
Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker - paulsutter
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/16/opinion/peter-thiel-the-online-privacy-debate-wont-end-with-gawker.html?_r=0
======
Analemma_
The balls on this guy. The sheer cynical audacity of trying to market yourself
as a "defender of privacy" when you serve on the board of a company so
antithetical to privacy that they're under federal supervision for twenty
years [1] is breathtaking. Please tell me no one on Hacker News is dumb enough
to fall for this.

My Google-fu is failing me on the exact link (can someone help?), but Marc
Andreessen once penned some breathless, excited editorial about "the future of
media", and at one point he talked about the editorial/advertising firewall as
a relic that needed to be abandoned. It was so slickly inserted that you could
almost forget what he was really saying: that news desks need to be prevented
from reporting things that companies rather they didn't.

Every time a VC tries to tell me "what's wrong with the media", I reach for my
gun. Everyone: they're not your friends. They're not trying to help you. Their
overriding concern is nurturing the value of their investments, and that
sometimes means silencing people who report inconvenient truths.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/technology/facebook-
agrees...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/technology/facebook-agrees-to-
ftc-settlement-on-privacy.html)

(reposted from other submission)

~~~
dominotw
do you have anything to say about the content of the article or just ad
hominem attacks on the author.

~~~
coldtea
A hypocrisy charge is not an ad hominen.

An ad-hominen would be: "what he says is wrong because he is
stupid/bribed/corrupt/a hypocrite" etc.

Saying: "What he says is hypocritical" is not an ad-hominem - it's not an
argument on the content or the man, but the relation between the two (what he
says and what he does).

~~~
stcredzero
You're trying to discredit an argument because the person saying it is a
hypocrite, which is also an _ad-hominem_. If the argument is true, then it
would also be true even if the person saying it were hypocritical.

~~~
coldtea
> _If the argument is true, then it would also be true even if the person
> saying it were hypocritical._

And nobody said otherwise -- for the core argument.

But in real life we don't usually know whether the thing (let's call it A)
itself that an argument tries to prove is true.

We only know that the argument in favor of A is formulated correctly (follows
its premises correctly, etc).

Regarding A though, there might be other premises we haven't checked (and
weren't mentioned in the argument), other facts that invalidate it, etc.

Thus it is enlightening to know if an argument for A is being made
hypocritically, to evaluate the possibility of A being true in a wider
context.

E.g. if I say "A is good for everybody, for X,Y,Z reasons" and I do the
opposite of A, then the possibility of A really being good for everybody is
somewhat lessened by the prior that "the person proposing A does not follow
A".

This is because:

a) nothing guarantees that X,Y,Z (the things mentioned in the argument) are
enough to prove that A is good for everybody.

b) the fact that someone proposes A but does the opposite, adds credence to
the possibility that there are benefits from NOT following A.

Heck, even if the argument is that "A is good for you for X,Y,Z" and it's
correct, someone that knows X,Y,Z (since he put forth the argument) but does
not follow A, might know something like A+ or B that's even better, and tries
to sell me short.

~~~
linkregister
I'm convinced that stcredzero is intentionally misdirecting you into arguing
about logical fallacies. Based off of her/his other comments in this thread,
it doesn't appear that she or he cares much about them. stcredzero's viewpoint
is clear and not focused on policing the thread from logical fallacies.

I would say it's a fallacy to harp on logical fallacies; it's not as if
everyone has infinite time to convert all arguments to syllogisms. The common
list of logical fallacies entered Western culture from the ancient Greeks but
shouldn't be taken with religious fervor.

~~~
stcredzero
_I 'm convinced that stcredzero is intentionally misdirecting you into arguing
about logical fallacies._

I'm just convinced coldtea is wrong. The fallacious use of logical fallacies
has taken over far too much of public debate.

 _The common list of logical fallacies entered Western culture from the
ancient Greeks but shouldn 't be taken with religious fervor._

Sure. Let's apply them with logic.

