocrisy charge is not the same as a "he is wrong" charge.
      - jdmichal 10y ago
        If I'm trying to sell you a high-efficiency AC unit, I will assert that it's a high-efficiency AC unit that will reduce your monthly bills, so you should buy it. You answer back that of course I would say you should buy it, because I'm selling it... Except that has absolutely zero impact on the fact that the AC unit is high-efficiency thereby will save you money. This is why ad hominem is a fallacy. It provides zero evidence for or against an argument. It's completely orthogonal.
- coldtea 10y ago
  A hypocrisy charge is not an ad hominen. An ad-hominen would be: "what he says is wrong because he is stupid/bribed/corrupt/a hypocrite" etc. Saying: "What he says is hypocritical" is not an ad-hominem - it's not an argument on the content or the man, but the relation between the two (what he says and what he does).
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    You're trying to discredit an argument because the person saying it is a hypocrite, which is also an ad-hominem. If the argument is true, then it would also be true even if the person saying it were hypocritical.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      >If the argument is true, then it would also be true even if the person saying it were hypocritical. And nobody said otherwise -- for the core argument. But in real life we don't usually know whether the thing (let's call it A) itself that an argument tries to prove is true. We only know that the argument in favor of A is formulated correctly (follows its premises correctly, etc). Regarding A though, there might be other premises we haven't checked (and weren't mentioned in the argument), other facts that invalidate it, etc. Thus it is enlightening to know if an argument for A is being made hypocritically, to evaluate the possibility of A being true in a wider context. E.g. if I say "A is good for everybody, for X,Y,Z reasons" and I do the opposite of A, then the possibility of A really being good for everybody is somewhat lessened by the prior that "the person proposing A does not follow A". This is because: a) nothing guarantees that X,Y,Z (the things mentioned in the argument) are enough to prove that A is good for everybody. b) the fact that someone proposes A but does the opposite, adds credence to the possibility that there are benefits from NOT following A. Heck, even if the argument is that "A is good for you for X,Y,Z" and it's correct, someone that knows X,Y,Z (since he put forth the argument) but does not follow A, might know something like A+ or B that's even better, and tries to sell me short.
      - stcredzero 10y ago
        Thus it is enlightening to know if an argument for A is being made hypocritically, to evaluate the possibility of A being true in a wider context. That sounds like logic, but it makes much less sense than it sounds. So you're saying it's good to examine the hypocrisy of someone's argument, because of the possibility that there's contradictory facts or implications that the arguer is holding back on us? Not only is that also ad-hominem it's a fuzzy half-logical ad-hominem.
- czep 10y ago
  Where evidence is provided which undermines the credibility of the author, this does not qualify as an ad hominem attack. The parent provided relevant background as to why one should doubt the author's objectivity. Simply playing the "ad hominem" card is not a free pass for the opinions of crackpots to be given equal weight.
sbov 10y ago
Even ignoring the differences between the privacy issues of Gawker vs Facebook, the decisions a company makes are influenced by more than just one person, and nothing posted here says anything of Peter Thiel's views on privacy with respect to Facebook.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >the decisions a company makes are influenced by more than just one person, and nothing posted here says anything of Peter Thiel's views on privacy with respect to Facebook. Again, assuming FB and Gawker have the same privacy issues, what you point doesn't really matter. FB's decisions might be influenced by more than just Thiel, but if Thiel feels strongly about privacy (and his views aren't heard on FB) he always has the option of selling his stock and leaving FB...
  - marcoperaza 10y ago
    >Again, assuming FB and Gawker have the same privacy issues, what you point doesn't really matter. They're not comparable. You give information willingly to Facebook and accept their terms of service. I know plenty of very social and successful people who don't use Facebook. Maybe you feel that there should still be additional regulations on Facebook; fine, that's a debate for another day. But it's very clearly different than a "journalist" prying into your private life against your will to produce a sensationalist and embarrassing article that does nothing to serve the public interest.
    - pessimizer 10y ago
