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.
Thiel 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.
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 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?
What you described is shitty. What I described is fundamentally destructive to society.
The privacy of Hulk Hogan's racist ramblings and the privacy of Hulk Hogan's dick and the privacy of where billionaires like to stick their dicks matter less than billionaires deciding to destroy the press because they don't like the coverage. Sorry, Hulk and billionaires, but life is hard.
Who cares? The problem isn't "sympathy;" it's the precedent being set. Ernesto Miranda was not necessarily a "sympathetic" person either and yet his case was important in establishing legal rights of people accused of a crime.
>Thiel may not be a saint, but it's hard to have any sympathy for Gawker...
But, neither has anything to do with the other when assessing their actions. That is, we can have disdain for both Gawker and Thiel.
This constant binary relativism is a recipe for descent into madness: Deciding everything by the logic underlying "Trump is deplorable, but I will support him because Hillary is worse" (or vice-versa) is not going to end well.
Yet, it seems that this "two-party politics way of thinking" is spilling over into all aspects of society.
you'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).
I 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.
I 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:
(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.
Surely "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.
Correct, but there's a difference between publishing what is in the public domain and publishing deeply private information, which they would have got through questionable sources.
If those billionaires play an active role in shutting down unfavourable coverage of themselves, yes. To my knowledge that hasn't been uncovered yet, though.
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 agree with the ideal you describe, but I think it is naive to assume that billionaires buy news orgs simply because they enjoy picking up a good newspaper in the morning.
I don't see how buying a media outlet to shut it down is different to buying it to influence the coverage. Both are shady but perfectly legal.
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.
> 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.
That analogy doesn't fit because the money doesn't give someone direct power but instead allows them to tip the scales in their favor. It is the same as Citizens United. The money allows influencing other people's votes but the money isn't directly choosing the 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?
I agree, but that is a clear result of the 1st Amendment. And you get lots of people angry if you start to question whether the 1st Amendment is a great idea.
I am not sure what you are really arguing here. The 14th Amendment portion of Citizens United is not the part of the case that has relevancy to this discussion. Overturning that portion would still allow Thiel's actions since he was acting as an individual. It would have a greater chance of effecting the EFF's action in that regard.
As does "freedom of speech", I guess. But both of those things mean something more specific in the context of US constitutional law, of course. It's that more specific meaning to which I'm referring. Sorry for the lack of precision.
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.
Citizens United was a case that addressed two issues. There was the 14th Amendment issue of corporate personhood and the 1st Amendment issue of whether money equals speech. Both of those had been applied separately before but this decision unified the two. You are focusing on the 14th Amendment portion while I was referencing the 1st Amendment portion, which is also likely the less controversial portion.
this is a good take. id like to add that this is one of the negative externalities of entrusting a single person with an outrageous amount of power by allowing them to have many millions or billions of dollars. there are certainly counter examples, but on the whole it seems very unlikely that billionaires are going to, as a group, do a better job allocating their money for public good than if that money was distributed more widely among the populace. i dont think people should be billionaires basically.
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.
Where is the logical connection between being a billionaire & shutting down a publication in a vindictive manner established?
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.
It has a lot to do with it. Only the very wealthy have the means to fund nuisance lawsuits until a publication is forced to shut down (or, for that matter, effectively bend the ear of influential politicians, etc.). The rest of us are stuck with stuff like Reputation Defender, which is not very effective, and in any case does not completely shut down any news organization.
im not sure i understand what your saying, doesnt seem to address my main point, which is: it seems unlikely that a very small group of rich people will use their money for public good in a more effective way than if that money were more evenly distributed among people. thats not even a normative statement, where is the logical fallacy?
WHY are you forcing your philosophy of "wealth should be used for the public good" on billionaires. If they accumulated wealth in a legal fashion, they aren't beholden to doing ANY public good.
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.
wasnt forcing my philosophy, just voicing my suspicion that its probably sub optimal to have billionaires if you are trying to maximize the greater good. not saying thats what you necessarily should do, though i do personally think that.
What greater good do you speak of? Regardless of how repugnant you find Theil, his investments have led to thousands of great paying jobs directly, and probably tens of thousands of indirect jobs. That my friend, is a great service to society.
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.
mate... look at the tax rates in america over the last 100 years. also, you still arent engaging with my argument, you are having a trite conversation with yourself about “socialism vs capitalism”. id also encourage you to stop thinking of “jobs” as universally good, and think about what the jobs actually do
I think we've both made our cases. You believe increased taxation of the rich to be a social good. I don't believe taking more money as a percentage of income from the wealthy is fair. Also do not believe it actually helps the needy - it only empowers politicians who ultimately have dominion over how they get to spend said tax money.
