It's my perception part of Thiel's motivation was to stop Gawker from outing closet homosexuals.

And the freedom of speech you so vigorously protect was to reveal details of a B-List celebrities sexual activities. Where is the moral courage on that?

Yes Freedom of Speech is paramount among our rights, but it's not inviolately absolute. The Gawker guys were scum but that's not why they lost their lawsuit. They lost their lawsuit because a jury felt their actions lacked news value and were a violation of privacy.

Yes Thiel had a vendetta against Gawker so he funded an unrelated lawsuit against them and used his billions to shut them down. The vendetta stemmed from the fact that the gay founder of Gawker found it horrifying that Thiel would hide his homosexuality when he should be a role model for other homosexuals that you can be gay and still be a rich and powerful VC. Whether or not you agree with Denton on that point, secretly funding unrelated lawsuits against small publications and shutting them down doesn't feel too morally courageous either. There are ways to get a sex tape removed from the Internet that don't involve permanently silencing an entire team of journalists by outspending them in lawsuits.

> shutting them down doesn't feel too morally courageous either

Why? What did the world lose with Gawker?

An independent media organization that uncovered quite a few stories: https://www.wired.com/2016/06/10-stories-exactly-need-gawker...

I don't agree with Wired that all of those were super important but some of them clearly are. For example, Buzzfeed removing articles that were critical of their advertisers, the first exposes of the Silk Road and The Armory, evidence of Greg Hardy abusing his girlfriend, etc.

> Buzzfeed removing articles that were critical of their advertisers

Wasn't that Bethesda? Somewhat important I guess, (not "we should be able to freely out gays" important) but where was Gawker during GamerGate?

> the first exposes of the Silk Road and The Armory

That helped bring it down? Maybe.. But how much investigation did it require. And how harmful was silk road? I'll admit though, if this was the first expose, it was good.

> evidence of Greg Hardy abusing his girlfriend

I'm a little concerned here, the evidence came from "court documents" - so a real court was exchanged for the court of public opinion? Was actual illegality (in court) discovered?

I don't claim to be an expert on all these cases but I think I've made my point.

Regarding Bethesda, the linked Wired article indicates Gawker exposed both Bethesda and Buzzfeed for removing negative articles at different times.

I'm not necessarily anti-Silk Road but exposing it is still worthwhile investigative journalism

We lost a militant vigilante that wants to out private information about people including their sexual preference, apparently.

I never said I would have picked that battle. I simply said spending boatloads of money to shut down the entire publication in response was a strong arm bully tactic.

See my response to the parent comment if you want some actual examples instead of just cherry picking the one you don't like that they famously were shut down for.

This is more about privacy.

i honestly cannot agree with you.

showing a sex tape and refusing to remove it (which is why hogan was suing gawker) from your site is not freedom of press. if it was, the leakage of celebrity pics (also known as 'the fappening') would be fine, no?

also, gawker outed thiel, which is bullshit. people should come out when they are ready, not when a yellow-paged blog decides.

also, let's change genders and say gawker not only leaked but refused to remove jennifer aniston's sex tape from their site. would you call that freedom of press?

Whether or not you think what Gawker did was right, it is a terrible precedent that a billionaire can shut down the entire publication by funding lawsuits for other people against the publisher. There are ways to get the tape removed without simply outspending the press to the point where they cannot feasibly fight your lawsuit.

It is a slippery slope. No one feels too bad about a sex tape getting taken down, but cases like this ensure that journalists will have to self-censor what they publish and err on the conservative side or else risk their entire publication being closed. This has a chilling effect on investigative journalism.

> it is a terrible precedent that a billionaire can

only people without money should be able to sue?

> There are ways to get the tape removed without simply outspending the press to the point where they cannot feasibly fight your lawsuit.

So this is Thiels fault, not Gawker? Gawker got away with a lot of shit before it was finally called on it.

> cases like this ensure that journalists will have to self-censor what they publish

Yes, is that difficult?

> This has a chilling effect on investigative journalism

I disagree, the degrees of freedom Gawker had were far too much, it didn't even try to be fair. What actual good did Gawker do?

> only people without money should be able to sue?

Is this what I said? No. But outspending a publication by an order of magnitude so that they either go bankrupt fighting you or lose the case is an example of how you can abuse the court system if you have way more money than your opponent. Its the same tactics large corporations use to sue small corporations in order to force them to settle regardless of whether they are right or wrong.

>> There are ways to get the tape removed without simply outspending the press to the point where they cannot feasibly fight your lawsuit.

> So this is Thiels fault, not Gawker? Gawker got away with a lot of shit before it was finally called on it.

Well yes, I see it as Thiel's fault because he wasn't a party to the case in any way but decided to give Hogan a blank check to send a huge team of lawyers after Gawker. Even if that was perhaps fair game, they didn't have to sue for so much that they literally shut down the entire organization.

>> cases like this ensure that journalists will have to self-censor what they publish

> Yes, is that difficult?

Yes it is. Its not black and white so there will necessarily be cases in the gray area (cases that could be very important and in the public interest) where publications will say "we can't publish this because we only have $10 million and someone with $10 billion could sue us and we will lose simply based on lawyer fees." For example, see the woman who was sexually harassed by Trump but backed down from talking about it publicly after Trump said he was sending an army of lawyers after her. How can someone who might make say $50,000 defend herself against a multi-billionaire? So we get censorship for no reason other than fear of billionaires suing.

> I disagree, the degrees of freedom Gawker had were far too much, it didn't even try to be fair. What actual good did Gawker do?