      Neither sbov nor coldtea are saying that they are comparable.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      >They're not comparable. You give information willingly to Facebook and accept their terms of service. Sure -- I agree that they're not comparable (that said, I don't necessarily agree that FB is better than Gawker privacy wise just because it's a different model. In fact I believe the opposite -- and don't particularly care for the "volunteer" part. People volunteer to all kinds of societal harmful stuff). But my argument above checks to see the validity of the parent's comment after "assuming that they're comparable".
anonymousDan 10y ago
I came in here to say exactly the same thing. The hypocrisy is just breathtaking.
onewaystreet 10y ago
> antithetical to privacy I don't use their service that much so I might have missed it, did Facebook add an update that forces people to post their private data?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
kirrent 10y ago
I don't particularly disagree with anything you said but even a privacy intruding clock can be right twice a day. The article is merely a pretty conventional discussion of the public interest vs what the public is interested in and what we should expect from journalism. Everything he says is pretty darn standard stuff which has been written a thousand times before, VC or no VC.
mixmixmix 10y ago
Every time a VC tries to tell me "what's wrong with the media", I reach for my gun. -- I'm going to steal this line. Great post.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  “When I hear ‘culture’...I unlock my Browning!.” [Also translated as “Whenever I hear the word ‘culture’...I release the safety on my pistol!.”] (“Wenn ich Kultur höre...entsichere ich meinen Browning!”) Hanns Johst (1890-1978) German playwright and Nazi SS officer http://www.quotecounterquote.com/2011/02/whenever-i-hear-word-culture.html http://www.quotecounterquote.com/2011/02/whenever-i-hear-wor...
idrios 10y ago
I see nothing wrong with a man who feels remorse for assisting in the stripping of online privacy owning up to his mistakes. "As an internet entrepreneur myself, I feel partly responsible for a world in which private information can be instantly broadcast to the whole planet." This article is as much an apology as it is a call to turn things around fix things
- vonklaus 10y ago
  That is literally what it says, however, most here seem to be questioning the subtext and authenticity. I have trouble interpreting this as an apologetic introspective look at the evolution of privacy and more as a self serving rant. Theils crusade against gawker killed what I think was a shitty trade rag focused on gossip, at a very steep price. Too much in my opinion. I had trouble taking his speech at the RNC seriously. I deeply respected him, probably naively, and I still do; just in a much more narrow context. His intellect and knowledge of technology and macrotrends is amazing, however I find his philosophy in contrast with some of his actions
anamoulous 10y ago
The firewall is a relic of a lucrative business model that imploded. What news desks can and cannot do anymore is a matter of exigency, not the politics of aspiring plutocrats.
loteck 10y ago
Here's Andreessen on the future of the news business [1]. The part you are specifically pointing out in your comment is thus: "One start would be to tear down, or at least modify the “Chinese wall” between content and the business side. No other non-monopoly industry lets product creators off the hook on how the business works." [1] http://a16z.com/2014/02/25/future-of-news-business/ http://a16z.com/2014/02/25/future-of-news-business/
kbenson 10y ago
Unless you have something specific to say regarding Peter Thiel's specific contribution to Facebook's current or past stance on privacy, I think you are being far too alarmist with an entirely unsupported position. For example, it's entirely possible that Peter Thiel is part of a losing faction of the board that values more privacy, and has actually been a force for the better with regard to privacy at Facebook? Is that likely? I have no idea, but it's supported by just as much evidence as you put forth. Keep in mind, by the logic you've used so far, if we ignore the voting history of congress, then every congressperson must obviously have been in favor of invading Iraq, since that's what the US did. Note: If you take this as a defense of Peter Thiel you've entirely missed the point. I have no evidence as to how Peter Thiel truly feels about privacy in general, and more importantly that's irrelevant to the point I'm making.
- pessimizer 10y ago
  You're intensely equivocating here. The moral calculus of renouncing your massive profit-making association with a company that you serve on the board of if it chooses to do things that you find morally unacceptable is trivial, and entirely different than when you're a citizen of a country that you serve in the legislature of that decides to do things that you find morally unacceptable. If you're on the losing faction on a corporate board that decides that the best option is to poison the city water supply, and your mournfully cash the checks, you are just as guilty as the winning faction.
