Comment by bronz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bronz | Hacker News Reader

gawker put tesla on a death watch. they exploited their struggle and heartbreak, their endeavour to make the world a better place, for clicks. they hosted a video of hulk hogan having sex on their website despite him not wanting them to. maybe people dont realize just how fucked up that is because people tend to dehumanize celebrities. these are not journalists. these people are fucking scum. good riddance. the fact that a billionaire funded hogans case doesnt bother me at all. it reminds me more of bill gates funding malaria research than anything. another parasite wiped out for the betterment of humanity.

all the people saying this is creepy because its a billionaire shutting down journalism -- dont make me laugh. these werent journalists. and they sealed their own doom by doing things that were not only mean and cruel but super illegal. they did this to themselves. hogan was going to win that case no matter what.

i would have donated to his case given the opportunity.

Not just hosted the video but then refused to take it down when a judge ordered them to

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Bronz, I assume you are serious. You could claim that every time the NY Times writes an article about a tragedy, they are taking advantage of it. Showing someone having sex who doesn't want that to be public is awful. But trying to get clicks (and get money from advertisers who pay per click) is little different than newspapers, in my opinion. It's a higher goal to try to inform, but in the end you are both selling advertising (and the subscription).

i mean, there is indeed a trend in the news industry today to exploit tragedies for ad money. im not ok with that either. but obviously gawker took exploitation to an entirely other level which is the source of my outrage.

Is Gawker the root of the problem, or a symptom of a larger one? Perhaps the problem is that people will ingest and internalize information from anywhere, without putting it through any sort of critical-thinking funnel. They let themselves become so convinced of something they read on gawker, that they actually try to convince other people it's true.

To put it another way: sure, good riddance to gawker. But what's to stop its successor? You may not like gawker, and your reasons may be valid, rational, or even altruistic. But you cannot dictate the will of its audience. What gives anyone, government or otherwise, the right to stop information at its source?

If you want to lessen the power of information, regardless of how "right" you think it is, the best way to invest your time or money is into teaching people how to think critically, and also why to think critically. Unfortunately it's quite difficult to teach on that subject when you're silencing an opinion from one side of your mouth, and preaching critical thinking from the other.

I think you can silence the opinion of fuckwits like Gawker without losing the ability to teach critical thinking.

In fact, the silence might be better for studying.

The central tenet of critical thinking is to question everything. Why bother questioning anything, if you just saw your teacher shut down a source of information without giving you the opportunity to ask your own questions about its motives?

Gawker is a "source of information" like chlamydia is to the common cold.

Nothing is lost in the destruction of a source of bile about individuals and their private lives, it was zero-information content in the first place. To posit Gawker as a "worthwhile source" indicates a lack of critical thinking to begin with.

Or, I reject one of your primary premises and think you're drawing a connection to "information being stifled" that is tenuous at best given the nature of the information and the behavior of Gawker as an organization. I also disagree with the implied slippery slope on the grounds that the content being "stifled" was bile about individuals in their personal lives and devoid of artistic, journalistic, or any other praise or protection.

tldr: Fuck Gawker.

"What gives anyone, government or otherwise, the right to stop information at its source?"

The overwhelming majority of the electorate who believe that information is powerful and that people should be held responsible for misusing it in certain limited situations.

I don't think anyone is silencing Gawker. Nobody is shutting it down. They did something illegal, so they must pay for it.

The consequence of the lawsuit is a fine. Gawker shutting down may be a consequence of the fine, but it is not the lawsuit's objective.

> What gives anyone, government or otherwise, the right to stop information at its source?

Defamatory falsehoods can sometimes be stopped by the government at its source.

Protecting individual privacy is an increasingly serious issue in the age of mass communication and smartphones.

Finally, the State routinely classifies information deemed sensitive to national security and foreign relations.

(ps upvoted for presenting such a clear and reasonable argument for me to disagree with)

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