Does the whole Thiel vs. Gawker thing trouble you?
I have been following reports on Thiel vs Gawker for the past a few days, on Twitter, through a VPN.
And what surprises me is the amount of praise for Thiel's actions.
Their reasoning usually includes:
- Look at what Gawker reports, they are in no way representing good journalism.
- Look at the harm Gawker causes, it is only fair they face this consequence.
Alarmingly, these defenses come from notable VCs, or at least they gladly retweet them in defense of Thiel.
Ignoring the conflict of interests for a moment here: let's assume they all act according to their principles.
You know what this looks like to a Chinese citizen and a Startup founder that thinks highly of SV culture?
US is slowly sinking to Chinese level of thinking:
- Where there are no alternatives, but to silence troubling tabloids.
- Where sacrificing freedom of a few, for stability of the masses, is a good cause.
- Where the best assurance you get, is to trust the people at the top.
And you can expect Chinese media quoting this case one day to prove US billionaires can silence media as well.
Gawker may be nowhere near journalism, but to think they "rise above" others to the point where SV billionaires need to spend millions and stick together to defeat them?
It says more about US than Gawker, isn't it?
And that troubles me, as an outsider.
30 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 91.7 ms ] threadThe troubling part is that we have someone secretly using money to manipulate a case in which he is not a direct participant.
Wealthy people should not be able to weaponize our legal system.
What manipulation was there?
3rd parties funding lawsuits is not a new, it's been happening for centuries.
Or is it the secrecy that's more concerning?
>We're now officially owned by the 300!
That's a steep slope.
The point of the article is that the .01% can fund a series of unrelated lawsuits because you publish an article unflattering of their industry, political stance, ideology, or just stating that cats or better than dogs.
For the 300 it's a trivial amount of money. Like us spending $1000 to shut down a web site we didn't like. (using them to us as 1,000,000,000 : 10,000,000 = 100,000 : 1,000)
My points are that first, this is both really scary because of how relatively few people are in this position and second, we've gone too far: there's no longer any way to stop these people from essentially doing anything they want to control us. They've become effectively gods who will allow us to live out our insignificant lives only if we don't annoy them.
-- Edit (to continue the metaphor cuz fun). --
Remember, the infraction wasn't posting the video on Gawker. The infraction that pissed of this god was being outed as gay. Essentially, this god was angered by being outed. He opened up a portal to our world via the Hulk Hogan video. His lightning bolts were the series of lawsuits he had lined up.
It's also worth noting that this is a god doing battle with a demi-god. Could you imagine the trivial amount of power (= money) (= free speech) that he would need expended to take out one of us antlike mortals.
If you could shut down breitbart or the drudge report (or your least favorite liberal sites) you wouldn't because you're a benevolent god. But then one day you wake up and find that they've passed judgement on you. Well, they can't pass judgement on a god. So you wave your hand and take them out without so much as making the most minor impact in your existence. "I'll show those mortals how judgement is passed! Talk bad about me, will they." That's the real issue here.
My second issue is that more money gives a plaintiff access to legal tricks that can overwhelm an opponent with less money. One example is to bury the opponent with discovery.
My final problem is that Thiel is not using the justice system to get justice for himself. He's sticking his nose into another person's complaint. That isn't how our courts were intended to work.
[1] http://observer.com/2016/05/peter-thiels-reminder-to-the-gaw...
And to clarify, I am not equating this case to censorship, but rather to setup some context that we have seen much worse :)
But what troubles me is really how SV response to this case:
- There are no better ways and so be it.
This is what Chinese call: the limit of democracy and freedom.
And Thiel get VCs to agree with him in this case. Even though I believe many VCs hold different view on democracy and liberty.
So I am personally troubled by their reactions.
On one hand, media outlets should ideally feel un-intimidated in publishing stories. On the other hand, people should be allowed to support causes with money. Both are widely considered in America to fall under freedom of speech. So it's balancing act. There is no optimal solution, there are only tradeoffs.
This is also ignoring the facts that are highly favorable to Thiel's case: what Gawker did really was illegal and reprehensible, and also let us ignore the fact that Peter Thiel really did not bury Gawker under a mountain of legal fees - the verdict is what did Gawker in, not the legal fees which I'm sure are less than $10 million (Gawker can afford that)
Thiel funding a lawsuit against a website that specifically wronged him is so mild that it's just not worth getting upset about.
To me the story seems to be that Gawker was wealthy enough to crush libel and slander lawsuits for years. But in the end, there's always a bigger fish.
As for it being censorship, this event is not properly comparable to the government censorship of speech in China. Read http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html if you haven't. In the US what you can say is restricted through informal, "softer" means like social pressure, which would make it like most places if not for the fact that American cultural institutions are the most powerful in the world; those institutions, in turn, have a complicated relationship with the government. Briefly, American billionaires like Thiel have nothing on the American media or universities in terms of their ability to influence what people think. Government, media and academic opinion form a feedback loop.
There is (thankfully, of course) no Great Firewall of the United States but in practice American thought rarely deviates from the government-approved norms.
It's a news outlet.
They can use/abuse their position to make hay in ways nobody else can.
Isn't this (as stated in another post) a case of revenge? (Legal revenge as it were.)
Now he is going to get stung.
Explain the false part please.
Peter Thiel was not hiding his sexual orientation, but Gwaker made it look like so.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/05/27/...
Assuming the legal system is just, I don't have a slightest problem with whoever funding or managing a lawsuit, revenge-seeking or not.
And comparing an invasion-of-privacy (or libel and slander) lawsuit to opaque state censorship is a huge stretch.