  - nikcheerla 10y ago
    Yes, but there are varying levels of 'moral acceptability', and online privacy violations are on the low end of that. I find it hard to believe that most people would act differently from Thiel in that situation.
    - pessimizer 10y ago
      According to Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel believes that online privacy violations are really, really important.
angry-hacker 10y ago
Someone sitting on the FB board on FB and Palantir, talking about privacy... Gawker dug his own grave but Thiel is a disgusting hypocrite. I hope the history will remember this man that way. And no, not because of Trump.
harshreality 10y ago
My take on Thiel is that he sees himself trying to help navigate between Scylla and Charybdis. On one side, I think he agrees that too much surveillance and data gathering is a problem. He calls himself a libertarian, after all. He just sees the other side as being just as much of a problem, as in this quote (mostly relating to his involvement in Palantir): "As a libertarian, I don't think we should have had the response [to 9/11] we did to those buildings blowing up. But all the mass movements, all the consciousness-raising in the world did not stop us from getting the Patriot Act. The ACLU is always good at talking about civil rights, but [despite that] once something happens, protections go out the window right way. I think there's something to be said for trying to figure out some ways to stop another attack which will be used to curtail civil liberties even more. A company like Paypal could not get started in the post-PatriotAct world, because we would be accused of money laundering [based on how we operated] in '98-'99..." (from a discussion with David Graeber hosted by The Baffler, Fall 2014)
- mindslight 10y ago
  And therein lies the heart of the phenomenon. Much evil has been done by good people telling themselves that they can prevent evil by wielding evil's power themselves. Crime can never be totally prevented. Building a tool that attempts to do so will not stop politicians clamoring for even more totalitarianism when the inevitable does happen.
- alphonsegaston 10y ago
  I have a hard time taking his libertarianism as anything other than a cynical maneuver to clear the way for corporate autocracy. He writes manifestos arguing against democracy, sits on the board of not one, but two private surveillance firms, and wrote a book about how the best business to be in is monopolies. It's like some negative image of Leninism, where the vanguard party is venture capitalists so the revolution is sabotaged before it begins
  - jacobolus 10y ago
    Not to mention promoting Trump at the GOP convention.
shimon_e 10y ago
Peter Thiel seems to be the polar opposite to a majority of Facebook's board. Not to say you don't have a point.
ittekimasu 10y ago
Peter Thiel is also on the steering committee of the shadowy Bildeberg group.
- MeghdeepRay 10y ago
  Source please ?
vintermann 10y ago
Pah, if facebook is under federal supervision, it's probably ultimately because they weren't friendly enough to government. That Thiel is on its board isn't in itself especially damning of him. Far worse, then, that he founded surveillance industry contractor Palantir. Thiel "acknowledges" this, though. That puts in him in the same boat as Soros, who is also good at "acknowledging" the paradoxes of his position even as he instructs governments, in private, exactly which people they should send out to handle a particular situation. Intercept is billionaire-funded, too - and Greenwald has written at length about "what's wrong with the media" - most of which I agree with, by the way. We won't get away from the billionaires and their meddling. The best we can hope for is that they're stronger when they're right than when they're wrong. That posting people's private sex tapes is not OK, is one of the ways Thiel is right. It's bad in many ways he doesn't elucidate. For instance, in a world where your last shreds of privacy can be obliterated by Gawker or Buzzfeed the moment you catch public attention, there will be some winners, and some losers. Women, on the whole, will lose, because it seems fewer women are willing to sacrifice privacy for power. Gays will lose slightly, because they have more to lose from catching public attention (not so true in the US anymore, fortunately, but still very true in many countries). Who are the winners? First, those who can pay an army of publicity experts, and have had it for years to keep an iron grip on their public perception, so that all embarrassments and scandals (real and manufactured) can be managed most efficiently. And, who have very few ambitions or opinions not conductive to seeking power. In short career politicians. The second type is people who just have no sense of shame, whose egos are so big they can just shrug it all off. Reality TV stars, or something.

