I’m with you on this - for a while io9 and boingboing where my must-visit-dailys. Now, with the corporatisation of boingboing and io9 becoming a sub-gawker blog, I’m feeling a bit rudderless. At least buzzfeed news (nb. the “news” bit at the end there is important, it’s not the same as regular buzzfeed) is still going strong…
Any idea what Charlie Jane is up to now? I haven’t had a chance to hunt down where she went after she (wisely?) bailed just before this happened…
Actually, these days Gawker is basically the Donald Trump Watch Network. They hate them some Trump, and yet his antics account for a huge amount of their content, and have ever since “and some of them, I assume, are good people”.
I think the article, and report, weren’t exactly right in the description about why Gawker filed for Chapter 11. My understanding was they were required to lodge a 50MM bond with the courts, right now, while they worked towards appealing the penalty fine they’ve been hit with. Apparently (and this is according to the Gawker commenteriate) the judge in this case regularly sets fines or penalties that are huge and subsequently cut down significantly on appeal. I took it from the posts on Gawker itself yesterday by the People in Charge that the Chapter 11 filing was because they didn’t have $50 million dollars in the bank for that bond.
I don’t want to come across like an apologist (though I enjoy many of the Gawker Media sites, I think they were wrong to not at least take down the sex tape clip when told to, if indeed avoid posting it in the first place), but I don’t think they are filing specifically to avoid that fine, especially as it’s not due yet (but that bond is).
He decided to pursue damages within the legal system. He didn’t do it himself. If he had chosen to destroy them, he’d likely have ripped his shirt off and used at least one suplex.
Besides, what better harbinger for the death (or at least reigning in) of gossip media than an acrobatic clown?
CJ is writing her next novel full time. Which I absolutely do not begrudge her. She’s an amazing author. In some ways I feel more for Annalee. She writes for Ars but I don’t see much of her voice coming through and I don’t like digging through the site for her stuff. She had a good thing going with iomodo but Gawker torpedoed it by apparently shopping around for buyers for io9 behind her back.
Also, Peter Thiel is now like Captain Lou Albano, handing the Hulkster a chair under the ropes when the ref “isn’t looking”.
At least Kinja is better than the Fell Dreaded Disqus.
Annalee and Joel Johnson need to start something new together. I’d daily-read the heck out of that. Joel’s work here as tech-writer for a while was terrific. His post about his child sexual abuse showed tremendous writing chops on non-tech (and will stay with me, along with Xeni’s first post about having cancer) long after boingboing finally gets sued into oblivion by a billionaire Cory annoys.
edit - anyone know any good sci-fi tv blogs that aren’t io9? The various sites mentioned (Verge, Inverse, Motherboard and Ars) are all more sciency than about sci-fi.
Except it was made quite clear in the case that “Hulk Hogan”, the media personality (and thus, someone that the public can have an interest in, meaning it’s ok to post about their sex life), is distinct from Terry Bollea, who was the guy that actually did the effing, and the suing. Thiel’s lawyers argued Terry was the guy on that tape, not Hulk, and so the public had no right to have an interest in him or what he gets up to, which made posting the video an invasion of privacy of a private citizen.
(I know you’re just having a laugh about how ridiculous this situation is, but I think the fact that this was even something that was brought up highlights how far Thiel wanted his lawyers to go to ensure they destroyed Gawker.)
this wasn’t about Hulk Hogan’s sex life. It was documentation of sex, subsequently ascribed to the character.
there are venn diagrams involved in this, but Hulk Hogan is within the performer. There is a difference without a distinction there, something human beings understand intuitively.
(I know you’re just having a laugh about how ridiculous this situation is, but I think the fact that this was even something that was brought up highlights how far Thiel wanted his lawyers to go to ensure they destroyed Gawker.)
I am justly having a laugh. There are a lot of massively oversized egos involved, and the only death so far is that of a corporate entity, a ghost. It would make good theater.
How was it not about Terry/Hulk’s sex life? It was a video of him having sex with his ex-best friends wife. Had the article been written as “a video exists of this thing”, Gawker would have been in the clear.
there are venn diagrams involved in this, but Hulk Hogan is within the performer. There is a difference without a distinction, something human beings understand intuitively.
