6 ms·

Gawker.com to end operations next week after nearly 14 years of operation

72 points by jeo1234 10y ago

socalnate1 10y ago
As much as I hate gawker.com, I hate the way they were destroyed even more.
- TillE 10y ago
  By being sued for invading someone's privacy? I don't like Peter Thiel, but he wasn't the judge or the jury.
  - loteck 10y ago
    We can't let distaste for Gawker in particular blind us to the underlying narrative here. I think Popehat[1] summed up the deeply concerning issues this Gawker mess has brought to the fore: For most of us the scary part of the story is that our legal system is generally receptive to people abusing it to suppress speech. Money helps do that, but it's not necessary to do it. A hand-to-mouth lunatic with a dishonest contingency lawyer can ruin you and suppress your speech nearly as easily as a billionaire. Will you prevail against a malicious and frivolous defamation suit? Perhaps sooner if you're lucky enough to be in a state with a good anti-SLAPP statute. [1] https://popehat.com/2016/08/18/gawker-money-speech-and-justice/ https://popehat.com/2016/08/18/gawker-money-speech-and-justi...
    - GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
      Since when is a legitimately selected jury, with no external influences, finding Gawker guilty "abusive suppression of speech" or "malicious and frivolous"? Bollea likely would have won the case easily even if he hadn't received outside funding; the violation was just that egregious. I have a hard time taking seriously the "underlying narrative" various self-interested news sources are trying to weave.
      - zorpner 10y ago
        Bollea's lawyer (paid for by Thiel, and who should be disbarred for his clear violation of basic legal ethical standards) made multiple trial decisions that punished Gawker at Bollea's expense. Besides, the specific case is a red herring -- Thiel simply got very lucky that one of the many lawsuits he was secretly funding against Gawker was so cut-and-dry. Had he not gotten that dropped in his lap, he would have continued funding other secret nuisance lawsuits until he was able to find something else with a substantial judgement (and then would have done what he did in this case -- announce that it was him in order to produce a chilling effect on other news organizations reporting negatively about his investments). You can't be simultaneously in favor of the legality of what Thiel did and against this: http://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/10/mother-jones-vandersloot-melaleuca-lawsuit http://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/10/mother-jones-vander...
        GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
        >that punished Gawker at Bollea's expense That's for Bollea himself to decide, not us. Frankly, I see no evidence presented that he had any objection to the choices his attorney made. > You can't be simultaneously in favor of the legality of what Thiel did and against this: http://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/10/mother-jones-vandersloot-melaleuca-lawsuit http://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/10/mother-jones-vander... [edited] I can and rather easily, at that. Why? Because I can distinguish between cases that clearly have merit and cases that clearly don't. This "underlying narrative" people are trying to build, as I said, is just an outright non-starter.
        zorpner 10y ago
        Thiel's intent was to bankrupt Gawker by secretly funding many cases such as the Mother Jones example. Again, he got lucky with the Bollea case (not only in that it was quite egregious, but that it provided an excellent framework to recruit unwitting members of the public to his defense by exploiting our cognitive tendency to break conflict into false dichotomies -- being anti-Gawker doesn't mean I'm pro-Thiel). Are you in favor of or against someone secretly funding multiple lawsuits in order to destroy a company producing negative press about their investment vehicles? That's the question that actually matters.
  - fweespeech 10y ago
    > By being sued for invading someone's privacy? The problem is businesses and politicians also argue they have a right to privacy. If Privacy > Free Speech, you end up with a situation where revealing abuses by such people becomes extremely risky and expensive. Just because Gawker and Nick Denton are pieces of shit doesn't make the precedent any less worrying.
  - moomin 10y ago