------
BinaryIdiot
I'm having trouble reconciling the following two quotes

> I am proud to have contributed financial support to his case. I will support
> him until his final victory — Gawker said it intends to appeal — and I would
> gladly support someone else in the same position.

> A free press is vital for public debate. Since sensitive information can
> sometimes be publicly relevant, exercising judgment is always part of the
> journalist’s profession. It’s not for me to draw the line

So this makes me think that, if Peter Thiel considers a journalist's
particular article morally wrong, he will help the supposed victim to sue
them. In the case of Gawker it's hard to say Gawker was innocent but at the
same time what if the next case is something more grey? Peter says he wants a
free press but it sounds more to me like he wants a _free press by his own
judgement_.

I'm not a fan of Gawker at all but having a billionaire bankroll lawsuits
against publications when his opinion is that they're doing something morally
wrong...worries me that it'll stifle.

~~~
serge2k
Gawker pissed off Thiel by doing their standard trashy tabloid garbage and
invading his personal life.

He took the opportunity to get even when they went too far with someone else.
Good for him. He's not taking part to cover up anything, or for revenge
because they exposed some wrongdoing on his part. He's doing it because Gawker
is a trashy worthless site.

~~~
microtherion
Yes, don't worry! Thiel merely wants to shut down worthless, trashy
publications like Gawker, and the presidential candidate he supports merely
wants to shut down worthless, trashy publications like the New York Times and
the Washington Post.

Valuable, classy publications who adopt the proper fellatory posture toward
their betters have nothing to fear whatsoever.

~~~
stillsut
Perhaps you should look into the Citizen's United court case.

Who was the plaintiff? Hillary Clinton.

And what was she seeking to accomplish? Prevent the release of a movie which
criticized her political career.

~~~
microtherion
Hint: the case was named "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission".
What does that tell you about who the plaintiff was?

~~~
dragonwriter
> Hint: the case was named "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission".
> What does that tell you about who the plaintiff was?

Very little, actually, because Supreme Court case title orders don't tell you
who the plaintiff vs. defendant is, they tell you who filed the appeal from
the case below. (However, it does tell you that Hillary Clinton _wasn 't_ the
plaintiff, since she is neither "Citizens United" nor the "Federal Election
Commission".)

However, in this case, the plaintiff below was the appellant, so...

------
shklnrj
I am actually in favour of Peter Thiel. What Gawker did was illegal and hence
it is facing this backlash by the LAW.

Many people committed suicides because of the way Gawker brought their private
life in public. [http://www.vox.com/2015/7/17/8992155/gawker-outing-gay-
peopl...](http://www.vox.com/2015/7/17/8992155/gawker-outing-gay-people)

As far as he being the investor in Facebook which uses your data to advertise
to you - You actually agree to Facebook's terms when you sign up for it! In
case of Gawker, it was someone who was feeding on destroying the private life
of people in order to sell ads.

* Whether this sets a precedent or not - That is another question and can be resolved in future. That does not mean we should support a publication which is just gossiping about the private life of a person.

~~~
incogitomode
Except that the incident was found to be newsworthy and not illegal in two
previous cases, once in federal court and another attempt in Florida state
court [1].

Shopping for a favorable venue, and convincing one jury in a civil case does
not make for a very compelling argument of "illegality."

[1]
[https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/hogan-v...](https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/hogan-
v-gawker/)

~~~
hsod
Those are both decisions regarding _preliminary injunctions_ , so your claim
that they were found "not illegal" is erroneous. It's explained pretty clearly
in the short paragraphs you linked to.

~~~
incogitomode
Fair to say, but I believe they were testing the waters again and again just
to find a venue that was favorable, undermining whatever notion the original
commenter was attempting to conjure about the definitive nature of legality
here.

If the legality of a case like this is also supposed as a proxy for the
(universal) morality of the verdict and the arguments Thiel likes to make
about Gawker's journalistic sins it certainly seems like a federal suit would
have been a more appropriate arena for proving the point.

~~~
maverick_iceman
Nothing illegal in testing waters. :)

------
shanusmagnus
Implying that objections to Trump's narcissism and probable sociopathy amount
to "culture war" is a staggering re-framing of reality. That combined with the
gay-conservative-Christian thing suggest that the amount of cognitive
dissonance Thiel can endure must truly be Olympic calibre.

