Peter Thiel, who waged a legal war against Gawker Media after it published coverage about his business interests and personal life which upset him
This is being very economical with the facts.
Gawker outed Thiel as gay against his wishes. And while the guy was in Saudi Arabia. Then they published a revenge porn tape of Hulk Hogan, which is what Thiel used to get them.
Thiel is firmly in the "rules for thee but not for me" camp which means any authoritarianism he isn't in control of is even worse than a democracy. Ironically many people feel this way but most just don't have the wealth to try their hand at oppression.
Yes Gawker was unethical and shouldn't have posted his personal details nor an illegally obtained sex tape, however billionaires shouldn't be able to destroy, censor and control media by deploying their unlimited resources to financially annihilate media outlets in endless litigation to take down reporting they don't like.
Free press is already under attack in so many countries, it is dangerous that now a single rich guy can weaponize his unlimited resources to wage legal war over his own personal vendettas because his ego got hurt.
Your pointing out he was in Saudi Arabia is being very misleading with the facts.
It's not like Saudi Arabia cares whether some billionaire Western businessman is gay or not. They also don't care that he's a bigot and an Islamophobe, and he doesn't care that they are Arab, outwardly Muslim, or any other thing he detests. They all worship money.
Gawker outing people against their wishes, the person they outed being one of the larger avatars of the crypto-fascist right, who worked with one of the biggest co-conspirators of Vince McMahon's brutal anti-union activities to destroy them for strictly personal reasons.
All of these people really deserve each other.
Edit: also for bonus points, him getting outed in such a dangerous place is ironic as all hell, given that he didn't need to be there apart from wanting money out of the Saudi royal family.
Like I wouldn't want to be outed while there either, but my answer is I wouldn't fucking go to Saudi Arabia with a gun to my head, and I certainly wouldn't be sucking up to the crown prince for m(b?)illions of dollars for my disinformation machine. But I guess principles are for the poors.
For folks interested in how far a publisher will go for a journalist, I recommend reading the story about Michael Pollan when he wanted to publish an article about opium.
Summary:
- first publisher said: you can't publish this b/c you could go to prison and we could get in trouble financially
- second publisher: you are going to publish this. If you go to prison, we will support your family financially for the entire time you are in prison. If you lose your house, we will buy them a new house.
What a silly little venture. Essentially a vanity publication for rich fools with thin skin. Though very amusing how completely it fell apart at the slightest prodding by this reporter.
edit - kind of curious why this was flagged and removed?
The U.S. legal system is very often a war of attrition. One side can relentlessly sue until the other side is broke, or just threaten. This is the basis of many plea deals, or worse, in the case of Aaron Swartz.
Evaluate the things, you may do so being aware of their provenance, but if you use that as the starting point of your conclusion then you are just asking for your biases to be confirmed.
There does need to be a higher form of journalistic accountability. If Thiel, or any other person on the planet, proposed a fair mechanism that was free from influence, I would support it.
For this I don't neet to know who is behind it, I need to know what its goals are, how it operates, and how does it maintain integrity.
Certainly coming from an odius person increases the chance it will not measure up, but for fucks sake, at least do the measuring.
> We’re the first people to sell adjudication as a service
PolyMarket and Kalshi are sort of doing that, you could say, adjudication is a valuable service for gambling.
I've always thought that the chatbots were much better judges than lawyers. Some real US courts are adopting chatbots for clerical tasks. Hard to say if you can directly sell the services of judging in a general sense, seemingly the only way that is done is for gambling.
separately, @dang, is it possible to just cut out the vamping about anything at the top level that isn't really about what is being written
> separately, @dang, is it possible to just cut out the vamping about anything at the top level that isn't really about what is being written
@dang does nothing, email the mods if it's something you care about. Downvoting and flagging are the usual ways to deal with off-topic discussions, though the mods do occasionally create a "stub for off-topicness" and move comments under an auto-collapsed comment of theirs. Again, though, @dang won't reach him, email the mods.
Well, who could have possibly seen that coming right from this person. I'm so much waiting for this ridiculous AI psychosis driven grifters just to stop bothering other people with their bullshit.
>“It’s only the top 1 percent who matter. These are the people who are going to be the value creators” when, in his view, AI soon completely transforms just about every aspect of economic life.
>Among other criticisms, D’Souza dismisses the value of anonymous sources, believing they are discrediting, no matter the justification
Peter Thiel, who waged a legal war against Gawker Media after it published coverage about his business interests and personal life which upset him
This is being very economical with the facts.
Gawker outed Thiel as gay against his wishes. And while the guy was in Saudi Arabia. Then they published a revenge porn tape of Hulk Hogan, which is what Thiel used to get them.
i remember knowing that thiel was gay before that story, and i m not even american. the sex tape was bad indeed.
Illiberal authoritarian monarchy is Thiel’s favorite form of government, so I’m not sure what his problem is with being outed while in Saudi Arabia.
Thiel is firmly in the "rules for thee but not for me" camp which means any authoritarianism he isn't in control of is even worse than a democracy. Ironically many people feel this way but most just don't have the wealth to try their hand at oppression.
[flagged]
At what point did the person to whom you are replying speak in favor of it?
or....was that a convenient cover story?
https://medium.com/@owenthomas/gawker-peter-thiel-and-me-f80...
