I suspect these comments will descend into a pit of chaos within a few minutes as everyone talks past each other... but the principle of this disturbs me. Basically, a billionaire secretly funded a lawsuit against a media organisation he doesn't like, and now that's it has been successful, he wants to scoop up the remains of it and (presumably!) delete it. The free speech implications of that are a little unnerving.
Now, I know the immediate retort to that is "Gawker was garbage", and indeed there's a fair case to made that Gawker wouldn't have been sued if they hadn't opened themselves up to it by doing publishing Hulk Hogan's sex tape. But it isn't just Gawker - Mother Jones was sued by a billionaire for reporting true fact, simply because he didn't like the reporting. He didn't even need to win, he just needed to bankrupt them through legal costs, and he nearly succeeded:
(Thiel followed this same idea by narrowing the suit in such a way that Gawker's insurance would not be able to pay out)
Personally, I'm concerned that the individual factors of this case (i.e. Gawker being Gawker) will overshadow the principle at stake, which feels a lot more important than a gossip site.
A different way to look at it might be that in most cases, an illegal deed might be overlooked simply because someone didn't have the funds to see it through the court system. It's one thing if someone is funding endless lawsuits just to drive someone out of business, it's another for someone like Hogan to have a legitimate case, and for Thiel to fund his lawsuit. Thiel's funding of the case did not influence the judgement against Gawker, it simply allowed it to proceed further than if Hogan ran out of money.
I agree with what I think you're saying, that we should be careful about allowing someone to sue someone out of business simply out of spite; however, I think there's something to be said for someone with deeper pockets funding a legitimate suit. It might be comparable to things that the EFF funds, or that the ACLU takes on -- they have deeper pockets, and can take the financial hit that someone with a legitimate claim may not be able to take.
Imagine if Gawker published the same thing of some average middle-class person. They can't afford a high-priced lawyer, so likely Gawker gets away with something that, if it went to court, they would lose. In this case, the bully ran into someone who actually could fight back. As far as I know, Thiel didn't fund endless lawsuits just hoping to run them out of money. He funded a legitimate lawsuit that ended up with Gawker being found in the wrong for.
There's a systemic problem here, independent of the Thiel/Bollinger/Gawker case.
"Equality before the law" is supposed to be a fundamental value in America and most Western common-law countries. It's the underpinning behind much of our economic system, which is based on the idea that everybody's welfare is improved if people can independently make contracts with each other. If it turns out that peoples' welfare is not improved, they can sue for damages, and the court system will right the externality.
This assumption does not hold when the vast majority of people harmed cannot afford to sue.
Your last paragraph is a good illustration of the problem, and I think that's the point the grandparent post was making. In this case, it may've been a good thing for justice that Gawker pissed off the wrong billionaire. But it's a terrible system where only the organizations that piss off billionaires get slapped, and the only way to achieve justice is to have a billionaire on your side.
Unfortunately I don't really know of a solution to this. We've already tried a bunch, with public defenders and Miranda rights and continent legal fees and class action lawsuits and pro bono work. But the cost of a court case keeps spiraling upwards, and it's soon reaching the level where only big corporations and wealthy individuals can afford them. And non-capitalist countries are even worse off: in many of them, you need a personal connection to a powerful person to get a fair judgment.
> Unfortunately I don't really know of a solution to this.
the solution is to take the economic incentives out of lawsuits (the legal industry is a pure economic cost, so an added perk is a more productive economy). some random ideas:
* make public law schools free and disband the various bar associations (increase competition/lower barriers to entry)
* make people file lawsuits within 3 months of injury (lower the statute of limitations)
* limit the length of lawsuits to 3 months total (limits legal costs)
* make judges prefer non-monetary compensation (like volunteer work).
> make people file lawsuits within 3 months of injury (lower the statute of limitations)
My issue with this is, 3 months from actual harm, or realization of harm? There just seem to be a lot of cases where harm does not show themselves immediately, but may take a few years to appear.
yes, there's unlikely a perfect solution, especially not one that comes out of 5 minutes of musing on it.
injuries involving bodily harm (assault, murder, etc.) might require more time, and financial crimes might take years to uncover, as you point out. but the underlying idea would be to make people act on injury quickly so that justice is delivered while memories and evidence are fresh (lowering costs) and deterrence is more immmediate and visible.
