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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

#101

Post by nikcheerla »

swang wrote: post #96
nikcheerla wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 lega…

Obligatory xkcd about free speech:

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.

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

#102

Post by coldtea »

stcredzero wrote: post #87
coldtea wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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.

>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.

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

#104

Post by coldtea »

wildmusings wrote: post #73
coldtea wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Again, assuming FB and Gawker have the same privacy issues, what you point doesn't really matter. FB's decisions might be influenced by more than just Thiel, but if Thiel feels strongly about privacy (and his views aren't heard on FB) he always…

> Again, assuming FB and Gawker have the same privacy issues, what you point doesn't really matter. They're not comparable. You give information willingly to Facebook and accept their terms of service. I know plenty of very social and successful people who don't use Facebook. Maybe you feel that there should still be additional regulations on Facebook; fine, that's a debate for another day. But it's very clearly diff…

>They're not comparable. You give information willingly to Facebook and accept their terms of service.

Sure -- I agree that they're not comparable (that said, I don't necessarily agree that FB is better than Gawker privacy wise just because it's a different model. In fact I believe the opposite -- and don't particularly care for the "volunteer" part. People volunteer to all kinds of societal harmful stuff).

But my argument above checks to see the validity of the parent's comment after "assuming that they're comparable".

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

#105

Post by spdustin »

serge2k wrote: post #100
microtherion wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> presidential candidate he supports So if Thiel was a democrat then none of this would be a problem?

That's not it, and I think you know it. If Thiel supported any candidate that championed the importance of the press to an informed electorate, it would be better. But right now, he supports a candidate who openly states his desire to strip citizens, in this example the press, of their constitutional rights.

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

#106

Post by swang »

nikcheerla wrote: post #101
swang wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lega…

Obligatory xkcd about free speech: 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.

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.

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

#108

Post by stcredzero »

coldtea wrote: post #102
stcredzero wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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…

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.

That sounds like logic, but it makes much less sense than it sounds. So you're saying it's good to examine the hypocrisy of someone's argument, because of the possibility that there's contradictory facts or implications that the arguer is holding back on us? Not only is that also ad-hominem it's a fuzzy half-logical ad-hominem.

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

#109

Post by spdustin »

serge2k wrote: post #99
swang wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

okay thats just kinda semantics then. he didn't get revenge because he did something wrong. he got revenge because he felt someone else did something wrong. so this is still all about revenge for thiel at the cost of chilling free speech. thiel saying he is defending free speech is disingenuous when the supreme court has given the press considerable latitude to write about someone's sexual orientation. he is mad abou…

> now it is a really shitty thing to do to out someone as gay. but let's not pretend this wasn't thiel's payback. It's absolutely payback, I'm saying I don't have a problem wiht it. I think gawker is getting exactly what they deserve. Thiel/Hogan had to go and prove their argument in court. Do you not trust the court system to preserve free speech? Does this argument apply to everyone, or just billionaires who actual…

> Do you not trust the court system to preserve free speech?

Bankrolling a plaintiff going up against a financially inferior defendant means that the plaintiff's argument may be framed more convincingly than the defendant's. And, not to put too fine a point on it, the jury opted to imperil Gawker's free speech; juries are even more susceptible to impassioned pleas to "think about the real victim" than a judge.

The main issue for me is that Thiel opted to use another case to exact his revenge against a media company, rather than his own. He made Hogan the instrument for his revenge. Sure, Gawker is a pox, but its right to be a pox should be defended with the same fervor with which Thiel's vengeance was exacted. It wasn't. It couldn't have been. That's why it's generally seen as a bad thing when someone an order of magnitude (or more) more wealthy than a defendant puts their money behind a plaintiff when the case isn't about the financier to begin with.

I see why Thiel is a self-styled privacy champion - the crux of his revenge scheme, after all, is that his privacy was violated. But, to me, it seems like a hypocritical assertion; why didn't he take Gawker down for violating his privacy? Did he not think a jury would be enamored enough with him?

The case stinks all over. It's bad for everyone involved. Thiel loses credibility as a champion of privacy, Gawker is on its way out, and Hulk Hogan's own private escapades were paraded out to the public. The whole mess is toxic.

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

#110

Post by r00fus »

tertius wrote: post #69
shanusmagnus wrote: post #42

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.

The Goldwater rule removes the strength of your statement regarding him being a sociopath.

Had to look that one up [1] So is it your understanding that shanusmagnus is a psychiatrist, or am I missing something?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldwater_rule

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