~~~
nikcheerla
Accusations of cognitive dissonance are fruitless – there's a sizable block of
'gay conservative Christians' who probably think that you're experiencing
cognitive dissonance and that their beliefs make sens given their worldview.

~~~
shanusmagnus
I'm sure that's true about many, perhaps most gay conservative Christians. But
Thiel is demonstrably a smart, capable, and educated person, which makes it
all the more impressive that his worldview can apparently accommodate what
amounts to wizardry, manifested through a dizzying array of fables whose
magical interpretation violate both common sense and Occam's razor to a degree
I can hardly begin to express.

I can understand how this system of beliefs could seamlessly cohere in the
minds of children or proto-humans. Thiel, and the rare others like him, are
harder to fathom.

~~~
20yrs_no_equity
The "culture war" is this idea that just because we are gay we're supposed to
be democrats.

But you're ignoring that Hillary Clinton was campaigning against gay marriage
from 1991-2013, basically up until the Supreme Court made the issue moot. It
was Bill Clinton, with 3/4 of Congressional Democrats support who signed the
Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 -- the last year I considered my self a
Democrat.

Not everyone who is a republican is a christian. I happen to be an atheist
libertarian.

Putting me in box, labelling it and then insisting that I must be experiencing
"cognitive dissonance" if I'm not a democrat is ... not exactly a rational
argument.

------
blintz
Peter Thiel is all for radical freedom and libertarianism as long as the free
speech that he protects isn't critical of himself.

He vehemently defended his friend's right to yell "Faggot! Faggot! Hope you
die of AIDS!" outside an instructor's residence. As he explains in his book,
"His demonstration directly challenged one of the most fundamental taboos: To
suggest a correlation between homosexual acts and AIDS implies that one of the
multiculturalists’ favorite lifestyles is more prone to contracting the
disease and that not all lifestyles are equally desirable."

How can someone be so radically opposed to encroachments on free speech, and
yet so quick to quietly fund lawsuits against those who criticize you?

~~~
remarkEon
Forgive me if I missed it, but has Gawker been "critical" of Thiel in the
traditional sense? I'm tracking that they outed him - not that they've been
publishing anti-Thiel business editorials - and that they published a sex tape
without the permission of those who made it.

It appears that we're starting to conflate protected free speech with
invasions of privacy. It's not immediately clear that shouting "Faggot!
Faggot! Hope you die of AIDS!" falls into the latter category, so I don't
really see how that's relevant.

~~~
FireBeyond
"without the permission of those who made it."

Well, no, the person who made the tape (not the "star"(s)) absolutely gave
"permission". He sent the tape to Gawker himself.

Guess what? He was sued, and Hogan settled with him. For $5,000.

~~~
remarkEon
When I used the word "made" I assumed it would be taken as those performing
the act.

It's not relevant that the "director", if you will, sent the tape to Gawker.

~~~
FireBeyond
It's true. I noted your point, as well.

I also think it's noteworthy that the fact that the person who actually
breached Hogan's -trust- was "punished" so lightly (granted, he settled, but I
wonder how much Hogan would have settled with Gawker for, with and without
Thiel's involvement).

------
pessimizer
This has nothing to do with online privacy or the internet, stills and
transcripts could have just as easily been published in the Enquirer (where
they probably would have been protected), and an article outing somebody could
have been in print anywhere. This "Gawker Law", has little or nothing to do
with the Gawker-Hogan case. In the courts, the privacy of public figures has
always been dealt with differently; if anything, this law will blur that
distinction, and you won't be able to publish things about your Senator that
you wouldn't be able to publish about your ex-wife.