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.
- jdmichal 10y ago
  That's kind of what ad hominem is... Discredit the argument by discrediting the arguer. The thing is, that has zero effect on whether the argument is valid or not. The fact that I state 10 wrong facts about bananas does not mean that the next fact I state is wrong, even though I've far and away proven myself to not be a trusted expert on banana facts.
  - tertius 10y ago
    The correct response would be to ignore you and only listen to people who should be trusted. Regardless of your subsequent fact listing.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >That's kind of what ad hominem is... Discredit the argument by discrediting the arguer. The thing is, that has zero effect on whether the argument is valid or not. In real life the content of an argument isn't the only think that matters. The motives of the arguer are also important -- what they're trying to achieve/sell by using it etc. That's because people don't only offer their arguments to have other people discuss them and assess their merits, but also to use them to influence people towards other stuff, often unrelated to the argument. E.g. "listen how right and eloquently I speak in favor of privacy -- and thus forgive my enormous contribution to privacy violations, or the fact that I killed an online outlet out of spite". >The fact that I state 10 wrong facts about bananas does not mean that the next fact I state is wrong No, but it means that pragmatic persons with limited time spans should do better than spend time listening you on bananas -- and thus are more right than wrong to dismiss anything else you have to offer beforehand. Sure, they might commit to a false negative this way, but it's statistically more likely that they wont (and being quick and mostly right to access stuff is more important than being 100% right but slow, again for people with limited life spans). Besides a hypocrisy charge is not the same as a "he is wrong" charge.
    - jdmichal 10y ago
      If I'm trying to sell you a high-efficiency AC unit, I will assert that it's a high-efficiency AC unit that will reduce your monthly bills, so you should buy it. You answer back that of course I would say you should buy it, because I'm selling it... Except that has absolutely zero impact on the fact that the AC unit is high-efficiency thereby will save you money. This is why ad hominem is a fallacy. It provides zero evidence for or against an argument. It's completely orthogonal.
coldtea 10y ago
A hypocrisy charge is not an ad hominen. An ad-hominen would be: "what he says is wrong because he is stupid/bribed/corrupt/a hypocrite" etc. Saying: "What he says is hypocritical" is not an ad-hominem - it's not an argument on the content or the man, but the relation between the two (what he says and what he does).
- stcredzero 10y ago
  You're trying to discredit an argument because the person saying it is a hypocrite, which is also an ad-hominem. If the argument is true, then it would also be true even if the person saying it were hypocritical.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >If the argument is true, then it would also be true even if the person saying it were hypocritical. And nobody said otherwise -- for the core argument. But in real life we don't usually know whether the thing (let's call it A) itself that an argument tries to prove is true. We only know that the argument in favor of A is formulated correctly (follows its premises correctly, etc). Regarding A though, there might be other premises we haven't checked (and weren't mentioned in the argument), other facts that invalidate it, etc. Thus it is enlightening to know if an argument for A is being made hypocritically, to evaluate the possibility of A being true in a wider context. E.g. if I say "A is good for everybody, for X,Y,Z reasons" and I do the opposite of A, then the possibility of A really being good for everybody is somewhat lessened by the prior that "the person proposing A does not follow A". This is because: a) nothing guarantees that X,Y,Z (the things mentioned in the argument) are enough to prove that A is good for everybody. b) the fact that someone proposes A but does the opposite, adds credence to the possibility that there are benefits from NOT following A. Heck, even if the argument is that "A is good for you for X,Y,Z" and it's correct, someone that knows X,Y,Z (since he put forth the argument) but does not follow A, might know something like A+ or B that's even better, and tries to sell me short.
    - stcredzero 10y ago
      Thus it is enlightening to know if an argument for A is being made hypocritically, to evaluate the possibility of A being true in a wider context. That sounds like logic, but it makes much less sense than it sounds. So you're saying it's good to examine the hypocrisy of someone's argument, because of the possibility that there's contradictory facts or implications that the arguer is holding back on us? Not only is that also ad-hominem it's a fuzzy half-logical ad-hominem.
czep 10y ago
Where evidence is provided which undermines the credibility of the author, this does not qualify as an ad hominem attack. The parent provided relevant background as to why one should doubt the author's objectivity. Simply playing the "ad hominem" card is not a free pass for the opinions of crackpots to be given equal weight.