I already answered this above but here is one series of examples: https://www.wired.com/2016/06/10-stories-exactly-need-gawker...

I don't agree with Wired that all of those were super important but some of them clearly are. For example, Buzzfeed removing articles that were critical of their advertisers, the first exposes of the Silk Road and The Armory, evidence of Greg Hardy abusing his girlfriend, etc.

> Its the same tactics large corporations use to sue small corporations in order to force them to settle regardless of whether they are right or wrong

The suggestion here is Theil bought the verdict?

> they didn't have to sue for so much

Doesn't the court decide if the amount is fair? And my point about "Gawker got away with a lot of shit" is that it is a net gain - Gawker did more harm then good.

> we will lose simply based on lawyer fees

Was that the case here? Gawker had merit, but could afford to even defend itself?

> there will necessarily be cases in the gray area

Then don't pusblish. Or just publish evidence. Neither apply here; It isn't important that Thiel is/isn't gay, it's important that Gawker shouldn't have published it. Where is the "gray area"? That Denton personally believes this personal information to be important? He should ask a lawyer. Or not use the publication as a vehicle for his personal values.

> How can someone who might make say $50,000 defend herself against a multi-billionaire?

This is a tangent, in in this case, there would be plenty wealthy liberals who hate Trump. Would it be unfair of them to do that?

You think that this kind of thing only happens on the right?

You think that the right-wing parties are more wealthy than the left-wing parties?

You are trying to confirm the "trump is bad" case. But when it is shown that Clinton is the same, and liberals are the same...we have to argue on a case-by-base basis...which is not as easy as calling out conservatives that you don't like.

This is called bias.

I never said this only happens on the right (whether I think it occurs more on the right is a separate argument but not one that I made here). But the post I responded to was saying they voted for Trump (despite his repeated racism, sexism, and bullying) because the poster perceives the left as bullying. My point is simply that Trump and friends are serious bullies so this isn't a credible reason for choosing him over the left.

Here is the exact quote I responded to: "Its ironic that my biggest reason for voting Trump is to stop the bullying from the left"

I think masondixon's point was bullying by the left, not by Clinton. Trump is in fact a bully, and at least some of his friends seem to be too, but that doesn't actually address masondixon's point.

And in fact I think masondixon is right. The left, taken as a whole, is more bullying to most people than the right is. You can argue that, if you're LGBTQ, say, the right is more bullying. If you're just a middle class person with no personal stake in the culture wars, though, the left says that you have to agree with them (and even use their words) or you're a morally bad person who may face ostracism or even lose their job. So for the majority of people, the left is more bullying than the right.

And, as masondixon keeps pointing out, this is all in the context of an election, so how the majority feels is directly relevant.

I strongly disagree.

First of all, more than half the population is female (not to even look at race, sexual orientation, those who don't identify as male or female, etc.) so the majority of people by far are not white males who have "no personal stake in the culture wars." I see every day how people use male pronouns when talking about engineers, implying time and time again that women aren't engineers or that it would be very atypical for them to be. This pushes women out of STEM fields slowly but surely over time, both because they feel they don't belong and because their superiors actually assume males will be better subconsciously due to stereotypes and language norms. You can literally put a man's name on a woman's resume and it is more likely to be accepted.

Secondly, the truth is that in most of America you are still much more likely to be harassed for being female, non-heterosexual, non-caucasian, etc. than for using the wrong pronoun. Its not like every time someone says "he" without knowing the person's gender they get called out on it. I appreciate that the original poster felt strongly about one particular case where it put someone's job at risk, but race, gender, and sexual preference put millions of jobs at risk daily.

> how people use male pronouns when talking about engineers

In French, if there are 99 women and 1 man, you use the masculine plural.

Some languages are sexist, but it ain't a big deal.

> that it would be very atypical for them to be

It currently is atypical for them to be. When there are more, it won't be atypical.

> This pushes women out of STEM fields slowly but surely over time

But do you really think this is about pronouns? I think there are other issues like women making choices to go into other fields for other reasons. There are innate psychological differences between men and women (I'm not even sure I am allowed to say this let alone go near this topic in PC-world).

Open-source programming is a place where your gender doesn't matter at all. No one ever needs to know if you are female if you don't want them to.

Its a very objective field. If I do a code review - I don't ever need to know your gender, and I can judge the quality of your code.

I mean if you are a gun female coder, and someone says "women are scared away by pronouns and are being pushed out", what are you going to think of this?

You don't want a world of male programmers thinking that a women got a job because of some diversity hire.

If I were a male entering a female dominated industry, the thought of telling them to change the she's to they's makes me a little ill.

I'd like to see a survey on women complaining about this.

If there was a quality survey of women saying their top ranked issue preventing them from entering STEM was gendered pronouns, then this would absolutely be the biggest priority!

I think there are bigger issues and this is just a bike-shedding thing that is easy for SV white knights to make themselves feel good over.

> the truth is that in most of America you are still much more likely to be harassed for being female, non-heterosexual, non-caucasian, etc.

100% agree. But the nitpicking over pronouns enrages people, and distracts from the more serious cases of outright and blatant sexism. Everyone is crying wolf these days, and it is driving sexism underground.

I know it sucks real bad, but you have to bring people along with you to change their minds. This is why Trump won.

AnimalMuppet is right.

The key is that the left's bullying aims to shut down the discussion.

The right's does not have the same objectives. It is simply for comedic value to add some flavour to an argument, and get some attention. Most of the time it is the right wanting to engage and debate, and the left refusing.

And the US intervened to cut off julian assange's internet access. They gave hillary debate questions . It's a veritable jungle between media and politics over there.