I agree that your point has merit. It's difficult to work out where the middle ground is, or whether "billionaires get to choose who sees their day in court" is better or worse than "poor people don't get their day in court" (they feel similar).
At the least, it would be good if those funding these cases had to make that fact public - Thiel only admitted that he was funding Hogan's case after journalists uncovered it. If he was campaigning on the side of truth and righteousness I can't see any reason why he wouldn't say as much (like the ACLU does).
Gawker didn't go after the average person, they very specifically went after a billionaire, Peter Thiel.
Then after that, Hulk Hogan filed a lawsuit because he got caught saying super racist things against African Americans on tape and Thiel secretly funds that lawsuit.
Does this make Thiel, by extension, somewhat racist considering he clearly had no qualms funding this lawsuit?[1] He's also a well-known Trump supporter, go figure lol
Call me crazy, but this seems very counter to where Silicon Valley wants to be and Silicon Valley values.
He's also considered a pretty well-known VC in the area. It's not hard to figure out why SV has so many diversity problems, when you have people like Thiel hailed as their leader.
I am not from your tech utopia, but i get the feeling that your so called "values" are more to blame for the wealth disparity than any single actor, regardless of their net worth. Assuming you live in SV, you are the folks that moved there, get paid obscene money to wrangle 1s and 0s, drive up the property value, and demand changes to the community to suit your tastes. When you were boarding your chartered bus to get you safely to the Green Zone, did you think you were part of the solution? I can think of 1 famous conservative VC (not my world so there are presumably more) and maybe 2 companies that make some claim to be, or are labeled as, conservative. The vast majority of the SV tech crowd and companies are liberals, and your Bernie T-shirt doesn't make you an "ally". Be honest with yourself: SV companies generate spam email, dump tons of thermal excess into the environment, and gentrify neighborhoods. Acting like you are somehow a different breed, and not a parasitic community (i know that term seems negative or besmirching but i mean it in its purely biological form), is something no one else is falling for. I realize this is an emotional rant that brushes with broad strokes, but i am pretty tired of West Coast folks acting like everything was fine before Trump and conservatives are backwards racists incapable of espousing compassion or modernity. That isn't an excuse, it is an explanation.
Right, but in both cases a billionaire got to choose what qualifies as "something bad". That's the "principle" part I'm getting at here that worries me.
Let's not kid ourselves - Thiel did not fund this lawsuit because he was deeply concerned about the fate of Hulk Hogan. He did it because of the coverage he'd received from Valleywag, which, let's be clear, included outing him! I'm not saying he's wrong to be aggrieved. But the idea that, if you have enough money, you can shut down whatever media organisation you want... that concerns me.
> They filed the suit in Bonneville County, Idaho, and asked for damages of up to $74,999—exactly $1 under the amount at which the lawsuit could have been removed to federal court. That ensured the case would be decided by jurors from the community where his company is the biggest employer and the sponsor of everything from the minor league ballpark to the Fourth of July fireworks.
The court system is not immune to problems.
> Since then, Mother Jones and our insurance company have had to spend at least $2.5 million defending ourselves. That’s money we can’t get back, since Idaho doesn’t have an anti-SLAPP statute that might open the door for recovering attorney’s fees in a case like this.
VanderSloot did not need to win against Mother Jones, he just needed to bankrupt them. And he nearly did. That this particular attempt failed does not mean the principle is not a dangerous one. In many ways the court decision is secondary to the enormous costs of defending yourself legally.
Anti-SLAPP laws have the same problem as "regulation via judiciary" -- by the time the law becomes useful, the damage is already done. If you go bankrupt defending yourself, suing under a SLAPP law doesn't help. Also, the barrier for proving you shouldn't be SLAPPed is far lower than the already low barrier for civil damages, so there's some question as to whether this even solves the problem.
Our civil justice system needs to be cheaper and more accessible. It shouldn't be possible to wage economic war on a company or individual via the judiciary.
Attorneys can take your case pro bono and then sue for wages later with anti-SLAPP, iirc. And it's much cheaper to file the anti-SLAPP than to defend against the suit.
