hey gawker dudes. what the fuck is wrong with you?

Cant believe billionaires get to do legal stuff that i cant afford to do hows that fair

good question, deems

Like what do you think "the press" was like at the time the Constitution was drafted, Bruneau? Like the golden era of Walter Cronkite and Huntley/Brinkley? No, it was tremendously partisan and opinionated. If it hadn't been -- and this should be patently obvious -- the First Amendment would have been largely superfluous.

the idea that we might erect barriers to separate the power of extreme wealth from politics is quite popular at the moment.

Which is my point - any time you have such insane wealth floating around in the hands of a few, they cannot be bound. We can talk all we want about reform and the right way to do things but so long as there are Thiels and Kochs and Gateses and Zuckerbergs, they're always going to win.

Milo killin it itt imo

Thiel's crime is not the "attack on the press," it's the influence and power of wealth. ILX demographics point to us all being good liberals-to-progressives, believers in the power of mass movements/boycotts/etc.. Those are used to influence/shutter businesses that do things we find disagreeable. Thiel isn't fundamentally doing anything differently, it's just that his billions give him power comparable to millions of people acting together.

Which is why the stuff about "freedom of the press" is semantically important - go that route and we can't tell Sheldon Adelson to fuck off and die, we have to listen when rightwing nutbags yell about free speech when racists and homophobes get shouted down.

i think both left and right could do to expand their definitions of freedom of speech/press. look at how we're tying ourselves into knots trying not to use an argument that could also condemn the college kids trying to ban problematic speakers that we defend in other threads via a very rigid definition of free speech.

xp that comparison is slightly too cynical about the ways mass movements/boycotts/etc could operate. they have their potential for conformism, participation out of vanity, self-interested motives, etc., but they are premised on an actual agreement between the participants on some point of moral concern - often at not inconsiderable inconvenience to themselves (when what's boycotted is basically a necessity for them), as opposed to the lower negative marginal utility of a billionaire spending to get his way.

but the billionaire wielding power is more likely to elicit complicity, quiescence, on account of what his money can do for him, not any real agreement with what he does.

not sure you can eliminate rich ppl having legal leverage without the whole operation coming apart. as long as legal service cost money ppl with more of it are gonna be able to spend more on them. maybe there's a way to finagle it in but it's not obvious to me

Which is my point - any time you have such insane wealth floating around in the hands of a few, they cannot be bound. We can talk all we want about reform and the right way to do things but so long as there are Thiels and Kochs and Gateses and Zuckerbergs, they're always going to win.

i disagree. i don't believe that the mere existence of massive wealth guarantees the unchecked freedom of the extremely wealthy to do whatever the fuck they want in any/every arena. i reject the implicit "but first we've got to dismantle capitalism" argument. short of that, we can and should work pragmatically to limit the ability of wealth to inflence politics and the law.

as long as legal service cost money ppl with more of it are gonna be able to spend more on them

that's the key. this must be radically curtailed.

so long as there are Thiels and Kochs and Gateses and Zuckerbergs, they're always going to win.

I love how there's only two energy business billionaires in this list, and only because they spend their dumb money in public on right wing kitsch, like buying Scott Walker and the Cato Institute. The BP and Exxon and Shell fuckos have been so much better at staying out of the public consciousness than these other "philanthropists" - rank amateurs, all. Oh, and how 'bout them Waltons?

Anyway, this isn't true. Rich people don't have to win. The promise of egalitarian democracy is that we can control the activities of the super-rich, we aren't beholden to them. They can be restrained by the law, and the law is set by the people. If you truly believe that democracy and the rule of law cannot constrain a billionaire, oh well.

I mean hey break out that guillotine that's been rusting in the shed for two hundred years let's go to town otherwise these rich people, you know, they'll ALWAYS WIN

theyre so rich theyll just buy new heads, come on

Like what do you think "the press" was like at the time the Constitution was drafted, Bruneau? Like the golden era of Walter Cronkite and Huntley/Brinkley? No, it was tremendously partisan and opinionated. If it hadn't been -- and this should be patently obvious -- the First Amendment would have been largely superfluous.

― a 47-year-old chainsaw artist from South Carolina (Phil D.), Thursday, May 26, 2016 9:41 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't see why the first amendment is applicable here? Is the government making a law against Gawker?

This is rich people fighting? They already have plenty of laws in their favor.

Is Gawker adding anything to the public good? They just add noise to an already over-saturated Hyper.

Hyper Golden Era or whatever you are talking aabout.

this series has been good

http://gawker.com/the-misery-of-adjunct-professors-keeps-higher-education-1772267323

this post is important

http://gizmodo.com/stock-reaction-gifs-are-for-idiots-1776888204

haven't seen this story covered elsewhere

http://blackbag.gawker.com/did-avril-lavigne-die-in-2003-an-internet-conspiracy-1734185142

Is Gawker adding anything to the public good?

irrelevant

i love blackbag and ashley feinberg posts in general tbh.

gawker is smug and indefensible in a lot of ways but it also unique in its independence. they don't pander to anyone, even their readers. idk. i probably dug into them more than anyone here except jj after the geithner thing and a million other privacy violations like that and i stand by everything i said then -- their disdain for privacy and expanded view of what constitutes a "public figure" is indeed toxic -- but i still think the internet would be a duller place without these blogs.

if some socially acceptable gazillionaire unicorn decided to take down Starm Farnt or whatever by anonymously funding other people's lawsuits - with no real interest in whether the other people actually got an award in the end, just looking to ruin the proprietors of Starm Farnt and try to teach their ilk a good lesson - that person would still be an asshole and their actions will still be cowardly.

Nobody ever thinks to ask "what's the right thing to do?" anymore, and so we don't expect any of our institutions or our elites to do it either. Decision criteria are all fucking business school rationalizations and "data driven" hedges. Our society only holds up ethics when they suit the game. This deserves its own thread y/n

there is one, it's abt utilitarianism

oh god

tombot otm

Nobody ever thinks to ask "what's the right thing to do?" anymore, and so we don't expect any of our institutions or our elites to do it either. Decision criteria are all fucking business school rationalizations and "data driven" hedges. Our society only holds up ethics when they suit the game. This deserves its own thread y/n

― El Tomboto, Thursday, May 26, 2016 11:24 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh wow do u work in education bc thats education

I honestly think there are corporate "senior leaders" that still do this, but they are typically older and to the extent they've decided it's still worth even trying, are increasingly becoming marginalized.

Live by the data, die by the data.

I think the underlying thesis of this is that the old corporate model at least had the pretension of some social responsibility, whereas Thiel and his ilk want to build fucking islands in the ocean and fuck everyone else.

yes, and that the rest of us just have to suck it up and let them. if you're rich enough why should you pay taxes, after all. It's a defeatist attitude that implicitly assumes democracy has run its course. By the fact that we haven't confiscated more of his wealth, Thiel himself is proof that he's not entirely full of shit.

i have trouble considering gawker a legit news or press source. it's basically opinion pieces. it is hard to read any article without being told how you should feel about it right in the headline. at least traditional news TRIES to present a sheen of impartiality. even if that is tenuous at times.

american exceptionalism is real

Assuming Hogan had a variable case and was angry enough to sue literally the only thing this could have stopped him is Gawker having superior financial resources. It's a $300m business that partnered with a psychopathic billionaire five times richer than Thiel specifically to fight the case. The superior financial resources of the press are as important as the provisions around free speech in the constitution when it comes to protecting them from allegations of invaded privacy. All Thiel did was level the playing field.

Contenderizer is right that access to justice shouldn't depend on money but that would probably mean making it easier to sue people than more difficult. One option that has been trialled in some countries is a system of tribunals for defamation that have low barriers to entry and significantly reduced legal fees but have damages capped in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Viable case*

at least traditional news TRIES to present a sheen of impartiality.

yeah, like Reader's Digest, and TIME

ShariVari, you're leaving out the part where Thiel's hounds removed the charge that would have kept Gawker's insurance in the case.

Plaintiffs in lawsuits have been financially backed by outsiders (not for ideological reasons, but because it seems to offer better return on investment relative to other alternative investments, without comparative risk). There's a debate whether this is better or worse for the justice system as a whole. On one hand you have possibly worthy plaintiffs being subsidized by wealthy investors, including some institutional interests. On the other hand you have defendants facing plaintiffs with virtually unlimited resources and nearly infinite patience, which is an absolutely lethal combination.

zzz + *jerk off hand motion* at all the hot air grandstanding PEOPLE JUST DONT CARE ABOIT BEING A GOOD PERSON IN THIS SOCIETY ANYMORE trenchant social commentary this thread devolved into. you guys realize it's just other 40 y/o dads reading this shit right? cuz you sound like the guy in a college polisci class trying to get laid. this legal war of attrition between two rich dudes was a hilarious and dark plot twist with some thorny legal questions about what freedom of press really means but i guess adolescent shrieking about 'ITS THE END OF DEMOCRACY THE RICH WON" is just the default crank ilxor go to these days??

well I guess you better keep praying for the competence of the New Yorker's general counsel and its legal staff, you nitwit

because their assiduous vetting is the only thing keeping them from this bullshit. they certainly don't have the financial resources.

hi flopson that's the opposite of what I was saying but I'm only a 38 yo dad so what do I know

I just don't get why a guy who is so haunted by the concept of individual freedom decided to attack fucking Gawker. It's like OKAY FREEDOM IS FINE AS LONG AS YOU TAKERS DON'T OFFEND PEOPLE WITH MORE RESOURCES THAN YOU. if you wanted free speech you should have acquired the resources to pay for them, since the two are obviously intrinsically linked through the logic of the legal system.

how is this a big deal, if this blog goes under can't they just start... another blog? it's not hard, blogspot.com boom, gawker 2

I'm not sure that's what the proprietor of Talking Points Memo was worried about when he wrote that it was a big deal.

you can write whatever you want on the internet, it's "open source" and they cant sue you b/c you can use a 'scrreen name' or 'avatar'.... soooooo?????

zzz / *jerk off hand motion* at all the hot aired grandstanding and PEOPLE JUST DONT CARE ABOUT BEING A GOOD PERSON IN THIS SPCIETY ANYMORE trenchant social commentary itt. this war off attrition between two rich dudes with differentially deep pockets was a darkly hilarious twist to a morally queasy trial and raises some thorny questions about what freedom of the press /really means/ *takes bongrip* but do we have to go full guy-seated-next-to-hot-girl-in-polisci-101 with the DEMOCRACYS OVER THE RICH WON BECAUSE WE DIDNT CONFISCATE GUY WHO OWNS 10% OF FACEBOOKS WEALTH?? we're all 40 y/o old dads here

shit i Thot zing ate that post gah

*shits*

im not sure hatred of rich dudes is the way you wanna approach this. I'm a spineless gawker Stan but just to take the oppo perspective, he's a rich dude who outs people and harasses barely-public figures and uses the legal leverage afforded by his wealth to get away with it. Only it's 'media' so that's ok... U know?

That's not the oppo perspective - you can be against both and still be far more concerned about Thiel.

on the other hand, equitable access to our legal system should be a concern regardless of this zillionaire shitshow