Peter Thiel submits bid for Gawker
reuters.com
reuters.com
- 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
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/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...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/is-amazon-getting-to...
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.)
I'm 100% pro-Bezos buying WaPo, especially since it seems he hasn't touched the editorial side of things. BUT it has been used to discredit legitimate WaPo journalism by Trump ("Amazon's Washington Post" / "Bezos Washington Post" / etc)
I included GigaOM because it's probably closest to Gawker (relatively small blog, shut down due to external forces, and brought back with a new name).
I didn't mean to imply all of these were nefarious changes. Rather, they're examples of people hijacking well-trusted (or well-known) brand names, which in the world of blogs/twitter/rumors are hard to come by.
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.
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.
This wasn't just 'a new interest in reporting on The Whitehouse'.
That being said, one bad thing about Bezos owning WaPo is that Trump can dismiss it as "Bezo's / Amazon's WaPo".
> it seems like he hasn't touched the editorial side at all
which on the surface looks true, but under the surface isn't. Bezos has been directing editorial coverage behind the scenes at WaPo. I belive this is what rufus_2 is referring to as 'despicable'. That you said you haven't noticed it makes it more worrying.
While additional Trump coverage may have happened without Bezos interfering, and I agree this would happen naturally, the issue here is that the changes happened at the request of Bezos. Bezos did interfere on the editorial side and did direct the paper to cover more of certain stories and less of others.
Regarding the NYT, its articles regarding Trump are noticeably more tame and fewer in number.
Evidence?
Trumps rise was a huge in this country. A paper is going to increase its coverage of a growing story (of that importance as a potential president). Can you provide some more of Bezos singling out Trump for more coverage than a paper would have?
To call what they did journalism is an insult to journalism.
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-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.
You mean "reporting"?
Don't get me wrong, in an ideal world all reporting would be independent, but I'm not sure how that model would be achieved.
I also don't see why how a single billionaire funding a lawsuit is that different than thousands of us funding a lawsuit by the EFF. If money = speech than those are both protected by the 1st amendment.
There is a difference. It's a microcosm of the difference between a god-king and an elected president.
I am also not speaking about a moral difference, I am speaking about a legal difference. How can you allow someone to spend $X on something with the logic that money equals speech but not allow someone to spend $X multiplied by a million on the same thing?
Citizens United is also terrible.
Citizens United itself was a 5-4 decision, so it's fair to say that CU was also a far-from-clear result.
The Citizens United decision rests on Corporate Personhood. Corporate Personhood was established in a case testing the limits of the 14th amendment.
Anyways, my only point was that Citizens United was not exactly a clear or obvious application of the First Amendment, and offering up the integral role of cases involving the Fourteenth Amendment as examples.
I guess merely mentioning that the decision was 5-4 would've been enough and prevented this now rather long thread.
edit: to preempt some questions- my guess is that by raising the marginal tax rate, especially for people who earn alot, we could address this problem to some degree.
ANYONE disagreeing with negative press about themselves will do everything in their power to do so. From politicians to people accessing reputation management services [1], in general, people with shut down negative opinion against them. So, the "logical" fallacy is in attributing wealth to reputation management, when everyone, from the very poor to the very rich, and otherwise powerful behave the exact same way.
Disallowing people from becoming billionaires by using punitive taxation is NOT logic.
On the contrary, of you requested billionaires to NOT cause harm by using their disproportionate wealth, that'd be a sound argument. For instance, Gawker's takeover by Thiel seems to border on the illegal.
What you are suggesting is an ultra high tax rate on the wealthy and that's proven over and over to not work out. Italy, France and Spain for instance, have a pivoted to a socialistic society that punishingly taxes the rich to the point of driving the ambitious and successful out of the country. While these countries produced some of the most iconic companies and individuals in the early 1900s, it's no coincidence that a Google, Microsoft, etc hasn't emerged from there.
The world's richest man (adjusted for inflation), Bill Gates has donated over $18B in philanthropy. His management of money that can potentially help the needy has been far superior to any elected political figure or government organisation. Don't enable politicians with power over (your) tax money, their only aim is to get reelected - not to serve society. Enables another Bill Gates it Zuckerberg, who've both pledged 99% of their wealth to charity. Heck, enable a Peter Theil to fund the next Facebook and create billions in wealth, jobs and taxes.