Also, it's another sex law. If anything, the publication of the video without
the consent of the people who made it was a copyright violation, and we
already have laws for that that levy tens of thousands of dollars in fines on
private citizens for republishing an albumful of music to dozens of people.
Peter Thiel is a terrible person who made his entire fortune from knowing the
right rich people at the right time. I hope he doesn't find somebody who
thinks I may have slandered them in the mid-90s and finance a normally
hopeless legal case in order to make sure that nobody who has less than a
billion dollars in the bank says anything he doesn't like about him, or anyone
he likes, or anyone he may be considering doing business with, ever again. We
can call it the Peter Thiel Line of No Good Reason.

------
api
I'm afraid I kind of agree. What brought me over to Thiel's side on this
particular issue (at least mostly) was when I realized that Gawker's
publication of a sex tape in this way would be considered a sex crime if the
victim were female. While I still understand the problem with outsiders
bankrolling lawsuits, I can't bring myself to have much sympathy with Gawker
here.

I don't agree with Thiel on a lot of things but on this one I see his point.

~~~
LA_Banker
I don't think one needs to necessarily choose a side. I'm of the opinion that
what Gawker did is wrong, but surreptitiously funding lawsuits to bankrupt the
company is a perversion of the justice system.

The tension between privacy and speech is a discussion that needs to be had.
Litigating it in a Pinellas County courtroom is an odd way to go about having
that debate.

Thiel has now demonstrated that those with deep enough pockets can now use the
courts to exact revenge in a roundabout way. Yes, Gawker is tawdry but one
can't help pondering a chilling effect here on more worthy stories. Were I a
journalist, I'd certainly think twice now of pursuing an investigative piece
that might offend a billionaire, given that my own financial livelihood could
become fair game.

~~~
erics32
Consider the way things were before Thiel showed up. Gawker destroyed lives[1]
with impunity because their victims didn't have deep enough pockets to fight
back in court. Thiel is just leveling the playing field.

[1] [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3488027/Gawker-
edito...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3488027/Gawker-editor-AJ-
Daulerio-refused-college-girl-s-pleas-possible-rape-video.html)

~~~
LA_Banker
I'm not defending Gawker; I'm saying there's a better way to have this debate.

We don’t have to accept or excuse Gawker’s worst stories to protest Thiel’s
dangerous playbook for attacks on institutions of civil society.

~~~
Natsu
You're free to propose that we outlaw the funding of lawsuits by non-parties,
as was done historically (google 'maintenance' and 'champerty' if you want
more history on that) but you're going to shut down the ACLU and company when
you do so. So it's a matter of which is more important to you, really.

~~~
LA_Banker
Hm, that's an interesting point that I'll have to noodle over. Thanks for
pointing it out.

------
guelo
In Hulk Hogan's sex tape he goes off on a racist rant. That's the reason the
WWE fired him. I'm glad my kids won't be exposed to that racist and I'm
thankful for Gawker's public services on that issue.

Also, Hogan was never going to earn $140million for the rest of his life. That
judgment was ridiculous.

------
swang
if we're talking about free speech here. gawker did not do anything illegal to
out peter thiel. a shitty thing to do? yes. illegal? no.

so essentially thiel planned revenge because they did something shitty and he
did not like it. again pretty shitty of gawker to out him, also pretty shitty
of thiel to chill free speech.

not sure there are any real winners to root for here. bringing down gawker did
bring down a lot of the satellite sites that were actually doing really good
reporting. very few sports websites were talking at all about the sexual
assaults going on in colleges, deadspin (a gawker blog) was probably the
foremost site posting about it (and other violations by schools).

~~~
nikcheerla
I suspect you are confused about the facts of the case – specifically, this
has nothing to do with Peter Thiel's outing and everything to do with the fact
that Gawker released Hulk Hogan's sex tape to the public and a court found
that to be an unethical violation of privacy.

~~~
swang
i'm not confused. i am discussing the hypocrisy of thiel saying he's about
protecting free speech when the thing he was originally angry about (his being
outed) was free speech. he doesn't give a shit about hulk hogan or his privacy
being violated. all he wanted was a legally winnable case to get at gawker.

so to say he still supports free speech is laughable when the origin of his
"fight" was something that was legally free speech.