Yes Gawker was unethical and shouldn't have posted his personal details nor an illegally obtained sex tape, however billionaires shouldn't be able to destroy, censor and control media by deploying their unlimited resources to financially annihilate media outlets in endless litigation to take down reporting they don't like.
Free press is already under attack in so many countries, it is dangerous that now a single rich guy can weaponize his unlimited resources to wage legal war over his own personal vendettas because his ego got hurt.
Your pointing out he was in Saudi Arabia is being very misleading with the facts.
It's not like Saudi Arabia cares whether some billionaire Western businessman is gay or not. They also don't care that he's a bigot and an Islamophobe, and he doesn't care that they are Arab, outwardly Muslim, or any other thing he detests. They all worship money.
Gawker outing people against their wishes, the person they outed being one of the larger avatars of the crypto-fascist right, who worked with one of the biggest co-conspirators of Vince McMahon's brutal anti-union activities to destroy them for strictly personal reasons.
All of these people really deserve each other.
Edit: also for bonus points, him getting outed in such a dangerous place is ironic as all hell, given that he didn't need to be there apart from wanting money out of the Saudi royal family.
Like I wouldn't want to be outed while there either, but my answer is I wouldn't fucking go to Saudi Arabia with a gun to my head, and I certainly wouldn't be sucking up to the crown prince for m(b?)illions of dollars for my disinformation machine. But I guess principles are for the poors.
You wouldn't go there, and I wouldn't go there, but he's rich, there's no real risk for him.
> Peter Thiel, who waged a legal war against Gawker Media after it published coverage about his business interests and personal life which upset him.
Didn't Gawker publish an illegally obtained sex tape of Hogan and refused to take it down even after a court order?
For folks interested in how far a publisher will go for a journalist, I recommend reading the story about Michael Pollan when he wanted to publish an article about opium.
Summary:
- first publisher said: you can't publish this b/c you could go to prison and we could get in trouble financially
- second publisher: you are going to publish this. If you go to prison, we will support your family financially for the entire time you are in prison. If you lose your house, we will buy them a new house.
You can read about it here: https://tim.blog/2021/06/30/michael-pollan-this-is-your-mind...
People talk a LOT about defending free speech but this story has always stuck out to me as what that really means.
Great interview, thanks for sharing.
Minor pedantic correction: same publisher, different lawyer
What a silly little venture. Essentially a vanity publication for rich fools with thin skin. Though very amusing how completely it fell apart at the slightest prodding by this reporter.
edit - kind of curious why this was flagged and removed?
It is more politic than technologic. The story is about a startup that wants to substitute judicial trials with private trials.
They want to create an environment, or an arena, or a marketplace, or some such term, where their judgment actually counts as more than just noise.
But on April 21, I received a remarkable email. “Someone has filed an objection against something you wrote,”
No one in their right mind is going to do anything other than ignore and/or delete an email this stupid.
Didn't he move to that place where nazis went ?
Twitter?
Also grew up with spiritual Nazis.
Yup. After he's spent a considerable amount of time and money to promote Nazi politics.
[flagged]
Yeah, what's up with that? And how many VCs are considering following suit?
Every supremacist accusation is a confession.
Remember, Thiel and Musk are both immigrants.
The U.S. legal system is very often a war of attrition. One side can relentlessly sue until the other side is broke, or just threaten. This is the basis of many plea deals, or worse, in the case of Aaron Swartz.
Billionaires seem to like it.
Good people can do bad things.
Bad people can do good things.
Evaluate the things, you may do so being aware of their provenance, but if you use that as the starting point of your conclusion then you are just asking for your biases to be confirmed.
There does need to be a higher form of journalistic accountability. If Thiel, or any other person on the planet, proposed a fair mechanism that was free from influence, I would support it.
For this I don't neet to know who is behind it, I need to know what its goals are, how it operates, and how does it maintain integrity.
Certainly coming from an odius person increases the chance it will not measure up, but for fucks sake, at least do the measuring.
> We’re the first people to sell adjudication as a service
PolyMarket and Kalshi are sort of doing that, you could say, adjudication is a valuable service for gambling.
I've always thought that the chatbots were much better judges than lawyers. Some real US courts are adopting chatbots for clerical tasks. Hard to say if you can directly sell the services of judging in a general sense, seemingly the only way that is done is for gambling.
separately, @dang, is it possible to just cut out the vamping about anything at the top level that isn't really about what is being written
> separately, @dang, is it possible to just cut out the vamping about anything at the top level that isn't really about what is being written
@dang does nothing, email the mods if it's something you care about. Downvoting and flagging are the usual ways to deal with off-topic discussions, though the mods do occasionally create a "stub for off-topicness" and move comments under an auto-collapsed comment of theirs. Again, though, @dang won't reach him, email the mods.
Well, who could have possibly seen that coming right from this person. I'm so much waiting for this ridiculous AI psychosis driven grifters just to stop bothering other people with their bullshit.
>“It’s only the top 1 percent who matter. These are the people who are going to be the value creators” when, in his view, AI soon completely transforms just about every aspect of economic life.
>Among other criticisms, D’Souza dismisses the value of anonymous sources, believing they are discrediting, no matter the justification