Then there's the whole concept of community. The Mormon church, for instance, raises more in charity than the net worth of many billionaires. If you truly want to help the poor, enable them to help themselves. Or, collectively raise enough for charity, like the Mormon church. Taxing the fuck out of people, and enabling a lobbied-to-death politician to spend the said tax on any whimsical thing has NEVER worked out in history.
If you want to start dragging historical examples into the discussion, the Hoover years pretty well discredited the idea that voluntarism and charity were sufficient means to deal with privation.
Thiel was more concerned about eliminating Gawker. It really reveals what he values as a person: himself.
Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley VC, financially supported a man, Hulk Hogan, that uttered this:
“I mean, I’d rather if she was going to f-ck some n-gger, I’d rather have her marry an 8-foot-tall n-gger worth a hundred million dollars! Like a basketball player!
https://www.foxsports.com/buzzer/story/hulk-hogan-fired-wwe-...
You'll note that Gawker lost their case, and Mother Jones won.
The general concern is that money provides one the ability to silence other people's speech.
If Thiel had did this against a smaller site that gave up without having its day in court that would be a different matter.
>> 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.
Thiel isn't on trial in this thread, but our justice system perhaps is.
I mean the free speech of anyone who doesn't have $N million needed to fend off a civil suit. If cases like this and the MJ one become common-place, there's a very real risk of chilling effect.
Incidentally, I think it's probably possible to allow Thiel the ability to sue Gawker into the ground without also having a system where genuinely legal free speech is reserved for people who can afford massive financial risk. So there's absolutely no reason for you to disagree with me just because you think Thiel in on the right side of the Gawker issue...
I'm confused.
>>>>>> 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.
We are discussing principles and problems that are larger than just these two cases. That's the entire thesis of the comment that started this thread.
It's fairly obvious that (b) is concerning, and also fairly obvious that it takes an actual suit to put a price tag on this problem. That's why the MJ case was presented.
But all of this is obvious and explained in the comments above, so this is getting very pedantic, and I don't see a) what point you're trying to make, or b) how that point is at all relevant to the overall thesis of the root comment.
Let's not kid ourselves - Thiel did not fund this lawsuit because he was deeply concerned about the fate of Hulk Hogan. He did it because of the coverage he'd received from Valleywag, which, let's be clear, included outing him! I'm not saying he's wrong to be aggrieved. But the idea that, if you have enough money, you can shut down whatever media organisation you want... that concerns me.
> They filed the suit in Bonneville County, Idaho, and asked for damages of up to $74,999—exactly $1 under the amount at which the lawsuit could have been removed to federal court. That ensured the case would be decided by jurors from the community where his company is the biggest employer and the sponsor of everything from the minor league ballpark to the Fourth of July fireworks.
The court system is not immune to problems.
> Since then, Mother Jones and our insurance company have had to spend at least $2.5 million defending ourselves. That’s money we can’t get back, since Idaho doesn’t have an anti-SLAPP statute that might open the door for recovering attorney’s fees in a case like this.
VanderSloot did not need to win against Mother Jones, he just needed to bankrupt them. And he nearly did. That this particular attempt failed does not mean the principle is not a dangerous one. In many ways the court decision is secondary to the enormous costs of defending yourself legally.
Also, if they only wanted 75k in damages why didn't MJ agree to pay that and save themselves 2.5 million?
Presumably because that's like waving a "free $75k available here" flag to anyone else who feels like suing them next week, and the week after that?
Our civil justice system needs to be cheaper and more accessible. It shouldn't be possible to wage economic war on a company or individual via the judiciary.
But designing a justice system around "maybe you'll find a charitable person willing to help" seems like a bad idea.
Pointing out problems with the current system is not a logical fallacy, and having a working solution in-hand is not a pre-requisite to observing the existence of problems.
Also, accusing me of using the Nirvana fallacy while also accusing me of not providing an alternative policy is literally a contradiction...
Why cite an exception yet no typical examples while making your case?
Being able to pick the venue of your grievance means a lot.
