I have been seeing a lot of people I know defending Gawker and I don't really get it. If a business uses illegal practices they should be sued. There is freedom of the press but that doesn't give you complete immunity for everything. It seems like journalists these days think they can do anything they want. Remember the News International phone hacking scandal? You can't break the law to get profits. I wouldn't mind if the "next gawker" is underground -- at least no one would be profiting on shady journalist tactics
Did they hack Hogans phone to get the tape?
>Gawker says it received the Hogan sex tape anonymously on a DVD in the mail [0]
People are defending Gawker because outing Peter Thiel wasn't illegal and the First Amendment is specific about celebrities personal lives being news worthy. Hogan's a public figure by his own choice and the story was true, it's not even really a case worth trying.
The fact that Thiel can bleed a publisher until it goes out of business for hurting his feelings shows how unfortunately fragile the first amendment has become.
I'm the author of this piece. can anyone explain why this piece is flagged? it has been submitted, upvoted to the home page, then banned 3 separate times.
Users of the site, like me, with more than some (nominal, low) amount of karma points clicked the "flag" button that appears under the headline and flagged it off the site.
It makes an argument I agree with but have read in dozens of other places, and makes it in an insufferable tone. It's written in such a way that it will generate a horrible thread here. Some topics are worth long arguments on HN, but the Nth take on why Thiel vs Gawker is ominous isn't one of them.
Are you honestly suggesting you think you might be the first person to write a piece on the implications of billionaires destroying media outlets they disagree with in the wake of the Gawker verdict?
By the way, if you're going to respond to answers to questions you asked with "lol", then yes, I do mind you asking.
did you read the piece? this is a specific implication that I haven't seen elsewhere (you have links?). it's a pretty standard prohibitionist argument and I feel like Hacker News could have a substantive discussion about it. I'm not a journalist, I care about this because I'm also in the tech industry.
B. Because you asked me that, this will be the last comment I write about it. Don't ask people whether they've read things they're commenting on.
I think it's a pretty silly piece that starts with an assumption that everyone in tech must side with Thiel and ends with pearl clutching. You asked. Now you know what I think and why I flagged it. I'm just one of many people who did that, and those are just my reasons.
hey dang. author here. This is an argument about the darker implications of Thiel's lawsuit on the tech industry. can you point me to a place on Hacker News where there has been a good discussion about this before? I've seen plenty of people rail against gawker, but haven't seen much discussion about what this could lead to. it's a pretty straight forward prohibitionist argument.
That's just such an intellectually dishonest response, Dang. Your links are just a smoke screen. The article does not discuss Gawker vs Thiel details, but rather talks about the future of journalism. Furthermore, I challenge you to produce a link that talks about investigate journalism being forced into WikiLeaks/dark net mode. What happened with gawker will have repercussions. And just like in 1920s, when rubber barons were hiding from people behind tall walls of their Long Island estates, today's net elite is hiding behind digital walls and these lawsuits.
Pretty sure we've had a number of big discussions about the implications for journalism (didn't Jay Rosen or somebody like that write about this?) and you're welcome to use HN Search to find them.
The community reaction to this post is unremarkable; it isn't a very good submission for HN, primarily because the site has been Gawker-Thieled thoroughly already, but also because it's sensationally written and doesn't go very deep. The community norms on this kind of thing are well-established. Perhaps there are other communities that would enjoy debating this piece, but there's no surprise in HN not being one.
I just did a search and nearly every piece, with even a minor tinge of support for Gawker's side, has been 'flagged'.
You say this doesn't go very deep but where has there been a good, substantive discussion on Hacker News about the implications of Thiel's lawsuit? the darker precedent it sets? This issue is important to the tech world, it cuts to the heart of many aspects of this industry and some of the most foundational aspects of our law.
You're right that other communities get value from discussing this argument. There are smart people here, and this piece has been submitted 9 times. It's a shame that a small group can shut down this discussion from happening. As much as I hoped it wouldn't, it makes the point of the piece.
this post is about what happens if Gawker is destroyed by thiel... if people really don't like gawker, then I really don't think they'll like what is likely to come next. this is a prohibitionist argument and it seems like a good thing for Hacker News to discuss instead of flagging.
Really?! This article is not about Gawker per se, but rather about the possible future of journalism. Wired, a respectable publication, thought it was worth to publish this piece. Google News runs it as a featured content.
My point is that HN moderators (I'm one of them btw) didn't moderate this article, and would never do so merely because someone said a thing about pg (which is what the comment upthread seemed to me to imply).
Oh yes, I know (and I'm not sure I'm reading your comments correctly) but the point is that the presence of that statement in the article doesn't affect its moderation status on HN.
Ooooh, interesting article, it's talking about... Oh, sorry I was reading... You don't like ad blockers you say? Oh well, guess it must be a pretty boring article anyway. Farewell.
This is a bit insulting. If you find my comment unsubstantive, please delete it. I think this kind of paywall is threatening the web and thought important to point it out.
I certainly didn't intend to insult you! It's more that that kind of snark is deprecated on HN, because it's associated with lower-quality internet discourse and we're trying for higher quality here.
The point about paywalls also comes up so often that we've asked people not to post such complaints in the threads; for the most part they're off-topic ballast. Few people here like paywalls, but it just gets tedious reading the same complaints over and over, even if one shares the complaint.
> The next Gawker will be decentralized and it may follow the Wikileaks model or even publish on the dark web.
There are plenty of ways to publish someone's sexual preference or sex video and you don't need to evoke Wikileaks.
Likewise I doubt the marketing maven for the next Adam Sandler movie will be paying in Bitcoin for a site takeover of a .onion domain, no matter how many celebrity nudes and confidential Sony documents it leaks.