    The reason it's awful isn't because they got punished for doing something wrong. It's that they'd done that stuff and more before and got away with it. Because only someone with Thiel-style money could make it stick. So yeah, they were awful and yeah they deserved to be put out of business but _also_ they only went out of business because they annoyed the wrong guy. In a better world, Thiel's intervention wouldn't have made a difference, but it did.
- tobyg123 10y ago
  How? Through claiming to be against objectification and then refusing to remove Hulk Hogan's sex tape?
  - fullshark 10y ago
    By a lawsuit bankrolled by a billionaire (not the damaged party) out for blood
    - bitchypat 10y ago
      This is nothing new. It's probably been going on since the advent of the judicial system. Would this be A-OK if the lawyers had taken the case pro bono? Or would we be crying about how good lawyers should have to charge people equally? Seems to me that the billion dollar media conglomerates could have funded Gawker's lawyers to protect their ability to release people's sex tapes.
- TrevorJ 10y ago
  You might need to explain that a bit, from what I know it seemed like a very just outcome.
  - intopieces 10y ago
    The main objection I've seen (not speaking for the GP comment here, just in general) is the precedent that courts are now allowed to determine newsworthiness. That is, with enough money backing your cause, you can get information that people previously deemed newsworthy suppressed. I have no love for Gawker, but I'm on the fence about this assertion.
    - juandazapata 10y ago
      A private sex tape shouldn't be newsworthy. Same with sexual orientation of anybody. They were gossip trash privacy invaders. Acted like bullies and got what they deserved.
      - intopieces 10y ago
        >A private sex tape shouldn't be newsworthy What is often shouldn't be. But that's precisely the question. Who gets to determine what is newsworthy and what isn't? Can the government decide that independent footage of American soldiers committing crimes abroad is "not newsworthy" and suppress it, sue the organization, demand that it be pulled from the Internet? Why or why not?
        juandazapata 10y ago
        A jury composed by citizens decided that. I don't know you and I share a private sex tape of yours with my huge audience. We all agree that I should end up in jail, but somehow is "not that bad" because it was a company the one who did it? That's not a good example for the kids. Bullies should be punished wether they are a person or a company. Videos of soldiers committing crimes are proof of a felony. A video of Hulk Hogan having sex or Thiel being gay is private life. Soldiers are funded by our taxes. Apples and Oranges.
- bogomipz 10y ago
  How about the people they destroyed? Don't forget Gawker bullied a lot of people over those 14 years. They picked the wrong fight this time and lost. This is an eventuality for all bullies(picking the wrong fight that is.)
- spaceflunky 10y ago
  How about I film you and your parent having sex, then post it on a popular site without your knowledge of the video or permission, then refuse to take it down when you ask, and then I'll ask you how you feel about gawker getting destroyed.
minimaxir 10y ago
Official announcement: http://gawker.com/gawker-com-to-end-operations-next-week-1785455712 http://gawker.com/gawker-com-to-end-operations-next-week-178... (Gawker.com is a banned domain so a third-party domain is necessary for submission. Although I guess that doesn't matter anymore). Note that this does not affect other sites in the Gawker network (Gizmodo, Jalopnik, etc.)
ilostmykeys 10y ago
Censored?
toomuchtodo 10y ago
Before anyone asks, ArchiveTeam is on this already.
- reustle 10y ago
  Doesn't archive.org already have everything?
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Not necessarily.
grabcocque 10y ago
The thing I don't understand is how that jury arrived at its stratospheric damages figure. Was it designed by the jury to be high enough to put gawker out of business? I mean. I have no sympathy for Gawker, and don't think there are any interesting free speech principles at stake here, I just don't understand it.
- phonon 10y ago
  Florida judge and jury, Florida celebrity plaintiff, NY defendant, A.J. Daulerio acting, umm, very unsympathetically? I think that gets you part way there...
- GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