I agree with what I think you're saying, that we should be careful about allowing someone to sue someone out of business simply out of spite; however, I think there's something to be said for someone with deeper pockets funding a legitimate suit. It might be comparable to things that the EFF funds, or that the ACLU takes on -- they have deeper pockets, and can take the financial hit that someone with a legitimate claim may not be able to take.
Imagine if Gawker published the same thing of some average middle-class person. They can't afford a high-priced lawyer, so likely Gawker gets away with something that, if it went to court, they would lose. In this case, the bully ran into someone who actually could fight back. As far as I know, Thiel didn't fund endless lawsuits just hoping to run them out of money. He funded a legitimate lawsuit that ended up with Gawker being found in the wrong for.
At the least, it would be good if those funding these cases had to make that fact public - Thiel only admitted that he was funding Hogan's case after journalists uncovered it. If he was campaigning on the side of truth and righteousness I can't see any reason why he wouldn't say as much (like the ACLU does).
Then after that, Hulk Hogan filed a lawsuit because he got caught saying super racist things against African Americans on tape and Thiel secretly funds that lawsuit.
Does this make Thiel, by extension, somewhat racist considering he clearly had no qualms funding this lawsuit?[1] He's also a well-known Trump supporter, go figure lol
Call me crazy, but this seems very counter to where Silicon Valley wants to be and Silicon Valley values.
He's also considered a pretty well-known VC in the area. It's not hard to figure out why SV has so many diversity problems, when you have people like Thiel hailed as their leader.
[1]https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/may/03/hulk-hogan-sue...
I thought the Hulkster sued because Gawker published a movie of him having sex with his friend's wife, filmed by his friend without Hogan's knowledge
Whether Hogan sued primarily because of privacy invasion or because it's published evidence of him being racist is something only he can know, really.
"Equality before the law" is supposed to be a fundamental value in America and most Western common-law countries. It's the underpinning behind much of our economic system, which is based on the idea that everybody's welfare is improved if people can independently make contracts with each other. If it turns out that peoples' welfare is not improved, they can sue for damages, and the court system will right the externality.
This assumption does not hold when the vast majority of people harmed cannot afford to sue.
Your last paragraph is a good illustration of the problem, and I think that's the point the grandparent post was making. In this case, it may've been a good thing for justice that Gawker pissed off the wrong billionaire. But it's a terrible system where only the organizations that piss off billionaires get slapped, and the only way to achieve justice is to have a billionaire on your side.
Unfortunately I don't really know of a solution to this. We've already tried a bunch, with public defenders and Miranda rights and continent legal fees and class action lawsuits and pro bono work. But the cost of a court case keeps spiraling upwards, and it's soon reaching the level where only big corporations and wealthy individuals can afford them. And non-capitalist countries are even worse off: in many of them, you need a personal connection to a powerful person to get a fair judgment.
the solution is to take the economic incentives out of lawsuits (the legal industry is a pure economic cost, so an added perk is a more productive economy). some random ideas:
* make public law schools free and disband the various bar associations (increase competition/lower barriers to entry)
* make people file lawsuits within 3 months of injury (lower the statute of limitations)
* limit the length of lawsuits to 3 months total (limits legal costs)
* make judges prefer non-monetary compensation (like volunteer work).My issue with this is, 3 months from actual harm, or realization of harm? There just seem to be a lot of cases where harm does not show themselves immediately, but may take a few years to appear.
injuries involving bodily harm (assault, murder, etc.) might require more time, and financial crimes might take years to uncover, as you point out. but the underlying idea would be to make people act on injury quickly so that justice is delivered while memories and evidence are fresh (lowering costs) and deterrence is more immmediate and visible.
If we take a step back what is the key principle at stake here?
I think the key principle is privacy.
Should we allow a media company to ruin a persons reputation and career by violating his privacy in direct violation of a court order?
The real concern for me is that you need to find a supportive billionaire to be able to put a stop to it.
If the media turns on me tomorrow and invades my privacy I don't have a billionaire friend to turn to.
There was a reason the courts ordered gawker to pay massive damages.
The courts found his career was damaged to the tune of $130 million.