Sounds like the Nirvana fallacy in action. Unless you have a better proposal, complaining about how some improvement isn't perfect doesn't do anything.
> Sounds like the Nirvana fallacy in action. Unless you have a better proposal
Pointing out problems with the current system is not a logical fallacy, and having a working solution in-hand is not a pre-requisite to observing the existence of problems.
Also, accusing me of using the Nirvana fallacy while also accusing me of not providing an alternative policy is literally a contradiction...
Mother Jones winning is the exception, not the rule, and plenty of outlets can't afford a legal fight. Those that can can-and-do (as Mother Jones did) are usually severely hampered in their ability to actually serve the people by dealing with barratrous claims.
No Thiel got to choose what qualifies for a court to hear. The court decided what qualifies as "something bad." There's a big difference. It does kinda suck the amount of money it takes to bring something to court, but that's the world we live in. You still have to win the case.
I agree this is an issue, but just because some people can't afford to defend themselves doesn't make what Thiel did wrong. You'll note Gawker was fully able to fund their defense.
If Thiel had did this against a smaller site that gave up without having its day in court that would be a different matter.
untog ended their up-thread comment with a pre-emptive answer to exactly this sentiment:
>> Personally, I'm concerned that the individual factors of this case (i.e. Gawker being Gawker) will overshadow the principle at stake, which feels a lot more important than a gossip site.
Thiel isn't on trial in this thread, but our justice system perhaps is.
No, he's one of the few people whose free speech I'm not terribly concerned about. (Don't be confused: I think he should have the right to express his opinion, I just don't think that right is in any jeopardy).
I mean the free speech of anyone who doesn't have $N million needed to fend off a civil suit. If cases like this and the MJ one become common-place, there's a very real risk of chilling effect.
Incidentally, I think it's probably possible to allow Thiel the ability to sue Gawker into the ground without also having a system where genuinely legal free speech is reserved for people who can afford massive financial risk. So there's absolutely no reason for you to disagree with me just because you think Thiel in on the right side of the Gawker issue...
By the same argument, patent trolls are NBD. Except, of course, we know for a fact that lots of people are extorted into paying BS fees because they can't afford to go to court.
If you tried to make the case that patent trolls are a big problem because they extort large fees from people, it would be appropriate to talk about cases where people settled and paid "BS fees". If you cite one case where the plaintiff won, and another where they lost in court, you aren't making that case very well because you haven't discussed any actual cases of the alleged harm.
Yes, and as I already pointed out, the root comment states:
>>>>>> Personally, I'm concerned that the individual factors of this case (i.e. Gawker being Gawker) will overshadow the principle at stake, which feels a lot more important than a gossip site.
We are discussing principles and problems that are larger than just these two cases. That's the entire thesis of the comment that started this thread.
MJ was offered as an example of a suit that was filed despite the fact that the speech was clearly legally protected, and where the cost of the suit was rather outrageous despite this fact. It establishes a) that people sue maliciously even when they know their suit is baseless; and b) that these suits are none-the-less expensive to defend.
It's fairly obvious that (b) is concerning, and also fairly obvious that it takes an actual suit to put a price tag on this problem. That's why the MJ case was presented.
But all of this is obvious and explained in the comments above, so this is getting very pedantic, and I don't see a) what point you're trying to make, or b) how that point is at all relevant to the overall thesis of the root comment.
IMO the elephant in the room is even more fundamental: the _existence of billionaires_.
There is a disturbing narrative I now notice whenever it appears, specifically, the formulation of "good billionaire X takes on public interest Y."
The subtext is, we should celebrate that some wealthy titan has decided to back an interest aligned with our political interest.
The problem is that our current political and cultural divisions are, if not necessarily solely originating in, primarily–even, almost exclusively–_driven and determined_ by a battle of billionaires.
So long as "normal" people are reduced to pawns in a not so secret chess match between billionaires, our entire civilization is hostage. Our democratic institutions certainly are.
The GOP's contempt for public opinion in pushing through a crappy tax bill which extracts a trillion dollars from the collective future, to further enrich its richest stake holders, is just one more example of the consequences.
