On the surface, we find what we want to see.
On the surface, it appears he has a case since Gawker media did publish
Terry Bollea’s (Hulk Hogan) sex-tap and they did publish the story about Mr Thiel’s
sexuality. If we look closer at the case, his story starts to fragment if not
dissolve. First, his sexuality was well known within the community.[1] To
put it bluntly, if Gawker heard about it, then it was common knowledge within the relevant communities by that point. Second, his belief in the public interest seem slight since
he selects cases where he can punish the media outlets who he finds
objectionable. Were he to be doing this on a public interest, rather than his private interest, he would
take cases against the giant media companies, such as 21st Century
Fox, NBC, CBS, or ABC instead of relatively small internet based news
organisation.
Lawsuits, suppressed news, and digital denial of service the new threats to truth
What he has done is to extract revenge against a company so that he can
silence them. More to the point, he wants to send a message or teach a lesson
to other journalists that if they write anything that he disagrees with or
finds personally offensive, he can launch an expensive legal assault either on
his own behalf or on the “victim’s” behalf. In effect, we are witnesses in
Silicon Valley the birth of a post-modern death squad. Whereas Putin uses
assassins, political thugs, or the judicial system to silence his political
opponents, Thiel has used a squad of lawyers for the same effect. What remains
to be seen is whether he supplements that legal hit squad with a technological
one that would harass and disrupt the computer systems, networks, and data of
media organisations and individual journalists.
In Silicon Valley the powerful take care of each other at the public and the law's expense.
We know that Facebook routinely
altered its “trending” list to remove stories from conservative political news
sources.[2] Mr
Thiel is on Facebook’s board of directors.[3] Who
can be assured that specific news sources or even journalists will not be
vetted from Facebook timelines at the request of Facebook friends like Mr
Thiel. If we consider that Google and Apple led a cartel of companies who
colluded to fix wages within Silicon Valley, it does seem possible that they
would cooperate against media targets this dislike or find overly intrusive in
their business affairs.[4] As
for targeting individual journalist, it is important to note that Steve Jobs
demanded that Google fire an employee and Google fired them.[5] Their
attitude to rules, morals, and ethics is not surprising. The powerful often
believe they should be beyond the rules and the Silicon Valley elite do not
like to be challenged nor held to account in ways that they cannot control.[6]
Or, in the words of Friedrich Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil for they write the
rules for themselves.
Does it matter who finances the lawsuit if the verdict is guilty? Yes it does.
Now some would argue that it does not matter who finances the case
against Gawker. The only question is whether they are guilty or innocent. Such
an approach appears deeply, almost dangerously, naïve if not disingenuous.[7] The issue has not been resolved since Gawker still has to appeal yet
they have already faced expensive legal bills to defend the case and their
appeal. The approach is naïve since it forgets what happened to Arthur
Anderson. They were found guilty of fraud for having shredded documents, which
lead to the company dissolving overnight. The reality, though, was that Arthur
Andersen won their appeal as the conviction was overturned and retrial ordered.
On June 15, 2002,
Andersen was convicted of obstruction of justice for shredding documents
related to its audit of Enron, resulting in the Enron scandal. Although the conviction was later reversed
by the Supreme Court, the impact of the scandal combined with the findings of
criminal complicity ultimately destroyed the firm.[8]
[emphasis added]
The only problem was that the company was dead so there was nothing
left to sustain. The damage was done and we will never know if the charge would
have been sustained in a retrial.[9] Gawker,
and any media company, faces the same problem. By the time they appeal, the
damage is done and they cannot recover even if their case is overturned on
appeal.
Can you speak the truth if it upsets the powerful? Apparently not if you work in Silicon Valley.
What is at stake is the ability to speak the truth. Peter Thiel and
other technology billionaires want to destroy this ability.[10]
Thiel has no time for the possibility of truth. He is too powerful to allow the
truth to be spoken so if he says that X is not X but is to be said as Y, then
he expects, and will enforce, that X is Y or that X is not to be spoken of, it
will not be spoken of. In this desire, he is no different from any tyrant such
as Kim Jong-un who also wants to be “free” of the truth or anything that limits
his life. Hannah Arendt, in her essay Truth and Politics, warned of such a
threat.
