If you mean him in particular, probably that he has strong moral convictions about right and wrong. I don't know the man personally but I've been examining his ideas with their percolations (e.g. mimesis, exits) and their interesting offshoots for several years now and although some people may suppose him contradictory this would be a very superficial reading. Being idiosyncratic is not the same thing as being a hypocrite. He is not about to stomp on people's freedom of speech merely because he disagrees with those people and/or their politics. That would be in fact an antipathy to him. That he considers aiding the takedown of Gawker as a philanthropic move is unsurprising to me and not a form of sarcasm as some suppose.
As for billionaires subverting the media generally, let's just say that if we assume Thiel did subvert the media for nefarious purposes he would be but a minnow in an ocean packed to the gills with sharks already eating each other. Eons before, you know, that minnow was hatched or whatever. I mean there are people literally killing each other out there over nothing. Perspective!
That's my point basically. Even if Gawker isn't a "real" news organization, and they probably aren't, I still think this sets bad a precedent.
What's to stop him from targeting a real news organization next?