And it's getting worse, not better.
The last 40+ years have consistently accelerated the consolidation of wealth. This process gives every appearance of having passed an event horizon, beyond which all political remedies to that consolidation are neutralized, through the simple expediency of the very very wealthy seizing ownership literal and figurative of political process.
The historic solutions to the extreme consolidation of wealth are few and don't offer much road map.
But we solve this, or it looks like we get a 2.5 class society.
An underclass, a 1% overclass–and a frightened buffer class jealous of its limited remaining prerogatives and lottery chances of entering the overclass.
Recognize that last cohort? That's the readership of Hackernews.
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws [actions] are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”
Not too mention, Thiel wasn't the least bit disturbed by what Hulk Hogan said about African Americans in the very same case!
Thiel was more concerned about eliminating Gawker. It really reveals what he values as a person: himself.
Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley VC, financially supported a man, Hulk Hogan, that uttered this:
“I mean, I’d rather if she was going to f-ck some n-gger, I’d rather have her marry an 8-foot-tall n-gger worth a hundred million dollars! Like a basketball player!
I thought the fact that he buys and injects blood from teenagers to (possibly) extend his own pathetic life would have proven that much by now. Someone said something about it being easier to pass camels through eyes of needles than for rich men to go to heaven.
Yes, I think this is one case where both sides of the issue can agree the real problem is that our civil justice system seems to care more about the depth of your pockets than the veracity of your position.
That needs to change, and you can find your way to this conclusion via sympathy with Hogan or with Gawker, but perhaps not via sympathy with Thiel (for the obvious reason).
That's an interesting take, but not one I'd agree with.
The argument that Thiel acted unethically by funding Hogan's lawsuit is not one that I support. You can picture it as a millionaire throwing his money around to exact vengeance on a company that wronged him if you want, and that certainly feeds the idea of a sort of "chilling effect" where media orgs intentionally avoid printing things about powerful (read: rich) people. I think we can both agree that that would be truly unfortunate and a great loss of speech principles.
However, I don't think that accurately maps to the validity of the case. In an ideal world, Hogan wouldn't have had to get Thiel to fund his lawsuit--he was legitimately wronged. Is a better alternative to this universe one where news/distribution organizations can say whatever they want about anyone all the time and unless you're a billionaire you just have to take it? It wasn't like Gawker was acting ethically here. Compare it to Mother Jones, who was sued frivolously, won, and is still around!
But, of course, that's not really your argument. Your argument isn't that news orgs can be sued and that's a problem, it's that legal battles are often a matter of who has more money to spend on them, and regardless of outcome, can leave even honest organizations out of capital. I agree with this (even though Mother Jones is still around). It's unreasonable to expect MJ to pay up $2.4m to cover fees, especially when margins on online journalism are already so low (forcing worse incentives on them just to compete).
But there's hope! We don't need to wring our hands and lament the death knell of free speech--rather, we can just support anti-SLAPP laws to reduce both the cost and frequency of frivolous defamation suits. The technology exists! In fact, the only reason MJ had to pay up is because their state doesn't have anti-SLAPP statutes.
I'm fundamentally not concerned at all with Thiel buying the decaying corpse of Gawker. They acted in incredibly poor taste, noncompliance of legal orders and vitriolic defiance of journalistic good will, so, they pay the price. Rather, I'm more concerned about two issues: first, valid lawsuits require far too large an initial capital investment, preventing truly wronged but non-rich individuals from seeking justice and second, incredibly wealthy individuals can force frivolous lawsuits onto organizations where their best case scenario is a pyrrhic victory.
> In fact, the only reason MJ had to pay up is because their state doesn't have anti-SLAPP statutes.
Their state (California) wasn't the problem. The problem was that they were being sued in a different state (Idaho). You aren't safe until all the states have anti_SLAPP statutes.
Surely "owning a major news organization" and "shutting down a major news organization because you don't like what they published about you" are not exactly the same.
Correct, but there's a difference between publishing what is in the public domain and publishing deeply private information, which they would have got through questionable sources.
If those billionaires play an active role in shutting down unfavourable coverage of themselves, yes. To my knowledge that hasn't been uncovered yet, though.