Some of us might say there is a moral challenge posed by a society where some of us are homeless, skip meals, or go without medical care, while others have so much money that they could spend a billion dollars on complete frivolities every year until dying and still have a tremendous estate left over. It's hard to see what you think is a logical fallacy here; it seems you simply reject the moral proposition underlying the argument.
You go from "this argument is based on logic" to "here's a moral stance regardless of logic". What you're proposing - an uber socialistic/communistic society has been proven again and again to not work out. Unless you consider maoist China and Soviet Russia (USSR) to be models you'd like to emulate, ethical capitalism is the only moral system that truly helps those who want to help themselves.
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.
TLDR - no one's stoppig you or any other non-billionaire from pledging 10% of your income, banding together and funding whatever program you want to. My guess is you've never really been active philanthropically, but, you feel entitled to take away Theil's money on taxes, though he earned his money in the exact same fashion as you earn yours. You've convinced yourself of false morality where punitively taxing the wealthy is completely ok
Every ethical argument ultimately follows from premises you can gum up the whole thing by rejecting. That's just the nature of the discipline. For instance, all the stuff you're writing doesn't really move someone if they don't accept the libertarian arguments about how taxation is theft or is evil.
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.
If Thiel wasn't a billionaire, he wouldn't have been able to do what he did. On the other hand, if he wasn't a billionaire, Valleywag might not have been as interested in his personal life.
Not too mention, Thiel wasn't the least bit disturbed by what Hulk Hogan said about African Americans in the very same case!
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!
I thought the fact that he buys and injects blood from teenagers to (possibly) extend his own pathetic life would have proven that much by now. Someone said something about it being easier to pass camels through eyes of needles than for rich men to go to heaven.
I agree this is an issue, but just because some people can't afford to defend themselves doesn't make what Thiel did wrong. You'll note Gawker was fully able to fund their defense.
If Thiel had did this against a smaller site that gave up without having its day in court that would be a different matter.
untog ended their up-thread comment with a pre-emptive answer to exactly this sentiment:
>> 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.
No, he's one of the few people whose free speech I'm not terribly concerned about. (Don't be confused: I think he should have the right to express his opinion, I just don't think that right is in any jeopardy).
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...
By the same argument, patent trolls are NBD. Except, of course, we know for a fact that lots of people are extorted into paying BS fees because they can't afford to go to court.
If you tried to make the case that patent trolls are a big problem because they extort large fees from people, it would be appropriate to talk about cases where people settled and paid "BS fees". If you cite one case where the plaintiff won, and another where they lost in court, you aren't making that case very well because you haven't discussed any actual cases of the alleged harm.
Yes, and as I already pointed out, the root comment states:
>>>>>> 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.
MJ was offered as an example of a suit that was filed despite the fact that the speech was clearly legally protected, and where the cost of the suit was rather outrageous despite this fact. It establishes a) that people sue maliciously even when they know their suit is baseless; and b) that these suits are none-the-less expensive to defend.
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.
Right, but in both cases a billionaire got to choose what qualifies as "something bad". That's the "principle" part I'm getting at here that worries me.
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.
Anti-SLAPP laws have the same problem as "regulation via judiciary" -- by the time the law becomes useful, the damage is already done. If you go bankrupt defending yourself, suing under a SLAPP law doesn't help. Also, the barrier for proving you shouldn't be SLAPPed is far lower than the already low barrier for civil damages, so there's some question as to whether this even solves the problem.
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.
Attorneys can take your case pro bono and then sue for wages later with anti-SLAPP, iirc. And it's much cheaper to file the anti-SLAPP than to defend against the suit.
Sounds like the Nirvana fallacy in action. Unless you have a better proposal, complaining about how some improvement isn't perfect doesn't do anything.
> Sounds like the Nirvana fallacy in action. Unless you have a better proposal
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...
Mother Jones winning is the exception, not the rule, and plenty of outlets can't afford a legal fight. Those that can can-and-do (as Mother Jones did) are usually severely hampered in their ability to actually serve the people by dealing with barratrous claims.
No Thiel got to choose what qualifies for a court to hear. The court decided what qualifies as "something bad." There's a big difference. It does kinda suck the amount of money it takes to bring something to court, but that's the world we live in. You still have to win the case.
