[lelanthran]

> Gawker Media however, was, by a deranged billionaire who abused the legal system to exact revenge on a gossip-oriented news site and its entire media conglomerate.

Gawker Media wasn't cancelled; they intentionally violated a direct court order. Maybe you should be arguing that the court should not have ruled against Gawker in the first place, or arguing that the court should not have directed Gawker to cease the publication of nonconsensual nudes, or that the court should not have brought the hammer down when Gawker continued its publication of nonconsensual nudes.

I'm curious why you think it is okay to publish nudes of someone against their will. https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/824/503/e53...

[zzzeek]

> I'm curious why you think it is okay to publish nudes of someone against their will.

I in no way stated or implied that that is OK in any way. such practices are vile and disgusting as was the outing of Thiel.

However, a "first amendment violation" , neither incident was.

"free speech" means, as we are reminded constantly by right wingers when they are denouncing "cancel culture", "speech that we despise is also free". Gawker in no way violated the first amendment. Right wing billionaires who claim to be things like "free speech absolutists" are full of it and will use any tools at their disposal to silence and "cancel" speech they don't like, including using their billions to abuse the justice system, launching torrents of frivolous lawsuits against media companies that published a story they didn't like (but had no legal basis to challenge).

[lelanthran]

Yeah, but this wasn't the abuse of the Justice system, nor is it a free speech issues.

Entity ordered by a court to cease publishing nonconsensual nudes, Entity refused, then told the court they would never agree, then fined punitively.

What about this do you consider is a free speech violation?

[zzzeek]

Again, "a free speech violation occurred" is not my point.

my point is, billionaires saying "At last! free speech!" like PG did when he retweeted this MIT annoucement are completely full of it. They would like right-wing speech, ideas like "Black people are less intellectually capable" to be "free", which means "welcomed into the discourse without constraint", whereas any media company they don't personally like should be sued into oblivion. Gawker's fate only began when Peter Theil decided to target tens of millions of dollars at suing them into oblivion, waiting for something to stick. It quite plainly set a precedent that such actions can be taken by any billionaire whenever they want. Billionaires like Theil, PG and quite plainly Musk do not give a flying f** about "free speech". it is their speech they care about. And they should be widely challenged on this.

Gawker was not fined $140 million for violating a court order. They were sued for damages by Hulk Hogan and Hogan could have sued for the same things even if they had complied with that order, and I am not familiar with what basis there is to claim this lawsuit would not have been brought or successful if they had complied; even if unsuccessful, Theil's goal was to continue flooding Gawker with lawsuits until they went out of business, and this is most certainly an abuse of the legal system.