Don't get me wrong, in an ideal world all reporting would be independent, but I'm not sure how that model would be achieved.
I agree with the ideal you describe, but I think it is naive to assume that billionaires buy news orgs simply because they enjoy picking up a good newspaper in the morning.
I don't see how buying a media outlet to shut it down is different to buying it to influence the coverage. Both are shady but perfectly legal.
I also don't see why how a single billionaire funding a lawsuit is that different than thousands of us funding a lawsuit by the EFF. If money = speech than those are both protected by the 1st amendment.
> I also don't see why how a single billionaire funding a lawsuit is that different than thousands of us funding a lawsuit by the EFF. If money = speech than those are both protected by the 1st amendment.
There is a difference. It's a microcosm of the difference between a god-king and an elected president.
That analogy doesn't fit because the money doesn't give someone direct power but instead allows them to tip the scales in their favor. It is the same as Citizens United. The money allows influencing other people's votes but the money isn't directly choosing the president.
I am also not speaking about a moral difference, I am speaking about a legal difference. How can you allow someone to spend $X on something with the logic that money equals speech but not allow someone to spend $X multiplied by a million on the same thing?
I agree, but that is a clear result of the 1st Amendment. And you get lots of people angry if you start to question whether the 1st Amendment is a great idea.
I am not sure what you are really arguing here. The 14th Amendment portion of Citizens United is not the part of the case that has relevancy to this discussion. Overturning that portion would still allow Thiel's actions since he was acting as an individual. It would have a greater chance of effecting the EFF's action in that regard.
Citizens United was a case that addressed two issues. There was the 14th Amendment issue of corporate personhood and the 1st Amendment issue of whether money equals speech. Both of those had been applied separately before but this decision unified the two. You are focusing on the 14th Amendment portion while I was referencing the 1st Amendment portion, which is also likely the less controversial portion.
As does "freedom of speech", I guess. But both of those things mean something more specific in the context of US constitutional law, of course. It's that more specific meaning to which I'm referring. Sorry for the lack of precision.
Anyways, my only point was that Citizens United was not exactly a clear or obvious application of the First Amendment, and offering up the integral role of cases involving the Fourteenth Amendment as examples.
I guess merely mentioning that the decision was 5-4 would've been enough and prevented this now rather long thread.
this is a good take. id like to add that this is one of the negative externalities of entrusting a single person with an outrageous amount of power by allowing them to have many millions or billions of dollars. there are certainly counter examples, but on the whole it seems very unlikely that billionaires are going to, as a group, do a better job allocating their money for public good than if that money was distributed more widely among the populace. i dont think people should be billionaires basically.
edit: to preempt some questions- my guess is that by raising the marginal tax rate, especially for people who earn alot, we could address this problem to some degree.
If Thiel wasn't a billionaire, he wouldn't have been able to do what he did. On the other hand, if he wasn't a billionaire, Valleywag might not have been as interested in his personal life.
Where is the logical connection between being a billionaire & shutting down a publication in a vindictive manner established?
ANYONE disagreeing with negative press about themselves will do everything in their power to do so. From politicians to people accessing reputation management services [1], in general, people with shut down negative opinion against them. So, the "logical" fallacy is in attributing wealth to reputation management, when everyone, from the very poor to the very rich, and otherwise powerful behave the exact same way.
Disallowing people from becoming billionaires by using punitive taxation is NOT logic.
It has a lot to do with it. Only the very wealthy have the means to fund nuisance lawsuits until a publication is forced to shut down (or, for that matter, effectively bend the ear of influential politicians, etc.). The rest of us are stuck with stuff like Reputation Defender, which is not very effective, and in any case does not completely shut down any news organization.
im not sure i understand what your saying, doesnt seem to address my main point, which is: it seems unlikely that a very small group of rich people will use their money for public good in a more effective way than if that money were more evenly distributed among people. thats not even a normative statement, where is the logical fallacy?
WHY are you forcing your philosophy of "wealth should be used for the public good" on billionaires. If they accumulated wealth in a legal fashion, they aren't beholden to doing ANY public good.
On the contrary, of you requested billionaires to NOT cause harm by using their disproportionate wealth, that'd be a sound argument. For instance, Gawker's takeover by Thiel seems to border on the illegal.
