If You Care About Innovation, Peter Thiel vs. Gawker Should Worry You
Why should you care about Peter Thiel vs. Gawker?
Peter Thiel may have foot the bill for Hulk Hogan's very expensive lawsuit against Gawker media for publishing his sex tape with his best friend's wife - but the court found for Hogan and ruled against Gawker fair and square. Nothing to see here, move on.
Well, no.
Thiel considers his extensive bankrolling of the Hogan lawsuit - and five others - to be "philanthropic" (and not just philanthropic, “one of my greater philanthropic things that I’ve done." Yes, THAT philanthropic!). He is characterizing it as a social good, based on his feelings and opinions.
"Feh, who cares!" says you, busy Silicon Valley investor or entrepreneur who just wants to keep your head down and build a great product! "I don't care about Gawker, they're mean to us anyway! This has nothing to do with me!"
"Feh, who cares!" says you, busy Silicon Valley investor or entrepreneur who just wants to keep your head down and build a great product! "I don't care about Gawker, they're mean to us anyway! This has nothing to do with me!"
Actually, it does.
This is not about siding with Hulk Hogan or Gawker, or even Peter Thiel as someone meting out justice to those who hath wronged him. This is about the squashing of innovation.
Say what you will about Gawker, it's been a trailblazer in media for more than a decade, going from one flagship upstart site to a powerful network of news and niche sites that have systematically disrupted the market. Gawker, Jezebel, Valleywag, Deadspin, Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Kotaku - even the car site, Jalopnik - have all wielded influence in their respective domains and beyond. They've made waves, headlines, and money - $45 million, to be exact, in total revenue for Gawker Media in 2014.
Gawker Media is a startup success story - even more rare, a media startup success story - and however you may feel about the site, that fact cannot be denied. (People have issues with sites like Facebook, Snapchat, Amazon, Tinder - you don't have to like them, but you can't argue that they are not successful.) So when one of Silicon Valley's most powerful investors declares it his "philanthropic" mission to destroy it, that's squashing innovation.
It's not just squashing this one company though: As Felix Salmon points out, Thiel has effectly created a playbook for any heedless rich person to bankroll an enemy out of business:
It's not just squashing this one company though: As Felix Salmon points out, Thiel has effectly created a playbook for any heedless rich person to bankroll an enemy out of business:
"Thiel, by funding Hulk Hogan, has managed to change the world. He has made the lives of all news organizations much more precarious, and he has created a whole new weapon which can be used by any evil billionaire against any publisher. And the whole thing cost him merely $10 million or so. Quite a return on invested capital!"
That's a big deal! Billionaires like Sheldon Adelson and Donald Trump are already on an offensive toward the free press. (Adelson stealth-bought the Las Vegas Review Journal; Trump wants to "open up" libel laws so it's easier for him to sue news organizations when they catch him in a lie.) Can you really see Sheryl Sandberg trying to bury The Feminist Wire for publishing bell hooks? Sara Blakely trying to pound xoJane into oblivion for writing an anti-Spanx article? Marissa Mayer firebombing Vox because it had the temerity to acquire Recode - and Kara Swisher? Never mind that this list of young billionaires could frivolously-litigate any number of startups into oblivion.
But back to Thiel, whose so-called "philanthropy" has strayed beyond mere media vendettas. Thiel was also revealed to have backed anti-abortion video fraudster James O'Keefe in 2009, the year of his "sting" against ACORN. So I guess any publication daring to run pro-choice articles could come under Thiel's "philanthropic" ambit. Maybe Slate shouldn't be so quick to publish Amanda Hess (or Amanda Marcotte, for that matter. Maybe they should just play it safe and never publish anyone named Amanda again!).
If you think this is only about media companies think again. Every company is a media company now - they're on Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, making viral videos, publishing in-house websites, you name it. Retweets aren't endorsements? Tell it to the judge! Think your pretty catalog is innocuous? Trick question, nothing is innocuous. Just ask Land's End!
It's one thing for Silicon Valley to use its money to build. It's another thing for Silicon Valley to use its money to tear down.
(And by the way can we stop for a second and think of how antithetical to progress it is to spend millions bankrolling frivolous legal cases? There are countless young entrepreneurs of all stripes slaving to make their world-changing dream a reality, on a shoe string. Even a modest investment can make all the difference. Can you imagine the good Peter Thiel could have done if he'd just put his Gawker money into a few good companies? Countless startup alleys weep for that cheddar.)
(Speaking of weeping - people who are actually engaged in philanthropy, try not to think about how that kind of money could have helped the people you serve. You can Save The Children - or you can wage lawsuit battle with Gawker Media! Hey Doctors Without Borders - you're also Doctors Without Millions From Peter Thiel! It would be nice to have school supplies, poverty-stricken kids of DonorsChoose, but someone was mean to Peter Thiel and NOW THEY MUST PAY.)
Sorry. That was depressing. Sorry to pile on, but there is one more reason why people who care about innovation should be unsettled by Peter Thiel's crusade against Gawker: his support of Donald Trump.