That needs to change, and you can find your way to this conclusion via sympathy with Hogan or with Gawker, but perhaps not via sympathy with Thiel (for the obvious reason).
Your "personal" concern is an extremely common opinion in a major debate that has been going on for years. There is even a documentary to support it.
Liberties aren't etched away by attacking the just users first. They are etched away by attacking those users most Good People disapprove of.
1. Sign contract with game company that all IP/source reverts to publisher on bankruptcy.
2. Start denying milestone payments 3/4 through development(highest burn rate) for frivolous reasons.
3. Dev runs out of money, bankruptcy.
4. Publisher offers to re-hire team at reduced rate + no royalties since they're all now unemployed to complete the game.
5. Profit (for the publisher).
The argument that Thiel acted unethically by funding Hogan's lawsuit is not one that I support. You can picture it as a millionaire throwing his money around to exact vengeance on a company that wronged him if you want, and that certainly feeds the idea of a sort of "chilling effect" where media orgs intentionally avoid printing things about powerful (read: rich) people. I think we can both agree that that would be truly unfortunate and a great loss of speech principles.
However, I don't think that accurately maps to the validity of the case. In an ideal world, Hogan wouldn't have had to get Thiel to fund his lawsuit--he was legitimately wronged. Is a better alternative to this universe one where news/distribution organizations can say whatever they want about anyone all the time and unless you're a billionaire you just have to take it? It wasn't like Gawker was acting ethically here. Compare it to Mother Jones, who was sued frivolously, won, and is still around!
But, of course, that's not really your argument. Your argument isn't that news orgs can be sued and that's a problem, it's that legal battles are often a matter of who has more money to spend on them, and regardless of outcome, can leave even honest organizations out of capital. I agree with this (even though Mother Jones is still around). It's unreasonable to expect MJ to pay up $2.4m to cover fees, especially when margins on online journalism are already so low (forcing worse incentives on them just to compete).
But there's hope! We don't need to wring our hands and lament the death knell of free speech--rather, we can just support anti-SLAPP laws to reduce both the cost and frequency of frivolous defamation suits. The technology exists! In fact, the only reason MJ had to pay up is because their state doesn't have anti-SLAPP statutes.
I'm fundamentally not concerned at all with Thiel buying the decaying corpse of Gawker. They acted in incredibly poor taste, noncompliance of legal orders and vitriolic defiance of journalistic good will, so, they pay the price. Rather, I'm more concerned about two issues: first, valid lawsuits require far too large an initial capital investment, preventing truly wronged but non-rich individuals from seeking justice and second, incredibly wealthy individuals can force frivolous lawsuits onto organizations where their best case scenario is a pyrrhic victory.
Their state (California) wasn't the problem. The problem was that they were being sued in a different state (Idaho). You aren't safe until all the states have anti_SLAPP statutes.
There is a disturbing narrative I now notice whenever it appears, specifically, the formulation of "good billionaire X takes on public interest Y."
The subtext is, we should celebrate that some wealthy titan has decided to back an interest aligned with our political interest.
The problem is that our current political and cultural divisions are, if not necessarily solely originating in, primarily–even, almost exclusively–_driven and determined_ by a battle of billionaires.
So long as "normal" people are reduced to pawns in a not so secret chess match between billionaires, our entire civilization is hostage. Our democratic institutions certainly are.
The GOP's contempt for public opinion in pushing through a crappy tax bill which extracts a trillion dollars from the collective future, to further enrich its richest stake holders, is just one more example of the consequences.
And it's getting worse, not better.
The last 40+ years have consistently accelerated the consolidation of wealth. This process gives every appearance of having passed an event horizon, beyond which all political remedies to that consolidation are neutralized, through the simple expediency of the very very wealthy seizing ownership literal and figurative of political process.
The historic solutions to the extreme consolidation of wealth are few and don't offer much road map.
But we solve this, or it looks like we get a 2.5 class society.
An underclass, a 1% overclass–and a frightened buffer class jealous of its limited remaining prerogatives and lottery chances of entering the overclass.
Recognize that last cohort? That's the readership of Hackernews.
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.
I have zero sympathy for Gawker but I must admit this is troubling. Poetic, but troubling.