5 ms·

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

by socalnate1 10y ago

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.
        GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
        >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? Do the lawsuits have merit or not? If they do, the source of funding or motivation or secrecy is clearly irrelevant.
        zorpner 10y ago
        Is your assertion that lawsuits are decided fairly regardless of the amount of money each side is able to invest? the source of funding or motivation or secrecy is clearly irrelevant You should read about the history of champerty and maintenance in common law.
- 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.

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.
        GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
        >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? Do the lawsuits have merit or not? If they do, the source of funding or motivation or secrecy is clearly irrelevant.
        zorpner 10y ago
        Is your assertion that lawsuits are decided fairly regardless of the amount of money each side is able to invest? the source of funding or motivation or secrecy is clearly irrelevant You should read about the history of champerty and maintenance in common law.
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.