Thiel shows why tech billionaires are the new robber barons

It would have been hilarious if someone had similarly casually dismissed the uproar software engineers were making over Oracle v Google: Note that the only entities complaining about API copyrights are themselves developers. They're just closing ranks

The two events are part of a larger narrative (for me) in which Thiel is attempting to redress. That narrative is inspired by his own negative treatment in outing his sexuality.

You also said something disturbing..."voicemail hack ...almost universally condemned because it targeted victims and those with almost no power."

Why on earth do you think it becomes morally justified for for-profit media entities to hack and invade the private lives of citizens simply because they have achieved a fame or some power in some sphere?

That is mind-boggling. You are saying that if your father or mother or sister or you became famous you would consent to the public destroying your private life through illegal actions in order to sell papers or generate clickbait.

Seriously, how can you reconcile that?

Exactly. You shouldn't need $10M to sue someone for a grave invasion of privacy.

It's also true that groups such as the EFF are funded in large part by corporations and billionaire foundations (although not exclusively).

However, there is a crucial distinction between the EFF and what Thiel did. The EFF is an issue-driven organization. They issue position statements and operate in public. Their lawsuits are specific to the issues they advocate. The public has the ability to debate these issues and ultimately evolve the law around them. They have that balance of power.

Thiel's objective was simply to run Gawker out of business. He pursued a variety of lawsuits on a diversity of claims that were united only in their goal of censoring a publication. That is not principled philanthropy. Operating in secret and without a principled issue focus, he does not face a balance of power from the public.

If Thiel funded a privacy-advocacy foundation that gave legal aid to victims and engaged in principled public debate, that would be one thing. But that's not what he did here.

Here, one very wealthy individual used his money to fund someone else's lawsuit. He did so secretly. He did so against an organization that had harmed him and against which he presumably wanted payback but that also had done a gratuitously damaging and sleazy act as part of a pattern of sleazy acts upon which it had built its erstwhile presumably profitable venture, hence presumably deserving payback.

So what does this say about Silicon Valley? Well, nothing at all, really. Both before and after this incident, Silicon Valley was, is and remains a place where multiple tech entrepreneurs and those who back them financially have built amazing ventures (and fortunes) that have reshaped all of world commerce even while many others failed. The thing that is new and different is the tech and the ways of using it to disrupt old-style business models. What is not different is the people. As with people everywhere, some are great, others sleazy, still others ravenously greedy, still others amazingly kind and gracious - in short, people who come in all shapes and sizes. I guess they are on average more educated and accomplished than average folks but the personal traits that define them, both good and bad, are pretty much the same as with people everywhere.

I don't know Mr. Thiel and don't know any more about him than what the headlines say. He may be fully justified in taking this action (it is a perfectly legal thing to do) or he may be displaying traits deserving our opprobrium. What I am sure of is that his actions here, good or bad, have little or nothing to do with what other prominent tech entrepreneurs do or how they think or how they run their companies.

So the logic of this piece - Mr. Thiel did x as a private act in his life, therefore all Silicon Valley tech billionaires stand indicted, therefore the public will now see them as no different than robber barons - seems to rest on multiple non sequiturs that really need to be more carefully thought through.

I guess we are conditioned to accept this sort of sloppy reasoning when it comes to discussing the very rich but this seems like a way-over-the-top overreaction to an individual episode that is what it is but that reflects very little on the broader environment surrounding it (or, if it does, not in ways that can be generalized in the crazy ways the author does here).