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MinM

(2,650 posts)
9. Gawker was Murdered by Gaslight
Tue Aug 23, 2016, 12:06 AM
Aug 2016

@Gawker

Gawker was Murdered by Gaslight

A lie with a billion dollars behind it is stronger than the truth. Peter Thiel has shut down Gawker.com...

Gawker.com is out of business because one wealthy person maliciously set out to destroy it, spending millions of dollars in secret, and succeeded. That is the only reason.

The strange and embarrassing thing about being the target of a conspiracy, an actual conspiracy, is that it undermines one’s own understanding of the world. It is true that Gawker was always a publication that took risks. It had bad manners and sometimes bad judgment. Occasionally, it published things that it would regret—just as, for instance, the New York Times has published things that it regrets.

What Thiel’s covert campaign against Gawker did was to invisibly change the terms of the risk calculation. The change begins with the post about Thiel’s sexual identity in a homophobic investor culture, the post Thiel now cites as the inspiration for his decision to destroy Gawker. It was solidly protected by media law and the First Amendment, as were the other posts that, as Thiel wrote, “attacked and mocked people”—specifically, his cohort of rising plutocrats in Silicon Valley. Hurting rich people’s feelings is, in principle, not a punishable offense...

http://gawker.com/gawker-was-murdered-by-gaslight-1785456581

It's not necessarily a free speech issue but it does set a terrible precedent when scumbags like Peter Thiel or Frank VanderSloot can shutdown those they disagree with.

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