~~~
nikcheerla
Obligatory xkcd about free speech:

[https://xkcd.com/1357/](https://xkcd.com/1357/)

Gawker's outing was free speech. Peter Thiel giving money to Hulk Hogan to
fight his legal battle was also free speech. There's nothing hypocritical
about wanting to protect free speech, yet disliking someone's specific use of
free speech.

~~~
swang
the hypocrisy is in saying, hey i still believe in free speech, while
punishing free speech because he doesn't like what was said. that just means
he's all for speech that doesn't affect his bottom line.

~~~
serge2k
Except he's not suppressing dissenting opinions or hushing up stories about
his wrongdoings.

He is going after them for outing him as gay. Gawker does this to people as a
matter of policy. This policy has lead to people committing suicide, they have
fired reporters who disagreed with it. It is a legal policy, they have the
right to do this. You can find cases where doing it isn't that unreasonable. A
politician with an awful record on gay rights gets caught with a male
prostitute, that's news worthy. It is a matter the public has an interest in.

A VC being gay? Why say anything. It's just cruel tabloid gossip.

~~~
swang
i am against outing people. gawker's policy of outing people, at best, is
terrible. saying people being outed could cause them to commit suicide is
true.

but

> He is going after them for outing him as gay. Gawker does this to people as
> a matter of policy. This policy has lead to people committing suicide, they
> have fired reporters who disagreed with it.

you're going to have to cite any firing. there have been resignations because
nick denton took down an article about a conde nast executive who was gay and
the editors disagreed with the article takedown. no one (afaik) was fired.
they resigned because their article got taken down. also saying gawker outs
being as a matter of policy... what.

also let's talk about thiel's outing. thiel was a huge investor in facebook,
therefore he is a public figure. and is it really an out-of-the-closet
"outing" if nearly everyone who worked with thiel knew, and told that to
people outside of thiel's general circle? you think the author of the story
dug through thiel's trash to find out that he was gay? it was pretty much
common knowledge regardless of what thiel's dislike of talking about it.

and imo he is suppressing dissenting opinions. cross peter thiel and you
better prepare to go through a legal battle for it even if what was said was
not libel.

------
aaronbrethorst
FTA:

    
    
        I’m glad that an arena full of Republicans
        stood up to applaud when I said I was proud
        to be gay, because gay pride shouldn’t be a
        partisan issue. All people deserve respect,
        and nobody’s sexuality should be made a
        public fixation.
    

From the 2016 party platform[1] of that arena full of Republicans[2]:

    
    
        In Obergefell, five unelected lawyers
        robbed 320 million Americans of their
        legitimate constitutional authority
        to define marriage as the union of
        one man and one woman.
    

And, to the people who will say 'Obergefell is simply antithetical to
Republicans because it's a states' rights issue,' you're not fooling anyone.

\----

[1] "A party platform is sometimes referred to as a manifesto[1] or a
political platform. Research on American politics suggests that platform
positions offer an important clue to the policies that U.S. parties will
enact."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_platform](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_platform)

[2] [https://prod-static-ngop-
pbl.s3.amazonaws.com/media/document...](https://prod-static-ngop-
pbl.s3.amazonaws.com/media/documents/DRAFT_12_FINAL\[1\]-ben_1468872234.pdf)

~~~
nikcheerla
Why exactly do you think those two positions are necessarily in opposition?
You can be proudly gay while still believing that 'marriage' is only between
men and women. AFAIK this is a pretty common belief among those who are both
Christian and gay.

~~~
dragonwriter
> You can be proudly gay while still believing that 'marriage' is only between
> men and women. AFAIK this is a pretty common belief among those who are both
> Christian and gay.

Is there any reason to believe this is a common alignment of views? While I
haven't seen things broken out at that detail level (e.g., gay marriage views
of gay Christians), in general, belief that society should accept
homosexuality tracks pretty well with belief that gay marriage should be
allowed; I'd be very surprised if, even among, say, Evangelicals (the
Christian religious subgroup polling shows _most_ opposed to gay marriage),
the share of that population that is gay isn't mostly part of the 27% (from
Pew earlier this year [0]) of that group that says that gay marriage should be
accepted.

[0] [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/05/12/support-
stea...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/05/12/support-steady-for-
same-sex-marriage-and-acceptance-of-homosexuality/)

~~~
gd1
It's perfectly possible to believe that society should accept homosexuality
and also be against gay marriage. It's a complex issue. 'Marriage' is a
religious ceremony, and freedom of religion and association is a thing. If the
Christians don't want to let the gays join their club and do their funny
little ceremony, then so be it. Any change needs to be driven by the Pope and
the church itself, not enforced by the state.