Some of us might say there is a moral challenge posed by a society where some of us are homeless, skip meals, or go without medical care, while others have so much money that they could spend a billion dollars on complete frivolities every year until dying and still have a tremendous estate left over. It's hard to see what you think is a logical fallacy here; it seems you simply reject the moral proposition underlying the argument.
You go from "this argument is based on logic" to "here's a moral stance regardless of logic". What you're proposing - an uber socialistic/communistic society has been proven again and again to not work out. Unless you consider maoist China and Soviet Russia (USSR) to be models you'd like to emulate, ethical capitalism is the only moral system that truly helps those who want to help themselves.
Then there's the whole concept of community. The Mormon church, for instance, raises more in charity than the net worth of many billionaires. If you truly want to help the poor, enable them to help themselves. Or, collectively raise enough for charity, like the Mormon church. Taxing the fuck out of people, and enabling a lobbied-to-death politician to spend the said tax on any whimsical thing has NEVER worked out in history.
Every ethical argument ultimately follows from premises you can gum up the whole thing by rejecting. That's just the nature of the discipline. For instance, all the stuff you're writing doesn't really move someone if they don't accept the libertarian arguments about how taxation is theft or is evil.
If you want to start dragging historical examples into the discussion, the Hoover years pretty well discredited the idea that voluntarism and charity were sufficient means to deal with privation.
TLDR - no one's stoppig you or any other non-billionaire from pledging 10% of your income, banding together and funding whatever program you want to. My guess is you've never really been active philanthropically, but, you feel entitled to take away Theil's money on taxes, though he earned his money in the exact same fashion as you earn yours. You've convinced yourself of false morality where punitively taxing the wealthy is completely ok
wasnt forcing my philosophy, just voicing my suspicion that its probably sub optimal to have billionaires if you are trying to maximize the greater good. not saying thats what you necessarily should do, though i do personally think that.
What greater good do you speak of? Regardless of how repugnant you find Theil, his investments have led to thousands of great paying jobs directly, and probably tens of thousands of indirect jobs. That my friend, is a great service to society.
What you are suggesting is an ultra high tax rate on the wealthy and that's proven over and over to not work out. Italy, France and Spain for instance, have a pivoted to a socialistic society that punishingly taxes the rich to the point of driving the ambitious and successful out of the country. While these countries produced some of the most iconic companies and individuals in the early 1900s, it's no coincidence that a Google, Microsoft, etc hasn't emerged from there.
The world's richest man (adjusted for inflation), Bill Gates has donated over $18B in philanthropy. His management of money that can potentially help the needy has been far superior to any elected political figure or government organisation. Don't enable politicians with power over (your) tax money, their only aim is to get reelected - not to serve society. Enables another Bill Gates it Zuckerberg, who've both pledged 99% of their wealth to charity. Heck, enable a Peter Theil to fund the next Facebook and create billions in wealth, jobs and taxes.
mate... look at the tax rates in america over the last 100 years. also, you still arent engaging with my argument, you are having a trite conversation with yourself about “socialism vs capitalism”. id also encourage you to stop thinking of “jobs” as universally good, and think about what the jobs actually do
I think we've both made our cases. You believe increased taxation of the rich to be a social good. I don't believe taking more money as a percentage of income from the wealthy is fair. Also do not believe it actually helps the needy - it only empowers politicians who ultimately have dominion over how they get to spend said tax money.
Now, I know the immediate retort to that is "Gawker was garbage", and indeed there's a fair case to made that Gawker wouldn't have been sued if they hadn't opened themselves up to it by doing publishing Hulk Hogan's sex tape. But it isn't just Gawker - Mother Jones was sued by a billionaire for reporting true fact, simply because he didn't like the reporting. He didn't even need to win, he just needed to bankrupt them through legal costs, and he nearly succeeded:
http://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/10/mother-jones-vander...
(Thiel followed this same idea by narrowing the suit in such a way that Gawker's insurance would not be able to pay out)
Personally, I'm concerned that the individual factors of this case (i.e. Gawker being Gawker) will overshadow the principle at stake, which feels a lot more important than a gossip site.