sbov 10y ago

Even ignoring the differences between the privacy issues of Gawker vs Facebook, the decisions a company makes are influenced by more than just one person, and nothing posted here says anything of Peter Thiel's views on privacy with respect to Facebook.

coldtea 10y ago
>the decisions a company makes are influenced by more than just one person, and nothing posted here says anything of Peter Thiel's views on privacy with respect to Facebook. Again, assuming FB and Gawker have the same privacy issues, what you point doesn't really matter. FB's decisions might be influenced by more than just Thiel, but if Thiel feels strongly about privacy (and his views aren't heard on FB) he always has the option of selling his stock and leaving FB...
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  >Again, assuming FB and Gawker have the same privacy issues, what you point doesn't really matter. They're not comparable. You give information willingly to Facebook and accept their terms of service. I know plenty of very social and successful people who don't use Facebook. Maybe you feel that there should still be additional regulations on Facebook; fine, that's a debate for another day. But it's very clearly different than a "journalist" prying into your private life against your will to produce a sensationalist and embarrassing article that does nothing to serve the public interest.
  - pessimizer 10y ago
    Neither sbov nor coldtea are saying that they are comparable.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >They're not comparable. You give information willingly to Facebook and accept their terms of service. Sure -- I agree that they're not comparable (that said, I don't necessarily agree that FB is better than Gawker privacy wise just because it's a different model. In fact I believe the opposite -- and don't particularly care for the "volunteer" part. People volunteer to all kinds of societal harmful stuff). But my argument above checks to see the validity of the parent's comment after "assuming that they're comparable".

anonymousDan 10y ago

I came in here to say exactly the same thing. The hypocrisy is just breathtaking.

onewaystreet 10y ago

> antithetical to privacy I don't use their service that much so I might have missed it, did Facebook add an update that forces people to post their private data?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

kirrent 10y ago

I don't particularly disagree with anything you said but even a privacy intruding clock can be right twice a day. The article is merely a pretty conventional discussion of the public interest vs what the public is interested in and what we should expect from journalism. Everything he says is pretty darn standard stuff which has been written a thousand times before, VC or no VC.

mixmixmix 10y ago

Every time a VC tries to tell me "what's wrong with the media", I reach for my gun. -- I'm going to steal this line. Great post.

stcredzero 10y ago
“When I hear ‘culture’...I unlock my Browning!.” [Also translated as “Whenever I hear the word ‘culture’...I release the safety on my pistol!.”] (“Wenn ich Kultur höre...entsichere ich meinen Browning!”) Hanns Johst (1890-1978) German playwright and Nazi SS officer http://www.quotecounterquote.com/2011/02/whenever-i-hear-word-culture.html http://www.quotecounterquote.com/2011/02/whenever-i-hear-wor...

idrios 10y ago

I see nothing wrong with a man who feels remorse for assisting in the stripping of online privacy owning up to his mistakes. "As an internet entrepreneur myself, I feel partly responsible for a world in which private information can be instantly broadcast to the whole planet." This article is as much an apology as it is a call to turn things around fix things

vonklaus 10y ago
That is literally what it says, however, most here seem to be questioning the subtext and authenticity. I have trouble interpreting this as an apologetic introspective look at the evolution of privacy and more as a self serving rant. Theils crusade against gawker killed what I think was a shitty trade rag focused on gossip, at a very steep price. Too much in my opinion. I had trouble taking his speech at the RNC seriously. I deeply respected him, probably naively, and I still do; just in a much more narrow context. His intellect and knowledge of technology and macrotrends is amazing, however I find his philosophy in contrast with some of his actions

anamoulous 10y ago

The firewall is a relic of a lucrative business model that imploded. What news desks can and cannot do anymore is a matter of exigency, not the politics of aspiring plutocrats.

loteck 10y ago

Here's Andreessen on the future of the news business [1]. The part you are specifically pointing out in your comment is thus: "One start would be to tear down, or at least modify the “Chinese wall” between content and the business side. No other non-monopoly industry lets product creators off the hook on how the business works." [1] http://a16z.com/2014/02/25/future-of-news-business/ http://a16z.com/2014/02/25/future-of-news-business/

kbenson 10y ago

Unless you have something specific to say regarding Peter Thiel's specific contribution to Facebook's current or past stance on privacy, I think you are being far too alarmist with an entirely unsupported position. For example, it's entirely possible that Peter Thiel is part of a losing faction of the board that values more privacy, and has actually been a force for the better with regard to privacy at Facebook? Is that likely? I have no idea, but it's supported by just as much evidence as you put forth. Keep in mind, by the logic you've used so far, if we ignore the voting history of congress, then every congressperson must obviously have been in favor of invading Iraq, since that's what the US did. Note: If you take this as a defense of Peter Thiel you've entirely missed the point. I have no evidence as to how Peter Thiel truly feels about privacy in general, and more importantly that's irrelevant to the point I'm making.

