Peter Thiel submits bid for Gawker
I suspect these comments will descend into a pit of chaos within a few minutes as everyone talks past each other... but the principle of this disturbs me. Basically, a billionaire secretly funded a lawsuit against a media organisation he doesn&#x27;t like, and now that&#x27;s it has been successful, he wants to scoop up the remains of it and (presumably!) delete it. The free speech implications of that are a little unnerving.<p>Now, I know the immediate retort to that is &quot;Gawker was garbage&quot;, and indeed there&#x27;s a fair case to made that Gawker wouldn&#x27;t have been sued if they hadn&#x27;t opened themselves up to it by doing publishing Hulk Hogan&#x27;s sex tape. But it isn&#x27;t just Gawker - Mother Jones was sued by a billionaire for reporting true fact, simply because he didn&#x27;t like the reporting. He didn&#x27;t even need to win, he just needed to bankrupt them through legal costs, and he nearly succeeded:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.motherjones.com&#x2F;media&#x2F;2015&#x2F;10&#x2F;mother-jones-vandersloot-melaleuca-lawsuit&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.motherjones.com&#x2F;media&#x2F;2015&#x2F;10&#x2F;mother-jones-vander...</a><p>(Thiel followed this same idea by narrowing the suit in such a way that Gawker&#x27;s insurance would not be able to pay out)<p>Personally, I&#x27;m concerned that the individual factors of this case (i.e. Gawker being Gawker) will overshadow the principle at stake, which feels a lot more important than a gossip site.