  It's much less surprising when you review the highlight of the testimony: https://youtu.be/Ub80kHh5WDI?t=73 https://youtu.be/Ub80kHh5WDI?t=73 That was said under oath in front of a judge and jury. Makes it rather hard to take people ranting about "chilling effect on the press" seriously, doesn't it?
  - berberous 10y ago
    Minor nitpick: I think he said that in a deposition, not in front of the judge and jury, although I think the tape was played in court for them.
    - GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
      My mistake; thank you for the correction.
  - travmatt 10y ago
    I wish I could see the exact moment Denton realized his glibness would help cause the destruction of the business he created.
- ryanswapp 10y ago
  It definitely could be the case that the jurors came up with the numbers they did in order to put Gawker out of business. However, a jury can't just make a random number up. The awarded amount has to be supported by evidence or an appeals court will strike it down as unconstitutional. I've been involved in a number of trials and my experience leads me to believe that a lot of what is behind a damages award has to do with the show put on by the plaintiffs attorney. If the plaintiffs attorney can anchor high and get experts to support the damages they are asking for anything can happen. This is perhaps one of the main downsides/upsides to a trial by jury. Depending on which side you are on this is a good or very bad thing.
fixxer 10y ago
On the upside, some nice office space in Manhattan coming on the market.
- mixedCase 10y ago
  On the upside, Gakwer.com is shutting down.
jmulvi 10y ago
Gawker was an entertaining read and loved by many. Doesn't this 10 year long vendetta against a popular news website make Peter Thiel look like an out-of-touch evil Bond villain. I'm not saying he is one, but to use a Trumpism, many people are saying he is.
- kalsk 10y ago
  Peter Thiel and Hulk Hogan aren't the only people whose privacy has been violated by Gawker, they're just the first ones to bite back. Thiel is a hero in my book.
  - e40 10y ago
    I'll agree, but what gives me pause to call him a hero: he supports Trump. So, like a broken clock being right twice a day, I agree Thiel was right to sue and shut down Gawker, but I don't hold him in any special esteem.
    - LyndsySimon 10y ago
      > I'll agree, but what gives me pause to call him a hero: he supports Trump. Without commenting on Trump in particular - you do realize that around half the country support him, right? It's hardly an extreme position.
      - evanelias 10y ago
        "Around half the country" is an exaggeration. Even with a two-party system, in modern history no candidate has achieved the outright support of anything approaching half of the US population. Consider that only a portion of the population is eligible and registered to vote, and even among them voter turnout is relatively low in this country. And then there's always a segment of undecided voters who just make a choice on election day, without supporting either candidate prior to that. In this specific case, add to the math that Trump is doing poorly in recent polls, and is disliked by an unprecedented percentage of his own party. Math aside, given the sheer number of disturbing, extreme things Trump has advocated over the past couple years... if Thiel supports Trump enough to give an endorsement at the GOP convention, this certainly seems to condone his behavior, which in my mind is a pretty extreme position.
sctb 10y ago
Recent discussion about the bankruptcy and sale: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11877814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11877814
gmarx 10y ago
The article praises Gawker for often "punching up". For the youngens this "don't punch down" rule that someone recently invented is a load of hooey. People who control the mainstream media define up and down and tell you it is beyond the pale to make fun of any aspect of those defined as down. Honestly as an older gentleman (hehe) it's shocking how badly we have clamped down on free speech. When I was young we would wonder how much wilder can the next generation of kids get? How far will the bounds of free expression be expanded. The answer turned out to be "not at all". These things go in cycles and the current round of private sector driven censorship (yes, please explain to me how the private sector can't censor) is probably a reaction to the free wheeling days from the late 1950s to about the late 1980s.