pessimizer 10y ago
You're intensely equivocating here. The moral calculus of renouncing your massive profit-making association with a company that you serve on the board of if it chooses to do things that you find morally unacceptable is trivial, and entirely different than when you're a citizen of a country that you serve in the legislature of that decides to do things that you find morally unacceptable. If you're on the losing faction on a corporate board that decides that the best option is to poison the city water supply, and your mournfully cash the checks, you are just as guilty as the winning faction.
- nikcheerla 10y ago
  Yes, but there are varying levels of 'moral acceptability', and online privacy violations are on the low end of that. I find it hard to believe that most people would act differently from Thiel in that situation.
  - pessimizer 10y ago
    According to Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel believes that online privacy violations are really, really important.

angry-hacker 10y ago

Someone sitting on the FB board on FB and Palantir, talking about privacy... Gawker dug his own grave but Thiel is a disgusting hypocrite. I hope the history will remember this man that way. And no, not because of Trump.

harshreality 10y ago

My take on Thiel is that he sees himself trying to help navigate between Scylla and Charybdis. On one side, I think he agrees that too much surveillance and data gathering is a problem. He calls himself a libertarian, after all. He just sees the other side as being just as much of a problem, as in this quote (mostly relating to his involvement in Palantir): "As a libertarian, I don't think we should have had the response [to 9/11] we did to those buildings blowing up. But all the mass movements, all the consciousness-raising in the world did not stop us from getting the Patriot Act. The ACLU is always good at talking about civil rights, but [despite that] once something happens, protections go out the window right way. I think there's something to be said for trying to figure out some ways to stop another attack which will be used to curtail civil liberties even more. A company like Paypal could not get started in the post-PatriotAct world, because we would be accused of money laundering [based on how we operated] in '98-'99..." (from a discussion with David Graeber hosted by The Baffler, Fall 2014)

mindslight 10y ago
And therein lies the heart of the phenomenon. Much evil has been done by good people telling themselves that they can prevent evil by wielding evil's power themselves. Crime can never be totally prevented. Building a tool that attempts to do so will not stop politicians clamoring for even more totalitarianism when the inevitable does happen.
alphonsegaston 10y ago
I have a hard time taking his libertarianism as anything other than a cynical maneuver to clear the way for corporate autocracy. He writes manifestos arguing against democracy, sits on the board of not one, but two private surveillance firms, and wrote a book about how the best business to be in is monopolies. It's like some negative image of Leninism, where the vanguard party is venture capitalists so the revolution is sabotaged before it begins
- jacobolus 10y ago
  Not to mention promoting Trump at the GOP convention.

shimon_e 10y ago

Peter Thiel seems to be the polar opposite to a majority of Facebook's board. Not to say you don't have a point.

ittekimasu 10y ago

Peter Thiel is also on the steering committee of the shadowy Bildeberg group.

MeghdeepRay 10y ago
Source please ?

vintermann 10y ago

Pah, if facebook is under federal supervision, it's probably ultimately because they weren't friendly enough to government. That Thiel is on its board isn't in itself especially damning of him. Far worse, then, that he founded surveillance industry contractor Palantir. Thiel "acknowledges" this, though. That puts in him in the same boat as Soros, who is also good at "acknowledging" the paradoxes of his position even as he instructs governments, in private, exactly which people they should send out to handle a particular situation. Intercept is billionaire-funded, too - and Greenwald has written at length about "what's wrong with the media" - most of which I agree with, by the way. We won't get away from the billionaires and their meddling. The best we can hope for is that they're stronger when they're right than when they're wrong. That posting people's private sex tapes is not OK, is one of the ways Thiel is right. It's bad in many ways he doesn't elucidate. For instance, in a world where your last shreds of privacy can be obliterated by Gawker or Buzzfeed the moment you catch public attention, there will be some winners, and some losers. Women, on the whole, will lose, because it seems fewer women are willing to sacrifice privacy for power. Gays will lose slightly, because they have more to lose from catching public attention (not so true in the US anymore, fortunately, but still very true in many countries). Who are the winners? First, those who can pay an army of publicity experts, and have had it for years to keep an iron grip on their public perception, so that all embarrassments and scandals (real and manufactured) can be managed most efficiently. And, who have very few ambitions or opinions not conductive to seeking power. In short career politicians. The second type is people who just have no sense of shame, whose egos are so big they can just shrug it all off. Reality TV stars, or something.