Thiel is a registered GOP delegate for Trump. Yes, this is your problem.
There is a bright line to be drawn between Thiel's support of the Hogan lawsuit against Gawker and his support of Donald Trump, and that is the squashing of innovation.
We already know of Trump's hostility for a free press (Vox's Matt Yglesias has the depressing rundown here). But for a second let's move beyond his petty sulking over legitimate journalism to his misogynist, racist, xenophobic tendencies.
There is a bright line to be drawn between Thiel's support of the Hogan lawsuit against Gawker and his support of Donald Trump, and that is the squashing of innovation.
We already know of Trump's hostility for a free press (Vox's Matt Yglesias has the depressing rundown here). But for a second let's move beyond his petty sulking over legitimate journalism to his misogynist, racist, xenophobic tendencies.
Trump's focus on promoting white supremacy above all else is anti-progress and anti-innovation, full stop. Diversity - women, black people, Latinos, immigrants -fuels progress and innovation. Full stop. I know sometimes it seems like Silicon Valley thinks everything that was ever worth having was invented by white dudes, but guess what - when you add women, people of color and other less-privileged groups to the pool, even more innovation happens! (It's simple math. Hi ho, I'm a woman in STEM!) Diversity is the rising tide that lifts all boats - and never mind that it makes for more successfully-run businesses.
(The phrase "white supremacy" can be used here both ways - lower case, denoting enhanced privilege, standing and opportunity for white people over all others, or upper case, to denote the White Supremacist movement which believes that and also includes the KKK, which Trump famously didn't know enough about to reject or not. Also it was unfair of Jake Tapper to ask him about it.)
As long as we're looking to free up potential innovation, why not get chilled over Thiel and Trump's war against abortion? We already know Thiel funded James O'Keefe - and we know that Donald Trump wants to fill Antonin Scalia's right-wing anti-abortion seat on the Supreme Court with, well, someone else right-wing and anti-abortion. Given that whether to have a child is the single most significant economic decision a woman can make; and given that sometimes children are born to two parents, thus becoming the single most significant economic decision two people can make; and given that sometimes one or more of those parents are men, it seems clear that restricting the right to choose whether or not to have a child directly impacts the ability of women and men to pursue their entrepreneurial, paradigm-disrupting entrepreneurial dreams. (Consider if Mark Zuckerberg had knocked up a girl in his Harvard freshman dorm, except that dorm was in rural Texas. Would we have Facebook today? Think about that, Peter Thiel!)
(The phrase "white supremacy" can be used here both ways - lower case, denoting enhanced privilege, standing and opportunity for white people over all others, or upper case, to denote the White Supremacist movement which believes that and also includes the KKK, which Trump famously didn't know enough about to reject or not. Also it was unfair of Jake Tapper to ask him about it.)
As long as we're looking to free up potential innovation, why not get chilled over Thiel and Trump's war against abortion? We already know Thiel funded James O'Keefe - and we know that Donald Trump wants to fill Antonin Scalia's right-wing anti-abortion seat on the Supreme Court with, well, someone else right-wing and anti-abortion. Given that whether to have a child is the single most significant economic decision a woman can make; and given that sometimes children are born to two parents, thus becoming the single most significant economic decision two people can make; and given that sometimes one or more of those parents are men, it seems clear that restricting the right to choose whether or not to have a child directly impacts the ability of women and men to pursue their entrepreneurial, paradigm-disrupting entrepreneurial dreams. (Consider if Mark Zuckerberg had knocked up a girl in his Harvard freshman dorm, except that dorm was in rural Texas. Would we have Facebook today? Think about that, Peter Thiel!)
The point is, quite apart from any moral judgments about diversity or, you know, basic reproductive rights, from a business and progress perspective, it should concern Silicon Valley denizens who purport to care about progress that Peter Thiel is engaged on all these actual and potential innovation-squashing endeavors.
However one may feel about Gawker, there are larger issues at play here than just one rich dude bankrolling (bank-trolling?) one controversial news site. It's about power and money silencing voices and suppressing facts. It's about narrowing access to information, and to capital. It's about chilling progress, and stifling innovation. It's about the worst, most curdled underbelly of "Make America Great Again," which is a dog whistle for protect ye thy privilege. It's about afflicting the afflicted and comforting the comfortable.
There's something poetic with closing this piece with a showtune - not that there's anything wrong with that! - and citing Rent: "The opposite of war isn't peace - it's creation." So the next time you hear about a billionaire going to war on someone or something, take it personally. Because tearing down is not the same as building up.
There's something poetic with closing this piece with a showtune - not that there's anything wrong with that! - and citing Rent: "The opposite of war isn't peace - it's creation." So the next time you hear about a billionaire going to war on someone or something, take it personally. Because tearing down is not the same as building up.
Rachel Sklar is a writer and founder of TheLi.st. Gawker has written mean things about her, too, but she got over it.
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