72 points by jeo1234 10y ago

socalnate1 10y ago

As much as I hate gawker.com, I hate the way they were destroyed even more.

TillE 10y ago
By being sued for invading someone's privacy? I don't like Peter Thiel, but he wasn't the judge or the jury.
- loteck 10y ago
  We can't let distaste for Gawker in particular blind us to the underlying narrative here. I think Popehat[1] summed up the deeply concerning issues this Gawker mess has brought to the fore: For most of us the scary part of the story is that our legal system is generally receptive to people abusing it to suppress speech. Money helps do that, but it's not necessary to do it. A hand-to-mouth lunatic with a dishonest contingency lawyer can ruin you and suppress your speech nearly as easily as a billionaire. Will you prevail against a malicious and frivolous defamation suit? Perhaps sooner if you're lucky enough to be in a state with a good anti-SLAPP statute. [1] https://popehat.com/2016/08/18/gawker-money-speech-and-justice/ https://popehat.com/2016/08/18/gawker-money-speech-and-justi...
  - GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
    Since when is a legitimately selected jury, with no external influences, finding Gawker guilty "abusive suppression of speech" or "malicious and frivolous"? Bollea likely would have won the case easily even if he hadn't received outside funding; the violation was just that egregious. I have a hard time taking seriously the "underlying narrative" various self-interested news sources are trying to weave.
    - zorpner 10y ago
      Bollea's lawyer (paid for by Thiel, and who should be disbarred for his clear violation of basic legal ethical standards) made multiple trial decisions that punished Gawker at Bollea's expense. Besides, the specific case is a red herring -- Thiel simply got very lucky that one of the many lawsuits he was secretly funding against Gawker was so cut-and-dry. Had he not gotten that dropped in his lap, he would have continued funding other secret nuisance lawsuits until he was able to find something else with a substantial judgement (and then would have done what he did in this case -- announce that it was him in order to produce a chilling effect on other news organizations reporting negatively about his investments). You can't be simultaneously in favor of the legality of what Thiel did and against this: http://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/10/mother-jones-vandersloot-melaleuca-lawsuit http://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/10/mother-jones-vander...
      - GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
        >that punished Gawker at Bollea's expense That's for Bollea himself to decide, not us. Frankly, I see no evidence presented that he had any objection to the choices his attorney made. > You can't be simultaneously in favor of the legality of what Thiel did and against this: http://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/10/mother-jones-vandersloot-melaleuca-lawsuit http://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/10/mother-jones-vander... [edited] I can and rather easily, at that. Why? Because I can distinguish between cases that clearly have merit and cases that clearly don't. This "underlying narrative" people are trying to build, as I said, is just an outright non-starter.
        zorpner 10y ago
        Thiel's intent was to bankrupt Gawker by secretly funding many cases such as the Mother Jones example. Again, he got lucky with the Bollea case (not only in that it was quite egregious, but that it provided an excellent framework to recruit unwitting members of the public to his defense by exploiting our cognitive tendency to break conflict into false dichotomies -- being anti-Gawker doesn't mean I'm pro-Thiel). Are you in favor of or against someone secretly funding multiple lawsuits in order to destroy a company producing negative press about their investment vehicles? That's the question that actually matters.
- fweespeech 10y ago
  > By being sued for invading someone's privacy? The problem is businesses and politicians also argue they have a right to privacy. If Privacy > Free Speech, you end up with a situation where revealing abuses by such people becomes extremely risky and expensive. Just because Gawker and Nick Denton are pieces of shit doesn't make the precedent any less worrying.
- moomin 10y ago
  The reason it's awful isn't because they got punished for doing something wrong. It's that they'd done that stuff and more before and got away with it. Because only someone with Thiel-style money could make it stick. So yeah, they were awful and yeah they deserved to be put out of business but _also_ they only went out of business because they annoyed the wrong guy. In a better world, Thiel's intervention wouldn't have made a difference, but it did.
tobyg123 10y ago
How? Through claiming to be against objectification and then refusing to remove Hulk Hogan's sex tape?
- fullshark 10y ago
  By a lawsuit bankrolled by a billionaire (not the damaged party) out for blood
  - bitchypat 10y ago
    This is nothing new. It's probably been going on since the advent of the judicial system. Would this be A-OK if the lawyers had taken the case pro bono? Or would we be crying about how good lawyers should have to charge people equally? Seems to me that the billion dollar media conglomerates could have funded Gawker's lawyers to protect their ability to release people's sex tapes.
TrevorJ 10y ago
You might need to explain that a bit, from what I know it seemed like a very just outcome.
- intopieces 10y ago
  The main objection I've seen (not speaking for the GP comment here, just in general) is the precedent that courts are now allowed to determine newsworthiness. That is, with enough money backing your cause, you can get information that people previously deemed newsworthy suppressed. I have no love for Gawker, but I'm on the fence about this assertion.
  - juandazapata 10y ago
    A private sex tape shouldn't be newsworthy. Same with sexual orientation of anybody. They were gossip trash privacy invaders. Acted like bullies and got what they deserved.
    - intopieces 10y ago
      >A private sex tape shouldn't be newsworthy What is often shouldn't be. But that's precisely the question. Who gets to determine what is newsworthy and what isn't? Can the government decide that independent footage of American soldiers committing crimes abroad is "not newsworthy" and suppress it, sue the organization, demand that it be pulled from the Internet? Why or why not?
      - juandazapata 10y ago
        A jury composed by citizens decided that. I don't know you and I share a private sex tape of yours with my huge audience. We all agree that I should end up in jail, but somehow is "not that bad" because it was a company the one who did it? That's not a good example for the kids. Bullies should be punished wether they are a person or a company. Videos of soldiers committing crimes are proof of a felony. A video of Hulk Hogan having sex or Thiel being gay is private life. Soldiers are funded by our taxes. Apples and Oranges.
bogomipz 10y ago
How about the people they destroyed? Don't forget Gawker bullied a lot of people over those 14 years. They picked the wrong fight this time and lost. This is an eventuality for all bullies(picking the wrong fight that is.)
spaceflunky 10y ago
How about I film you and your parent having sex, then post it on a popular site without your knowledge of the video or permission, then refuse to take it down when you ask, and then I'll ask you how you feel about gawker getting destroyed.

minimaxir 10y ago

Official announcement: http://gawker.com/gawker-com-to-end-operations-next-week-1785455712 http://gawker.com/gawker-com-to-end-operations-next-week-178... (Gawker.com is a banned domain so a third-party domain is necessary for submission. Although I guess that doesn't matter anymore). Note that this does not affect other sites in the Gawker network (Gizmodo, Jalopnik, etc.)

