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Peter Thiel submits bid for Gawker
- lurr 9y agoWell, I was on his side until now.
- draw_down 9y agoUgh.
- debt 9y agoThiel is a stain on SV. He's a billionaire Trump supporter that knowingly bankrupted a press outlet by funding a known racist(Hulk Hogan, as was revealed in the very case he funded) because he didn't like what they reported about him. He obviously didn't mind what Hulk Hogan said about African Americans though! Google it lest you forget. Not to mention he somehow has finagled his way into working as a CEO-by-proxy for Palantir and Facebook simultaneously. One is a defense-contract funded software thinktank, and another is the largest media organization on Earth. I don't think his intentions are good at all.
- emodendroket 9y agoHe couldn't have been more explicit about his goal being totally destroying Gawker.
- nsxwolf 9y agoDid Thiel leak the sex tape to Gawker in the first place? Did he force them to publish it? Gawker did something wrong and got sued. Does it matter who funded the lawsuit?
- debt 9y agoThiel can purport to be a VC for the largest media company on Earth while simultaneously be comfortable knowingly censoring and shutting down other media companies reporting on things he dislikes. Is this how he wants Facebook to operate?
- emodendroket 9y agoIsn't it? That's the end game of the fake news hysteria.
- tribune 9y agoThiel may not be a saint, but it's hard to have any sympathy for Gawker after the Hulk Hogan scandal and their myriad other nefarious behaviors...
- eropple 9y agoThe idea that it's about "sympathy", rather than "what makes a good and just society", is misguided. Billionaires being able to destroy the media, acquire its corpse, and stuff it in the memory hole is not a recipe for a good and just society.
- sheepmullet 9y ago> Billionaires being able to destroy the media We should all have the power to fight back against a corrupt privacy invading media. Unfortunately, at the moment it seems only billionaires can fight back.
- eropple 9y agoThose poor, poor benighted billionaires. But after perusing your comment history, why does it seem so very likely that you'd have a different tune if it wasn't a kleptocratic oligarch under consideration?
- sheepmullet 9y ago> Those poor, poor benighted billionaires. Why do you think it is ok to dehumanize the wealthy? They are entitled to the same basic human dignity and respect as everyone else. > But after perusing your comment history, why does it seem so very likely that you'd have a different tune if it wasn't a kleptocratic oligarch under consideration? Why are you so quick to categorize and attack people?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
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- philsnow 9y agoyou're not going to mention that he advocated for people to skip college, instead jumping right to startups? there's a conflict of interest here where the billionaire tells the kids what they want to hear (join a startup, become rich) and he benefits (from their cheap, tireless labor).
- Jhsto 9y agoI agree it is odd given that how highly academically educated he himself is. However, Thiel Fellowship (tell kids to skip college) doesn't benefit Thiel except for publicity in his name: the $100K is a grant. Thiel or the organization does not own any stake in the companies they fund.
- untog 9y agoI suspect these comments will descend into a pit of chaos within a few minutes as everyone talks past each other... but the principle of this disturbs me. Basically, a billionaire secretly funded a lawsuit against a media organisation he doesn't like, and now that's it has been successful, he wants to scoop up the remains of it and (presumably!) delete it. The free speech implications of that are a little unnerving. Now, I know the immediate retort to that is "Gawker was garbage", and indeed there's a fair case to made that Gawker wouldn't have been sued if they hadn't opened themselves up to it by doing publishing Hulk Hogan's sex tape. But it isn't just Gawker - Mother Jones was sued by a billionaire for reporting true fact, simply because he didn't like the reporting. He didn't even need to win, he just needed to bankrupt them through legal costs, and he nearly succeeded: http://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/10/mother-jones-vandersloot-melaleuca-lawsuit/ http://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/10/mother-jones-vander... (Thiel followed this same idea by narrowing the suit in such a way that Gawker's insurance would not be able to pay out) Personally, I'm concerned that the individual factors of this case (i.e. Gawker being Gawker) will overshadow the principle at stake, which feels a lot more important than a gossip site.
- olfactory 9y agoAre you equally concerned with other billionaires owning major news orgs (Bezos, Slim, etc.)?
- emodendroket 9y agoSurely "owning a major news organization" and "shutting down a major news organization because you don't like what they published about you" are not exactly the same.
- olfactory 9y agoOK then I'll rephrase it to using one's massive wealth to significantly control the fate of a news organization
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- chasing 9y agoWhat Peter Thiel did to Gawker is despicable and will no doubt become a pattern for aggrieved billionaires.
- rufus_2 9y agoWhat Bezos did to WaPo is despicable and became a pattern for aggrieved billionaires.
- chasing 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
- gkoberger 9y agoSerious question: how so? I was really worried when I heard he had bought WaPo, however it seems like he hasn't touched the editorial side at all. I haven't seen a change. However, the business and tech sides have improved, which is good news.
- Pilfer 9y agoHe has touched the editorial side. Bezos personally ordered the Washington Post to cover as many stories as possible on Trump and the Post dedicated 20 full time editors to him at his direction. I don't think Bezos has told reporters to change the words write, but he's definitely directed what reporters should write about. By dedicating so many resources to Trump and the gossip surrounding him, it leaves less resources to cover other, actually important issues. It's made a huge change in the direction of the paper. There's much more about Trump now and less on other important topics. I'm surprised you didn't notice it.
