They outed him. Let’s not soft-pedal this, Gawker Media took an ideological stance on sexual expression, and violated the privacy of numerous individuals in the name of proving that they were gay. Outside of this ideology, there’s basically no justification for telling the world that Peter Thiel is gay, unless you want to consider the notion that Gawker was simply making money by indulging the public’s taste for prurient gossip. In fact, there’s a lot of other behavior that Gawker engaged in, including publishing the Hogan sex tape and early Fappening dumps to support the non-ideological motivation of Gawker.
There’s all this sturm and drang about Thiel using his money to take on free expression, which is silly. Gawker wasn’t free expression incarnate, it wasn’t a charity, it was some content verticals published by a rich guy who got sued by another rich guy. As someone who read Gawker, and appreciated it, especially after they had their moment of clarity post-David Geithner, it sucks that it’s gone, but none of this happened in a vacuum.
As for the notion that third parties shouldn’t fund ideology-driven lawsuits on behalf of total strangers, where does that leave the ACLU? Or the EFF? Are we under the illusion that these orgs aren’t also funded by rich people?
