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Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

nytimes.com

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Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#11

Post by serge2k »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #9

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 journalis…

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.

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#12

Post by serge2k »

blintz wrote: post #6

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 impli…

> 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!"

He's gay.

This all started because Gawker outed him years ago.

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#13

Post by swang »

serge2k wrote: post #11
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #9

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 journalis…

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.

lol yeah this is definitely not about revenge. lies in wait for 7 years

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#14

Post by onetimeusename »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #9

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 journalis…

But what about when Gawker(or other media) can afford lawyers but people legitimately harmed by Gawker cannot? I am not sure why Peter Thiel is being made out to be the bad guy here because he is a billionaire. The courts decided where the line was and Terry Bollea was awarded. What he did was charitable. I don't think those quotes are inconsistent.

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#15

Post by LA_Banker »

erics32 wrote: post #10
LA_Banker wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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...

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.

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#16

Post by serge2k »

swang wrote: post #13
serge2k wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

lol yeah this is definitely not about revenge. lies in wait for 7 years

revenge for wrongdoing on his part.

Far as I know they outed him as a homosexual. That's not wrongdoing on his part.

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#17

Post by 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...

(reposted from other submission)

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#18

Post by yabatopia »

Analemma_ wrote: post #17

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 s…

Maybe he's just being sarcastic, like his buddy Trump.

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#19

Post by dominotw »

Analemma_ wrote: post #17

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 s…

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

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#20

Post by sbov »

Analemma_ wrote: post #17

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 s…

Even ignoring the differences between the privacy issues of Gawker vs Facebook, the decisions a company makes are influenced by more than just one person, and nothing posted here says anything of Peter Thiel's views on privacy with respect to Facebook.
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