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.