A different way to look at it might be that in most cases, an illegal deed might be overlooked simply because someone didn't have the funds to see it through the court system. It's one thing if someone is funding endless lawsuits just to drive someone out of business, it's another for someone like Hogan to have a legitimate case, and for Thiel to fund his lawsuit. Thiel's funding of the case did not influence the judgement against Gawker, it simply allowed it to proceed further than if Hogan ran out of money.
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.
I agree that your point has merit. It's difficult to work out where the middle ground is, or whether "billionaires get to choose who sees their day in court" is better or worse than "poor people don't get their day in court" (they feel similar).
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).
Gawker didn't go after the average person, they very specifically went after a billionaire, Peter Thiel.
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.
I am not from your tech utopia, but i get the feeling that your so called "values" are more to blame for the wealth disparity than any single actor, regardless of their net worth. Assuming you live in SV, you are the folks that moved there, get paid obscene money to wrangle 1s and 0s, drive up the property value, and demand changes to the community to suit your tastes. When you were boarding your chartered bus to get you safely to the Green Zone, did you think you were part of the solution? I can think of 1 famous conservative VC (not my world so there are presumably more) and maybe 2 companies that make some claim to be, or are labeled as, conservative. The vast majority of the SV tech crowd and companies are liberals, and your Bernie T-shirt doesn't make you an "ally". Be honest with yourself: SV companies generate spam email, dump tons of thermal excess into the environment, and gentrify neighborhoods. Acting like you are somehow a different breed, and not a parasitic community (i know that term seems negative or besmirching but i mean it in its purely biological form), is something no one else is falling for. I realize this is an emotional rant that brushes with broad strokes, but i am pretty tired of West Coast folks acting like everything was fine before Trump and conservatives are backwards racists incapable of espousing compassion or modernity. That isn't an excuse, it is an explanation.
There's a systemic problem here, independent of the Thiel/Bollinger/Gawker case.
"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.
> Unfortunately I don't really know of a solution to this.
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).
> make people file lawsuits within 3 months of injury (lower the statute of limitations)
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.
yes, there's unlikely a perfect solution, especially not one that comes out of 5 minutes of musing on it.
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.
Yes, I think this is one case where both sides of the issue can agree the real problem is that our civil justice system seems to care more about the depth of your pockets than the veracity of your position.
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).
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws [actions] are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”
That's an interesting take, but not one I'd agree with.
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.
> In fact, the only reason MJ had to pay up is because their state doesn't have anti-SLAPP statutes.
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.
IMO the elephant in the room is even more fundamental: the _existence of billionaires_.
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.
Serious 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.
He 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.
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.
Uh, he bought WaPo in 2013. Trump began running in 2015. How could you possibly know what would have happened without Bezos?
NYT wasn't bought by Bezos, and currently has a similar number of Trump articles.
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.
> 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.
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?
At the same time, what Gwaker did to Thiel is despicable as well. This is truly one of those cases where there is no good guy, just a bunch of bad guys being bad.
Something 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.
People 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.
Let'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/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:
I agree with you. They're all done for different reasons.
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.
Remember that story with the company management stepping in because a feud between Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann was starting to get into unsavory business of the networks' parent companies? The idea that Jeff Bezos could influence the Post's coverage isn't outlandish, even if Trump rather cynically invoked the concept.
just 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?
gawker'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.
Please 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.
Don'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.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 240 ms ] threadHe'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.
Gawker did something wrong and got sued. Does it matter who funded the lawsuit?
Is this how he wants Facebook to operate?
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.
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.
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 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?
The privacy of Hulk Hogan's racist ramblings and the privacy of Hulk Hogan's dick and the privacy of where billionaires like to stick their dicks matter less than billionaires deciding to destroy the press because they don't like the coverage. Sorry, Hulk and billionaires, but life is hard.
But, neither has anything to do with the other when assessing their actions. That is, we can have disdain for both Gawker and Thiel.
This constant binary relativism is a recipe for descent into madness: Deciding everything by the logic underlying "Trump is deplorable, but I will support him because Hillary is worse" (or vice-versa) is not going to end well.
Yet, it seems that this "two-party politics way of thinking" is spilling over into all aspects of society.
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.
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.
I enjoyed reading the back and forth, fwiw.
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.
[1]: https://www.reputation.com/
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
I have zero sympathy for Gawker but I must admit this is troubling. Poetic, but troubling.
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.
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.
The courts found his career was damaged to the tune of $130 million.