Maybe Gawker shouldn’t have been digging into his private sex life including publishing a sex tape. It’s not like Thiel funded round after round of litigation until Gawker ran out of money - they lost on the merits.

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hellotheretoday 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

It’s an everyone sucks here situation. Gawker was undeniably shitty for outing thiel and posting a sex tape of hogan and then refusing to take it down. But the impact of the lawsuit was basically that if a billionaire has a vendetta against your media org they can fund a lawsuit even if they are in no way involved. And it’s rumored that Thiel funded several suits, not just hogans, discreetly. Even with hogans he was challenged but was allowed to keep funneling cash to take gawker down

The end result of that is that media orgs are now far more cautious about posting “exposes” of powerful people. Gonzo journalism in America is basically dead except for a handful of independent outlets that have much less impact, funding, and reach. Now it’s substacks of people that used to work for the intercept and rolling stone because media with money is playing it safe posting articles about trumps latest antics and 12 vacation spots you have to check out before you die.

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phil21 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

It's not an everyone sucks situation. A relatively powerful organization well known for playing bully finally picked on someone who happened to be stronger than they anticipated and got what was coming to them.

It's not like they decided to fess up and play nice once they were caught red handed. They decided to double down and act even shittier in court thinking they were still the big bad bullies and finding out the hard way courts don't really like that sort of attitude.

Absolutely no one would be taking Gawkers side here if the victims happened to be more sympathetic. The facts of this case were pretty one sided, as shown by the win in a notoriously difficult to win sort of case. The behavior of Gawker in court was absurd on top of it all.

If this were a case of a SLAPP lawsuit or burying them in legal costs over a series of marginal cases I would agree. It was not. It was simply one of their victims finding the means to finally stand up to an organization that abused it power consistently and with malice. The bully found out the hard way they weren't the biggest bully on the block, and refused to back down.

Nothing of value was lost. Very little of what Gawker was doing was in the public interest. It was life-ruining clickbait at it's worst.

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pwdisswordfishz 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> But the impact of the lawsuit was basically that if a billionaire has a vendetta against your media org they can fund a lawsuit even if they are in no way involved.

How is that different from what was before?

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archerx 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[flagged]

	▲	dang 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Ok, but can you please not post snark and/or post unsubstantive comments to HN? We're trying for something else here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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kotaKat 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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delfinom 4 days ago | parent [-]

Please GMG went to shit when they switched to pushing out absolute click bait trash. And that's driven by how dead traditional website ads are. Only medium with viable ad revenue has been videos for a long time.

Otherwise most of those sites werent anything they needed protection from billionaires besides Gawker. Kotaku was supposed to be a gaming site but instead became an opinionated rag piece that rivals the NYPost.

It was all for the eyeballs chasing whatever pennies are left in website ads.

	▲	lvturner 4 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I don't ever remember Kotaku being a gaming site, even back in 2008 (give or take my memory may off) - always just seemed full of circlejerking garbage back then.
	▲	kotaKat 4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That was after the GMG Union kicked in, they went to mailing in their work once that one happened. That was the second stage of the destruction of Gawker.

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blast 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is an interesting thread from someone who worked on the case (on Hogan's side):

https://x.com/dilanesper/status/1948757550993998192

	▲	bitlax 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		> Gawker published a link to the secretly recorded footage of Erin Andrews (now of Fox Sports) nude in her hotel room, shot through a keyhole. Nobody else in the "legitimate media" did that. Gawker did.

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WarOnPrivacy 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Maybe Gawker shouldn’t have been digging into his private sex life including publishing a sex tape.

Even if one supports this revenge-based justification, it doesn't mitigate the societal harm done when a path is carved out for billionaires to shutter news orgs who print things they don't like.

The societal harm: Republicans weaponizing Gov power and billionaire resources against news outlets - which is happening at this moment.

ref: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44688663