![]() While many believe that Thiel’s decision-making was driven largely by the publication of a December 2007 article titled “Peter Thiel is totally gay, people,” the situation was more nuanced. A, following a period in which he met with current and former Gawker staffers to understand why he drew the scrutiny of their coverage. Thiel, however, only proceeded with his plan three years later when he met Mr. The revelation of D’Souza’s role paints a clearer picture of Thiel’s plan to finance litigation against Gawker following its 2007 publication of articles he considered invasive and hurtful. D’Souza did not return multiple phone calls to his offices, emails, and a LinkedIn message sent by BuzzFeed News. ![]() Thiel declined an interview for this piece through a spokesperson. He’s left many questions, like those about his exact motivations and how he funded Hogan’s case, unanswered. Since 2016, Thiel has sparingly discussed his role in destroying Gawker, sitting for just three public interviews and writing a single New York Times opinion piece. Two months later, Forbes reported that Thiel had been secretly funding Hogan’s lawsuit, and others, against Gawker Media. The online news outlet, which published clips of a sex tape featuring Hogan and his friend’s wife, lost that case in March 2016, with a Florida jury awarding the plaintiff with a $140 million judgment. ![]() Some will cheer Gawker's destruction and others will lament it, but after reading these pages-and seeing the access the author was given-no one will deny that there is something ruthless and brilliant about Peter Thiel's shocking attempt to shake up the world.D’Souza’s involvement, which has not been previously reported, provides more clarity into how the billionaire technology investor executed a plot that involved paying about $10 million to fund litigation against Gawker, including an invasion of privacy lawsuit brought by former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan. It's a study in power, strategy, and one of the most wildly ambitious-and successful-secret plots in recent memory. In Holiday's masterful telling of this nearly unbelievable conspiracy, informed by interviews with all the key players, this case transcends the narrative of how one billionaire took down a media empire or the current state of the free press. Why had he done this? How had no one discovered it? What would this mean-for the First Amendment? For privacy? For culture? The verdict would stun the world and so would Peter's ultimate unmasking as the man who had set it all in motion. He would come to pit Hogan against Gawker in a multi-year proxy war through the Florida legal system, while Gawker remained confidently convinced they would prevail as they had over so many other lawsuit-until it was too late. Thiel saw their publication of the tape as the opportunity he was looking for. Only later would the world learn that Gawker's demise was not incidental-it had been masterminded by Thiel.įor years, Thiel had searched endlessly for a solution to what he'd come to call the "Gawker Problem." When an unmarked envelope delivered an illegally recorded sex tape of Hogan with his best friend's wife, Gawker had seen the chance for millions of pageviews and to say the things that others were afraid to say. This post would be the casus belli for a meticulously plotted conspiracy that would end nearly a decade later with a $140 million dollar judgment against Gawker, its bankruptcy and with Nick Denton, Gawker's CEO and founder, out of a job. Thiel's sexuality had been known to close friends and family, but he didn't consider himself a public figure, and believed the information was private. In 2007, a short blogpost on Valleywag, the Silicon Valley-vertical of Gawker Media, outed PayPal founder and billionaire investor Peter Thiel as gay.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |