Greg Piper – Tech billionaire Peter Thiel drove Gawker into bankruptcy by funding an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit against the tabloid news site by Terry Bollea, known as former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan, whose sex tape Gawker published.
Gawker’s defenders alleged Thiel’s involvement was “payback” for having outed him as gay several years before.
“It’s less about revenge and more about specific deterrence,” he said in 2016 in his first interview after his identity was revealed. “I saw Gawker pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attention by bullying people even when there was no connection with the public interest.” Continue reading
Jonathan Taplin – Four very powerful billionaires—Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Marc Andreessen—are creating a world where “nothing is true and all is spectacle.” If we are to inquire how we got to a place of radical income inequality, post-truth reality, and the looming potential for a second American Civil War, we need look no further than these four—“the biggest wallets,” to paraphrase historian Timothy Snyder, “paying for the most blinding lights.”