I was assured this was only about Gawker!
The Mail has settled with Melania Trump in the US and UK for an undisclosed amount. FT is reporting $3m, including fees (which could easily be the bulk of that)
Definitely all about protecting privacy, and not making a billionaire richer.
I still don’t know who you are arguing with about this. Rich people (e.g. George Soros) and organizations (e.g. NAACP, EFF) fund lawsuits with ulterior motives all the time. No one here has, as far as I can tell, ever claimed that Theil’s motivations are pure. But I don’t see how you can draw some line that says he can’t do it because you find him objectionable but other people can because you like them better.
Newegg famously helps other companies fight patent trolls and helps fund their lawsuits. They are doing this for their own financial purposes. Should they not be allowed to?
Well, they are upfront about their motivations. During comments to the press, he literally said, “I am not doing this for any sort of compensation, this is about personal privacy rights” And he certainly got a taste of the payout.
“Mr. Thiel’s funding of the Bollea action was driven by an economic
motivation as well as a desire to protect privacy rights,” his lawyers
wrote in arguing that Gawker’s attempts to seek discovery from the
billionaire should be dismissed by New York-based federal bankruptcy
judge Stuart Bernstein.
It’s a 180-degree turn from the billionaire has said previously. The day after Forbes revealed his role in bankrolling Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker, Thiel told The New York Times, “I would underscore that I don’t expect to make any money from this. This is not a business venture.”
Though, I guess anyone in the Trump-bandwagon could give two shits about being truthful to the public, ever.
I have no problems believing he didn’t really expect to make a bunch of money, or even win the case so decisively, when he funded the lawyers to go after Gawker.
Having seen huge news organizations repeatedly decline to break stories about Weinstein, and now Louis CK, I am reminded more and more how much I appreciated how hard Gawker would go against abusers like this. First rumors I heard about CK were an anonymous blind item on a Gawker site, and they tiptoed around naming CK, but you got the idea.
Wish they were still around to break stories like this. They were fearless in publishing (Obviously to a fault) But I think the world needs that now more than ever.
The Hispanic media company said Tuesday that it has initiated a formal process to explore the sale of the Gizmodo Media Group (GMG) and The Onion, in which Univision owns a majority stake.
“The company determined that pursuing a sale of GMG and The Onion collectively will allow UCI to focus on its core assets and further strengthen UCI’s position as the No. 1 media company serving U.S. Hispanics, while enabling both GMG and The Onion even greater opportunities to grow under new ownership,” Univision said in a statement.
The GMG digital portfolio includes Gizmodo, Jezebel, Deadspin, Lifehacker, Splinter, The Root, Kotaku, Earther and Jalopnik and The Onion portfolio includes, The Onion, Clickhole, The A.V. Club and The Takeout.
And here’s who now owns Gawker.com. I certainly don’t mourn the site, but this guy is a straight up douche.
I came here to post that.
I guess if you have enough money you can say stuff like this and they won’t fire you from your job. Clearly someone doesn’t understand how important public image is in terms of their social media profile.
He’s absolutely terrible. He is unfortunately the owner which is why he isn’t fired.
It is bonus insane to me because I can see how his previous site Bleacher Report’s userbase might not (on aggregate) care about how much he sucks, after he sold that he started a site focused towards women called Bustle. I would have thought he’d alienate readers and writers but somehow it is very successful. I don’t get it (although admittedly I purposefully avoid anything he does)
I gotta assume he is pretty hands-off on that one.
Deadspin lives, sort of!
Excited about this. Already did a year sub.
I too am here for this.
Yeah, super happy!