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

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

#131

Post by Natsu »

LA_Banker wrote: post #15
erics32 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're free to propose that we outlaw the funding of lawsuits by non-parties, as was done historically (google 'maintenance' and 'champerty' if you want more history on that) but you're going to shut down the ACLU and company when you do so. So it's a matter of which is more important to you, really.

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

#132

Post by serge2k »

swang wrote: post #116
serge2k wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> It's absolutely payback, I'm saying I don't have a problem wiht it. I think gawker is getting exactly what they deserve. cool. just don't say you (thiel) advocate for free speech when you do that.

I don't.

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

#133

Post by prodigal_erik »

pessimizer wrote: post #81
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…

You're intensely equivocating here. The moral calculus of renouncing your massive profit-making association with a company that you serve on the board of if it chooses to do things that you find morally unacceptable is trivial, and entirely different than when you're a citizen of a country that you serve in the legislature of that decides to do things that you find morally unacceptable. If you're on the losing factio…

If the anti-poison faction resigns, they cede any remaining influence over the organization to the pro-poison faction. Voting "no" is better than giving up your vote in favor of someone who will undoubtedly vote "yes" (and get paid for doing so).

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

#134

Post by mindslight »

harshreality wrote: post #111
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…

My take on Thiel is that he sees himself trying to help navigate between Scylla and Charybdis. On one side, I think he agrees that too much surveillance and data gathering is a problem. He calls himself a libertarian, after all. He just sees the other side as being just as much of a problem, as in this quote (mostly relating to his involvement in Palantir): "As a libertarian, I don't think we should have had the resp…

And therein lies the heart of the phenomenon. Much evil has been done by good people telling themselves that they can prevent evil by wielding evil's power themselves.

Crime can never be totally prevented. Building a tool that attempts to do so will not stop politicians clamoring for even more totalitarianism when the inevitable does happen.

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

#135

Post by solipsism »

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.

I keep seeing "cognitive dissonance" used in this way, and I think it's incorrect. Cognitive dissonance is not holding opposing views simultaneously. It's having a anxiety because of it.

Although your usage could be taken in that way, I'd wonder why you think he experiences any cognitive dissonance at all.

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

#136

Post by vacri »

prodigal_erik wrote: post #133
pessimizer wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're intensely equivocating here. The moral calculus of renouncing your massive profit-making association with a company that you serve on the board of if it chooses to do things that you find morally unacceptable is trivial, and entirely different than when you're a citizen of a country that you serve in the legislature of that decides to do things that you find morally unacceptable. If you're on the losing factio…

If the anti-poison faction resigns, they cede any remaining influence over the organization to the pro-poison faction. Voting "no" is better than giving up your vote in favor of someone who will undoubtedly vote "yes" (and get paid for doing so).

It's not really a moral standpoint if you're not going to win and you benefit anyway.

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

#137

Post by solipsism »

shanusmagnus wrote: post #125
nikcheerla wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accusations of cognitive dissonance are fruitless – there's a sizable block of 'gay conservative Christians' who probably think that you're experiencing cognitive dissonance and that their beliefs make sens given their worldview.

I'm sure that's true about many, perhaps most gay conservative Christians. But Thiel is demonstrably a smart, capable, and educated person, which makes it all the more impressive that his worldview can apparently accommodate what amounts to wizardry, manifested through a dizzying array of fables whose magical interpretation violate both common sense and Occam's razor to a degree I can hardly begin to express. I can u…

It's not so hard to fathom if you abandon the mistaken idea that intelligence is a scalar value. Thiel's capacity to reason and function might be genius in some ways and crippled in others. This idea is most evident when you consider idiot savants (I'm not implying Theil is one).

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

#138

Post by remarkEon »

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! Faggot! Hope you die of AIDS!" falls into the latter category, so I don't really see how that's relevant.

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

#139

Post by will_brown »

prodigal_erik wrote: post #133
pessimizer wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're intensely equivocating here. The moral calculus of renouncing your massive profit-making association with a company that you serve on the board of if it chooses to do things that you find morally unacceptable is trivial, and entirely different than when you're a citizen of a country that you serve in the legislature of that decides to do things that you find morally unacceptable. If you're on the losing factio…

If the anti-poison faction resigns, they cede any remaining influence over the organization to the pro-poison faction. Voting "no" is better than giving up your vote in favor of someone who will undoubtedly vote "yes" (and get paid for doing so).

>Voting "no" is better than giving up your vote in favor of someone who will undoubtedly vote "yes"

Is it? What do you think does more to further the cause and draw awareness, a no vote that doesn't matter and gets no attention or news articles Peter Thiel resigns Facebook board seat over moral objections to FB Privacy Policy?

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

#140

Post by alphonsegaston »

harshreality wrote: post #111
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…

My take on Thiel is that he sees himself trying to help navigate between Scylla and Charybdis. On one side, I think he agrees that too much surveillance and data gathering is a problem. He calls himself a libertarian, after all. He just sees the other side as being just as much of a problem, as in this quote (mostly relating to his involvement in Palantir): "As a libertarian, I don't think we should have had the resp…

I have a hard time taking his libertarianism as anything other than a cynical maneuver to clear the way for corporate autocracy. He writes manifestos arguing against democracy, sits on the board of not one, but two private surveillance firms, and wrote a book about how the best business to be in is monopolies. It's like some negative image of Leninism, where the vanguard party is venture capitalists so the revolution is sabotaged before it begins
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