- messick 9y ago> I'm surprised you didn't notice it. Sorry, they were probably too busy reading about The Pentagon Papers, The Watergate Burglary, Iran/Contra, Monica Lewinsky, WMDs, etc. to notice that The Post had taken a new interest in reporting on The Whitehouse.
- jaydestro 9y agoburning cash to destroy parts of the internet you don't like seems bad. what's next?
- emodendroket 9y agoIsn't Peter Thiel in with the "neoreaction" guys who want to bring back feudalism, more or less?
- make3 9y agoI wonder if he's only buying them for shits and giggles, to shit on their corpse, so to speak
- thecolorblue 9y agoA perfectly orchestrated hostile take over.
- ancorevard 9y agoThat Gawker is dead should be celebrated. To call what they did journalism is an insult to journalism.
- gkoberger 9y agoSomething really scary that's silently happening is activists taking over well-known/"famous" publications and changing the narrative without changing the name: - WaPo was bought by Bezos - Local news stations (Tribune) bought by Sinclair - WSJ was bought by Murdoch - Newsweek bought by IAC - GigaOM was sold off and has new writers - Gawker now potentially being owned by a guy with a grudge We trust many of these news organizations because they've been around for years or decades or even centuries. And many times, we don't realize that their priorities have silently shifted.
- sytelus 9y agoPeople are realising media is dirt cheap for the power it exerts. For a fraction of your net worth, you can buy big stack or even entire Fox News or Breitbart or Times and change it the way you want. You can not only transmit your ideology on large portion of the population but even propel your commercial agenda. I think sooner or later people will realize that instead of spending big marketing $$, buying up media outright might be more cost effective.
- knownothing 9y agoIt's a concerning trend. Another strange example: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-la-weekly-20171129-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-la-weekly-20171129-sto...
- shortformblog 9y agoLet's be clear, here: WaPo is not in the same category as most of your other examples. It just has a different owner, and the prior owner (the Graham family), while not as rich as Bezos, was still plenty rich. Don Graham famously tried to invest in Facebook as early as 2005: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2012/02/02/facebook-and-don-graham-have-been-very-good-to-each-other/#3a2e789328ba https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2012/02/02/facebo... Bezos, while involved, has not changed the basic tenor of its journalism beyond maybe souping up some of its technology. Also, WaPo publishes pieces critical of Amazon and its subsidiaries all the time: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/12/07/amazon-wants-a-key-to-your-house-i-did-it-i-regretted-it/?utm_term=.da8c5883ff1d https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/12/07... https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/is-amazon-getting-too-big/2017/07/28/ff38b9ca-722e-11e7-9eac-d56bd5568db8_story.html?utm_term=.062539b02c1a https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/is-amazon-getting-to... https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/whole-foods-places-new-limits-on-suppliers-upsetting-some-small-vendors/2018/01/05/7f58b466-f0a1-11e7-b390-a36dc3fa2842_story.html?utm_term=.e99a4ce3315d https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/whole-foods-... (Also, but on a different note, GigaOM was sold off because it had previously shut down and laid off all its writers.)
- thrillgore 9y agoThe ultimate fuck you, above all fuck yous. I have zero sympathy for Gawker but I must admit this is troubling. Poetic, but troubling.
- r00fus 9y agoIt's poetic if you think the language of hostile takeovers are poetry.
- azzhohle 9y agoBut Thiel being homosexual means he's a member of a protected class. How can we judge him now?
- chasing 9y agoThat's not what being a "member of a protected class" means, silly.
- heifetz 9y agojust because someone put in a bid, it doesn't mean that the owner of the assets have to sell to the highest bid. In this case, why does the owner have to sell to Thiel just because he has the highest bid?
- sigstoat 9y agogawker's remaining assets are being auctioned off by a bankruptcy administrator. if you're selling your own property because you want to, you can set whatever terms you want, but when you go into bankruptcy because you can't pay your debts (the judgement against you, in this case), you're no longer in full control of what happens. that said, it looks like the bankruptcy administrator is trying to block thiel's purchase, and maybe there's some grounds for that, unrelated to the interests of the previous owners.
- aseroiu89798 9y agoPlease weep for the privacy of a billionaire whose analytics firm is monitoring your lives for their gain. I'm sure he's losing sleep over his efforts that impacts our free agency; while being up ins the ass of others that cross him. Won't someone think of these poor billionaires and the stress they put on themselves without anyone asking! JFC. What a transparent blowhard. When does the right-wing authoritarian crowd accept that they're behaving like childish snowflakes as well? "It's not freedom if a rich person can't get away with whatever they want!" Welcome to the club, Pete. You didn't invent any net new human knowledge others couldn't with effectively unlimited $$ and no concern over where the next meal is coming from. That Thiel was so convinced "Trump gets it right at the high-level" when it's obvious the guy just says what people want to hear is proof Thiel is an idiot who was simply born in the right time and place.
- mrgordon 9y agoDon't forget this when you're contacted to work at a Thiel portfolio company. I always say "No" and provide an explanation for why I would never work at a company affiliated with him. Between Gawker and Palantir, he is disgusting.
- dingdongding 9y agoBad ass Move. Thug life !