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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

#151

Post by kbenson »

snsr wrote: post #146
kbenson wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you have something specific to say regarding Peter Thiel's specific contribution to Facebook's current or past stance on privacy, I think you are being far too alarmist with an entirely unsupported position. For example, it's entirely possible that Peter Thiel is part of a losing faction of the board that values more privacy, and has actually been a force for the better with regard to privacy at Facebook? Is t…

> I have no evidence as to how Peter Thiel truly feels about privacy in general Thiel founded Palantir.

Which would have been a wonderful fact to include as supporting evidence, yet it was not. Like I said, I'm not defending Thiel, I'm condemning accusations without good evidence. I wouldn't have had anything to complain about if that was included.

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

#152

Post by FireBeyond »

remarkEon wrote: post #138
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…

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! Fagg…

"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.

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

#153

Post by FireBeyond »

pandaman wrote: post #83
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think 'one man and one woman' is if not a biblical model of marriage?

It's called "monogamy" and existed in such biblical places as the USSR and PRC.

What does monogamy have to do with sexual orientation?

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

#154

Post by NotSammyHagar »

snsr wrote: post #146
kbenson wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you have something specific to say regarding Peter Thiel's specific contribution to Facebook's current or past stance on privacy, I think you are being far too alarmist with an entirely unsupported position. For example, it's entirely possible that Peter Thiel is part of a losing faction of the board that values more privacy, and has actually been a force for the better with regard to privacy at Facebook? Is t…

> I have no evidence as to how Peter Thiel truly feels about privacy in general Thiel founded Palantir.

So to clarify for those not in the know, he does not care about people's privacy, and is happy to build companies that want to spy on your social activities, and sell the surveillance capability to the us govt.

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

#155

Post by FireBeyond »

serge2k wrote: post #112
swang wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

"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."

Apropos of anything else and the merits thereof, the courts have held that billionaires are public figures whether they particularly wish to be or not because of the disproportionate level of influence they wield or are capable of wielding.

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

#156

Post by incogitomode »

hsod wrote: post #148
incogitomode wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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.

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.

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

#157

Post by swang »

vanattab wrote: post #124
swang wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what does any of that have to do with any of this case? did any of this incite illegal acts or acts that resulted in violence? no. that part of your post has zero relevance to either my post or to the current situation (did someone kill someone? did someone make someone cause someone else to commit an illegal act?) i said outing peter thiel is not illegal. and in fact the supreme court has ruled that reporting facts…

>i said outing peter thiel is not illegal. and in fact the supreme court has ruled that reporting facts is permissible. _but_ it is a really shitty thing to out people. What does this have to do with the case? The case is about a sex tape not outing thiel.

the reason he helped hulk hogan was because gawker, "outed" him about 9 years ago. this article is not about the gawker case. it is... i don't know, thiel gloating? trying to deflect any criticism? trying to continue to punish gawker by posting this article the day before final bids for gawker are being accepted?

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

#158

Post by shimon_e »

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…

Peter Thiel seems to be the polar opposite to a majority of Facebook's board. Not to say you don't have a point.

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

#159

Post by MichaelBurge »

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #154
snsr wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have no evidence as to how Peter Thiel truly feels about privacy in general Thiel founded Palantir.

So to clarify for those not in the know, he does not care about people's privacy, and is happy to build companies that want to spy on your social activities, and sell the surveillance capability to the us govt.

Do you mean social media sites? People voluntarily give up that information to the public, so it could reasonably not be considered private.

The sex tape would be considered private.

Presumably he draws his line somewhere between those two extremes.

Has he done anything inconsistent with the position "The paparazzi should not write scandalous articles about famous people"? For example, has he invested in companies similar to Gawker? If not, I don't see any real conflict in his position.

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