While many readers praised Peter Thiel for his support of a lawsuit against Gawker, some questioned whether he was really a defender of Americans’ privacy, in response to a recent Op-Ed.
Gawker Media was reportedly sold to Univision at auction on Tuesday. The sale followed bankruptcy proceedings resulting from the lawsuit.
Some readers praised the lawsuit that sought damages from Gawker, which had published a sex tape of the wrestler Hulk Hogan that was recorded without his consent. The suit will help protect many women from the vengeful publication of private images, readers said.
“Most beneficiaries of this action will not be the unsympathetic Hulk Hogans of the world — they will be young women who trusted the wrong creep, or a man who might be struggling with his sexuality, or just a person who didn’t deserve to have his most private moments publicly displayed in the name of ‘journalism,’” Tom from DC wrote. “Just because people may want to see such videos, doesn’t mean that unsavory vendors should have a constitutionally protected right to broadcast it.”
Others noted Mr. Thiel’s involvement with other Silicon Valley companies that have been conduits for people who have used sexual images to hurt people. He is on the board of directors of Facebook and is an investor in Reddit.
“I don’t understand how he could be so outraged by ‘revenge porn’ when at least two social media websites he is invested in, Facebook and Reddit, have been called out for not controlling it,” Anne wrote. “Reddit only recently started responding to complaints last year. Are we supposed to believe that Thiel was also secretly fighting to protect people’s privacy on these websites?”
Others said Mr. Thiel has become wealthy from investments in companies that profit from the collection and sale of computer users’ digital histories, including email. In addition to his connections to Facebook and Reddit, he was a co-founder of the big data company Palantir, which serves intelligence agencies and private businesses.
“Social media networks like Facebook, which contributed mightily to Mr. Thiel’s fortune, have made a business model out of appropriating our privacy. These sites alter our online experiences, the news we see, the ads and editorial content we’re presented, and the choices available to us. This is a world Mr. Thiel helped create,” GP wrote from Los Angeles. “Our behaviors are transformed into commodities that are traded without our consent, ostensibly for our benefit but much more significantly for the benefit of others.”
Some readers worried about the chilling effect of lawsuits against media companies, even though most readers said Gawker was wrong to publish the video.
“Super-wealthy people can silence the press,” Jeff wrote from Evanston, Ill. “This may be good for an oligarchy or dictatorship, but it is a serious — I’d say even fatal — blow to a democracy.”