
Peter Thiel submits bid for Gawker - api
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gawker-thiel/peter-thiel-submits-bid-for-gawker-faces-challenges-idUSKBN1F02V2
======
gkoberger
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.

~~~
shortformblog
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...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2012/02/02/facebook-
and-don-graham-have-been-very-good-to-each-other/#3a2e789328ba)

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/news/the-
switch/wp/2017/12/07/amazon-wants-a-key-to-your-house-i-did-it-i-regretted-
it/?utm_term=.da8c5883ff1d)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/is-amazon-getting-
to...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/is-amazon-getting-too-
big/2017/07/28/ff38b9ca-722e-11e7-9eac-d56bd5568db8_story.html?utm_term=.062539b02c1a)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/whole-
foods-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/whole-foods-places-
new-limits-on-suppliers-upsetting-some-small-
vendors/2018/01/05/7f58b466-f0a1-11e7-b390-a36dc3fa2842_story.html?utm_term=.e99a4ce3315d)

(Also, but on a different note, GigaOM was sold off because it had previously
shut down and laid off all its writers.)

~~~
gkoberger
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.

~~~
emodendroket
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.

------
chasing
What Peter Thiel did to Gawker is despicable and will no doubt become a
pattern for aggrieved billionaires.

~~~
rufus_2
What Bezos did to WaPo is despicable and became a pattern for aggrieved
billionaires.

~~~
gkoberger
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.

~~~
Pilfer
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.

~~~
messick
> 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.

~~~
Pilfer
The change in coverage occurred before Trump was president, when he was still
a candidate competing for the 2016 Republican nomination.

This wasn't just 'a new interest in reporting on The Whitehouse'.

~~~
emodendroket
I don't know that that makes the Post any different from other news sources.

------
ancorevard
That Gawker is dead should be celebrated.

To call what they did journalism is an insult to journalism.

------
thecolorblue
A perfectly orchestrated hostile take over.

------
untog
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:

[http://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/10/mother-jones-
vander...](http://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/10/mother-jones-vandersloot-
melaleuca-lawsuit/)

(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.

~~~
JonFish85
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.

~~~
nostrademons
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.

~~~
clairity
> 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).

~~~
natecavanaugh
> 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.

~~~
clairity
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.

------
mrgordon
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.

------
heifetz
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?

~~~
sigstoat
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.

------
thrillgore
The ultimate fuck you, above all fuck yous.

I have zero sympathy for Gawker but I must admit this is troubling. Poetic,
but troubling.

~~~
r00fus
It's poetic if you think the language of hostile takeovers are poetry.

------
jaydestro
burning cash to destroy parts of the internet you don't like seems bad. what's
next?

~~~
emodendroket
Isn't Peter Thiel in with the "neoreaction" guys who want to bring back
feudalism, more or less?

------
dingdongding
Bad ass Move. Thug life !

------
lurr
Well, I was on his side until now.