Absolutely, and yet that didn’t stop Theil’s lawyers arguing that they should not be conflated, because apparently while Hulk is the public persona of Terry, while he’s not being Hulk Hogan, he doesn’t count as someone the public can have an interest in (this is important since celebrities ‘waiving’ a right to privacy as part of becoming famous has been well established by the courts, and allows for ‘reporting’ on them by Gawker/TMZ etc that wouldn’t normally be ok of a non-celebrity, and would indeed be more like stalking). I’m not saying it makes sense, or is even vaguely honest, what I am saying is that is what his lawyers argued, and is also why he couldn’t suplex anyone in court 
Oh stahp. You keep mentioning this aspect. Whatever marylou.
arguing that they should not be conflated, because apparently while Hulk is the public persona of Terry, while he’s not being Hulk Hogan, he doesn’t count as someone the public can have an interest in
Hulk is the property of WWE (or was, often) in much the same way Mickey Mouse, or the Blue Men are. Terry is a performer, and his having had sex with his uncles cousins second daugher, and documented it, really isn’t any of our business. gross.
Do you know who Peter Thiel is? He’s a libertarian, openly anti-democratic, anti-equality billionaire who’s said things like women’s suffrage was a bad idea (yes, he’s also an MRA), and is an open oligarch who wants to see only those he sees fit rule society, where the rulers turn out to be billionaires like him. While he made his early money off Paypal and a lucky early investment in Facebook, these days he’s running a CIA backed business designed to violate private citizens’ privacy to outsource work for the NSA and CIA. He’s a very intelligent man, deeply vindictive, and puts a lot of money into political causes he likes, which mostly involve eroding the foundations of our democracy. He’s a Libertarian Sheldon Adelson.
Hogan had something terribly wrong done to him by Gawker, who should definitely have seen justice. Then Lex Luthor popped in, and offered to help with $10 million in legal aid and guidance. Luthor, secretly and behind the scenes, used the huge legal advantage he had against a media company he wanted to see destroyed for something they’d reported about him, so in a very unusual legal move, had them structure damages so that Gawker’s insurance wouldn’t be able to cover them, all so he could get his revenge.
Gawker’s top brass are villains and somewhat toxic to our society with their irresponsibility.
Thiel is a billionaire supervillain secretly tailoring court cases to achieve outcomes designed to destroy media companies he hates for revenge, with greater goals to erode the democratic foundations of our society.
Hogan is a pawn.
If you’re aware of the context of who Thiel is, and what his goals are, and are okay with seeing him further empowered to secretly abuse the court system to accomplish his goals, and pursue outcomes that don’t realize justice, but vengeance for oligarchs, and still think this outcome was just, that’s fine, and we can agree to disagree.
Yes, I am perfectly fine with a precedent being set for tabloids publishing stolen sex tapes and outing persons not in the public’s interest. Gawker’s properties will continue to exist.
If you want to separately go after billionaires bankrolling private lawsuits I can also support you there.
Though I am curious if there are any other interesting recent examples of the phenomenon.
There have been a few recent cases of billionaires trying to silence the media, the VanderSloot case being the most recent:
There were a few others, but I’m heading out for the day so no time to build a list.
Theil’s involvement wasn’t deliberately revealed, so if there are cases of billionaires secretly manipulating court cases to quash forms of the media they want silenced you aren’t guaranteed to ever hear about them, though I don’t recall having heard about others.
Right, but a direct suit, not using a proxy victim.
I don’t think “you have too much money to devote towards suing us” is a realistic thing that can be protected against, and these billionaires are suing BECAUSE they’ve received bad press, so what’s more due to the suit itself?
How do you protect against the baddies without keeping that from affecting good persons from being able to assist the downtrodden? Or is that more of a scenario that doesn’t happen due to pro-bono work?
An open question to anyone reading this thread: in these sort of situations, what recourse is available to the conscientious writers and editors working for Gawker Media? I’m asking this mostly for my own education.
If I understand you correctly: the decision in this civil lawsuit was itself valid, but the forces bolstering its defense have a malicious trajectory aimed at the heart of journalism itself.
So glad you said this, because it needed to be said.
If the properties and writers move on to a different ownership company with a direction that will not incorporate the same utter sleaze, is this a net negative?