…[N]o
human world destined to outlast the short life span of mortals within it will
ever be able to survive without men willing to do what Herodotus was the first
to undertake consciously – namely, λéγειν
τα éoντα, to say what is. No
permanence, no perseverance in existence, can even be conceived of without men
willing to testify to what is and appears to them because it is.[11]
[Emphasis added]
The same inability to tolerate the truth is displayed by Donald Trump.
Does it come as a surprise that Thiel supports Trump’s bid for the presidency? Even
though commentators may wish to agree with Thiel as they find Gawker and other
tabloid news sites as problematic and beneath their dignity, they have to
confront a terrible truth. The truth has become fragile in the digital domain
for it is not based on nature or the given; it only exists by what is created
within the digital domain in men’s’ minds.[12] She
was worried about the potential that a lie would rule us. There is no need to
lie or defend a lie, when you can create a “truth” and suppress anyone who
wants to tell the truth. In this development, what you are seeing, is a new
threat, the post-modern “death squads” who will kill the truth since anyone who
speaks it will be denied access, harried with lawsuits, and find they are attacked
by colleagues who do not wish to suffer their fate.
The public interest is being used to further a private interest and democracy is at stake
We may wish to believe that this is one public interest, the story and
the first amendment, against another, the rule of law. To focus on that level,
misses the role of power and the event’s future consequence. The law is only
reflecting what the wealthy can pursue in their private interest not in the
public interest. A public interest, as such is democratic and we know that Mr
Thiel does not like democracy.
“Most importantly,
I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”[13]
Our choice is whether we revise the laws to allow easier redress for
such stories, thus pre-empting such lawsuits, or we allow the powerful to
decide what is fit for print and in the public interest. In either case, Thiel
has achieved what he set out to do, he has made the press hesitant, fearful,
and deferential.
“Owen Thomas, the former
editor of Valleywag who wrote the article about Mr. Thiel, offered his side of
the story in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “As I’ve said before, I did
not ‘out’ Peter Thiel,” said Mr. Thomas, now business editor at The San
Francisco Chronicle. “I did discuss his sexuality, but it was known to a wide circle who felt that it was not fit for
discussion beyond that circle. I
thought that attitude was retrograde and homophobic, and that informed my
reporting. I believe that he was out and not in the closet.” [emphasis added]
So far from being a question of outing him, the
article and the underlying issue was the approach within the community to
whether public figures need to be open about what is known within the
community. In that sense, it was less about an action to harm Thiel by
publishing his sexuality than an issue within the community of how high profile
figures within the community enjoy the benefits of the community without
bearing the responsibility they have from their public stature. If Mr Thiel wanted to extract revenge, perhaps he needed to assess his relationship with the community.
[7]
John Podhoretz betrays an almost libertarian belief that it does not matter
who funds it or the consequences of the context so long as the apparent logic
seems to fit. https://twitter.com/jpodhoretz/status/735876265815769089
[11]
TRUTH AND POLITICS by Hannah Arendt Originally published in The New Yorker, February 25,
1967, and reprinted with minor changes in Between Past and Future (1968) and The Portable Hannah
Arendt edited by Peter Baier (2000) and Truth:Engagements Across Philosophical Traditions
edited by Medina and Wood (2005) https://idanlandau.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/arendt-truth-and-politics.pdf
p.1
“The modern age, which believes that truth is neither
given to nor disclosed to but produced by
the human mind.” p.2
The post-modern era has become one where it is not so
much that truth is only what is in men’s minds it is what is created or
presented digitally since it shapes and presents its own reality, as reality,
within which men can believe reality that contradicts this is distorted and not
the truth. One only has to see how the social media age allows lies to be told
and the truth suppressed easily. In effect, the digital domain becomes the new
cave beneath the cave for it is not simply in man’s mind, it is his “reality”
that shapes his mind that has become distorted.
The digital domain allows the truth to be changed
while nature, as given, cannot be changed.
Arendt ends her essay with a positive note and one we
have to remember was written before the social media age:
“Conceptually, we may call truth what we cannot
change; metaphorically, it is the ground on which we stand and the sky that
stretches above us.” p.19
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