That is completely distinct from the concept of a legal union as defined by
the state, which should be available to all consenting adults. Hell, as a
mathematical type myself, if you can get it working in 2 dimensions you should
be able to generalize to n dimensions, so why not legalize a union between any
n consenting sentient beings while we're at it?

The bigger mystery is why any non-christian gay people would care...?? If
you're not Christian, you shouldn't care about a religious 'marriage', only
civil unions. If you are Christian, you should take it up with your Church and
work on change from within. I mean how is it going to work? If you're a
Christian gay and you feel hurt and not included because your faith denies you
the right to a religious marriage, are you really going to feel any more
included when the state kicks the door down and forces them to accept you?
They have to decide to accept you on their own.

I just don't get the whole issue.

~~~
dragonwriter
"Marriage" had been the English name for the civil unions as well as the
religious unions for much longer than the modern separation of Church and
State changed those into distinct institutions with the same name.

"Civil union" as an institution name was created in the US for the separate-
but-notionally-equal state law institution adopted in some areas while denying
civil marriage to same-sex partners.

------
elevensies
Seeing Hulk Hogan force Gawker into bankruptcy has been so satisfying. After
all the sanctimonious nattering after the huge iCloud celebrity nudes leak,
and then all the hand-wringing while Gawker gets punished for getting waist
deep in the exact same thing has been galling. But after dozens of think-
pieces about the _troubling implications_ , bankruptcy court grinds on,
impervious.

------
maverick_iceman
If a conservative site was outing gays on a regular basis it would have been
shut down long ago. But liberal sites outing gay conservatives is considered
totally acceptable and even commendable in today's society. Thus the vitriol
towards Thiel.

------
josephdviviano
Gawker played dirty, then Peter Thiel played dirty. Peter won. Nothing of
value was lost. We're not talking about Reuters here.

------
kyledrake
I posted a link to the "Revenge Porn" bill, incase anyone wants to talk about
the topic at hand instead of Peter Thiel. The bill is actually a pretty
significant one with some big implications for service providers
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12295410](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12295410)

------
zorpner
The fact that Thiel is still involved with Y Combinator should tell you
everything you need to know about the disingenuity of their "commitment" to
equality and diversity.

~~~
vanattab
Does tolerance mean no Republicans/Libertarians allowed in any of our
social/work circles? Is that where we're going as Democrats? If so I will be
putting the Kool Aid down and jumping off the wagon at the next stop.

~~~
jshevek
Yes, it appears to me to be increasingly popular among liberals (esp. among
the younger generation) to use any tactic they can to silence, ostracize, and
censor dissenting opinions.

It also seems to me that this has the effect of driving moderates to the
right.

------
emblem21
Suicide queens.

------
jonathankoren
I love how he's trying to make his personal vendetta against Gawker Nobel, by
trying to dub the IPPA as "the Gawker Bill."

From [https://www.buzzfeed.com/nitashatiku/peter-thiel-gawker-
new-...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/nitashatiku/peter-thiel-gawker-new-york-
times) : "It's the Intimate Privacy Protection Act or IPPA," a spokesperson
for Rep. Jackie Speier, one of the bill's sponsors, told BuzzFeed News. "I
have no idea where 'the Gawker Bill' name comes from, but it's incorrect."

~~~
randomname2
It had been called that, informally. From a few weeks ago:
[http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/07/gawker-bill-
criminal...](http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/07/gawker-bill-criminalize-
revenge-porn/)

