Not OP, but part of it is probably his (successful) attempt to shut down a journalism outlet that he had a personal beef with by bankrupting them with proxy lawsuits. Free press, no matter how much you may not like the stuff an outlet chooses to focus on, is an important part of free democracy, and when billionaires can essentially just lay siege over non-legal matters I consider it an active attempt to erode modern society.

> his (successful) attempt to shut down a journalism outlet

I have no idea how people are able to say this with a straight face. The case was heard in a court of law and the Gawker witnesses behaved so incredibly badly during testimony (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/10/business/media/gawker-edi...) that the judge and jury actually awarded damages that were more than the plaintiff asked for. Now that's impressive, albeit in all the wrong ways.

Whatever Thiel's sins are, helping Bollea bring the Gawker Group to justice isn't one of them.

You're conveniently ignoring the part where Gawker was doing illegal things and therefore lost the lawsuit (getting a verbal smackdown from a judge in the process). Your argument only works if the lawsuits were baseless and/or frivolous.

I'm not sure how you can throw shade on Thiel -- would it be any better if media companies could freely ignore the law as long as the affected individuals lack the funds to take them to court? It's a broken system but I feel no sympathy towards Gawker or animosity towards Thiel.

You're misinterpreting what i'm saying. Gawker did something illegal and they did deserve to pay for it.

The issue is that Thiel had no direct connection to that incident. The issue is that he funded everything because they outed him as gay (completely legal), with the express goal of bankrupting them via lawsuit. He didn't want them to learn a lesson, he wanted to fucking end them.

While he didn't do anything illegal, I think it absolutely counts as eroding modern society.

I'd agree with you that a legal system driven by the individual wealth of the parties involved is corrosive to modern society. I don't see how you can claim that Thiel's actions are, barring some internal bias against him or wealth people as a whole.

Outing Thiel as gay is legal. Thiel funding Hogan is legal. The only party here who fucked up is Gawker by flagrantly skirting the law.

> they outed him as gay (completely legal)

Lol, I don't know about this.

If I were a pretty public outlet media and said to everyone "Hey! foobarchu is gay/tranny/whatever" (without your consent) and that affected your personal life, relationships with other people, etc. Wouldn't you think that is illegal? Or at least it should be in my opinion.

But he’s determined. To destroy society!