ilostmykeys 10y ago

Censored?

toomuchtodo 10y ago

Before anyone asks, ArchiveTeam is on this already.

reustle 10y ago
Doesn't archive.org already have everything?
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Not necessarily.

grabcocque 10y ago

The thing I don't understand is how that jury arrived at its stratospheric damages figure. Was it designed by the jury to be high enough to put gawker out of business? I mean. I have no sympathy for Gawker, and don't think there are any interesting free speech principles at stake here, I just don't understand it.

phonon 10y ago
Florida judge and jury, Florida celebrity plaintiff, NY defendant, A.J. Daulerio acting, umm, very unsympathetically? I think that gets you part way there...
GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
It's much less surprising when you review the highlight of the testimony: https://youtu.be/Ub80kHh5WDI?t=73 https://youtu.be/Ub80kHh5WDI?t=73 That was said under oath in front of a judge and jury. Makes it rather hard to take people ranting about "chilling effect on the press" seriously, doesn't it?
- berberous 10y ago
  Minor nitpick: I think he said that in a deposition, not in front of the judge and jury, although I think the tape was played in court for them.
  - GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
    My mistake; thank you for the correction.
- travmatt 10y ago
  I wish I could see the exact moment Denton realized his glibness would help cause the destruction of the business he created.
ryanswapp 10y ago
It definitely could be the case that the jurors came up with the numbers they did in order to put Gawker out of business. However, a jury can't just make a random number up. The awarded amount has to be supported by evidence or an appeals court will strike it down as unconstitutional. I've been involved in a number of trials and my experience leads me to believe that a lot of what is behind a damages award has to do with the show put on by the plaintiffs attorney. If the plaintiffs attorney can anchor high and get experts to support the damages they are asking for anything can happen. This is perhaps one of the main downsides/upsides to a trial by jury. Depending on which side you are on this is a good or very bad thing.

fixxer 10y ago

On the upside, some nice office space in Manhattan coming on the market.

mixedCase 10y ago
On the upside, Gakwer.com is shutting down.

jmulvi 10y ago

Gawker was an entertaining read and loved by many. Doesn't this 10 year long vendetta against a popular news website make Peter Thiel look like an out-of-touch evil Bond villain. I'm not saying he is one, but to use a Trumpism, many people are saying he is.

kalsk 10y ago
Peter Thiel and Hulk Hogan aren't the only people whose privacy has been violated by Gawker, they're just the first ones to bite back. Thiel is a hero in my book.
- e40 10y ago
  I'll agree, but what gives me pause to call him a hero: he supports Trump. So, like a broken clock being right twice a day, I agree Thiel was right to sue and shut down Gawker, but I don't hold him in any special esteem.
  - LyndsySimon 10y ago
    > I'll agree, but what gives me pause to call him a hero: he supports Trump. Without commenting on Trump in particular - you do realize that around half the country support him, right? It's hardly an extreme position.
    - evanelias 10y ago
      "Around half the country" is an exaggeration. Even with a two-party system, in modern history no candidate has achieved the outright support of anything approaching half of the US population. Consider that only a portion of the population is eligible and registered to vote, and even among them voter turnout is relatively low in this country. And then there's always a segment of undecided voters who just make a choice on election day, without supporting either candidate prior to that. In this specific case, add to the math that Trump is doing poorly in recent polls, and is disliked by an unprecedented percentage of his own party. Math aside, given the sheer number of disturbing, extreme things Trump has advocated over the past couple years... if Thiel supports Trump enough to give an endorsement at the GOP convention, this certainly seems to condone his behavior, which in my mind is a pretty extreme position.

sctb 10y ago

Recent discussion about the bankruptcy and sale: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11877814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11877814

gmarx 10y ago

The article praises Gawker for often "punching up". For the youngens this "don't punch down" rule that someone recently invented is a load of hooey. People who control the mainstream media define up and down and tell you it is beyond the pale to make fun of any aspect of those defined as down. Honestly as an older gentleman (hehe) it's shocking how badly we have clamped down on free speech. When I was young we would wonder how much wilder can the next generation of kids get? How far will the bounds of free expression be expanded. The answer turned out to be "not at all". These things go in cycles and the current round of private sector driven censorship (yes, please explain to me how the private sector can't censor) is probably a reaction to the free wheeling days from the late 1950s to about the late 1980s.