> Also its a good lesson to other sites to police content to ensure no one says anything bad about billionaires.

There's a brave new world of pro-billionaires media awaiting us. Just compare this lavish Vanity Fair piece (http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/photos-sean-parker-we...) on Sean Parker's wedding to the ugly reality behind it all, as published by Gawker: http://valleywag.gawker.com/the-full-damage-of-facebook-bill...

> There's a brave new world of pro-billionaires media awaiting us.

As opposed to the brave world of billion-dollar news corporations destroying millionaires.

For context, you really should have published Mr. Parker's defense: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/06/sean-p...

I vaguely remember (please, someone, correct me if I am wrong) an article by Parker explaining the whole affair - my impression was the truth(tm) was someone in the middle. Or it was just very good damage control by Parker...

Neither are particularly helpful. It's all just noise.

Ziff Davis has possible plans to buy Kotaku:

http://www.recode.net/2016/6/10/11904892/memom-here-s-what-z...

Of course, whether those sites should be saved is another question. Some have some good content, but some are exactly the kind of low quality, often legally shaky muckraking that got Gawker sued into oblivion in the first place.

If you like the kind of journalism you currently get from Engadget, Kotaku, Valleywag, et al., you'll still be able to get it even if they're shut down. It's not as though the terms of the decision include the slaughter en masse of the editorial staff and reporters, after all; they'll find jobs elsewhere and continue to get published. Life goes on.

> Also its a good lesson to other sites to police content to ensure no one says anything bad about billionaires.

Or maybe to not publish sex tapes?

they didn't say anything bad about Thiel, the reason he went after them is because they outted him as gay.

Incorrect, that's his sub-excuse. The actual reason is because of Valleywag reporting on e.g. his embarrassing failure of a hedge fund.

Please don't post drive-by insinuations to HN. If you know something, back it up. But please don't lower the quality of discourse here by making things up.

Failure of a hedge fund during the worldwide financial crash, out of which he started two new investment entities (Thiel Capital and Mithril) which are alive and well.

I can't understand why people are so upset about a third party paying legal expenses... what do you think the ACLU, EFF, and tons of other organizations and private citizens (either in individual or collective form) do? A jury (impartial to Thiel and unaware of his involvement) found Gawker and Nick Denton personally guilty. Denton himself is worth over $100 million (Gawker itself was valued according to reports to the court at $80 million, so he has plenty of assets outside Gawker), so this isn't a story of a big financier ganging up on a "little guy" that people are trying to make it out to be.

Source?