Gawker's estate has been in play since the company filed for Chapter 11 in June 2016 with a firm Ziff Davis bid under $100M already on the table, after Thiel's secretly funded litigation drove it under. The open question since then has been who ends up controlling the archive and domains.
Thiel spent late 2017 fighting for standing: his lawyers filed a motion to block efforts that had kept him from bidding on the Gawker.com assets during the proceeding. With that obstacle cleared, he is now reportedly inside the auction rather than outside it — the man who bankrolled the lawsuits moving to buy what is left of the target.
First-order effects
Thiel's entry turns a single-bidder sale into a contested auction, forcing Ziff Davis to either raise its sub-$100M offer or cede the domains and 200K+ article archive to the litigation's funder.
Second-order effects
Creditors stand to recover more from competitive bidding, but a Thiel win would put the Gawker brand and archive in the hands of the person most motivated to keep it dark or repurposed rather than revived as an adversarial outlet.
Third-order effects
The sequence — fund lawsuits against a publisher, then acquire its remains at distressed prices through court process — completes a playbook that lowers the cost of neutralizing hostile media and raises the stakes for any outlet litigating against deep-pocketed figures.
The trend: Billionaire-funded litigation against publishers is extending from courtroom victories into outright ownership of the targets' assets, with bankruptcy courts as the transfer mechanism.
Glad to see Peter Thiel feeling guilty about shuttering Gawker. Hopefully, when he relaunches it, he'll inject fresh new blood into it, and make it better than ever. http://twitter.com/...
Peter Thiel is like that bully in elementary school who first stole your lunch, then pushed you to the ground, and then kicked you in the nuts while you were down.
Facebook board member attempts to purchase the archives of a news website that he secretly funded frivolous lawsuits against for ten years https://www.nytimes.com/...
Back in Nov, Thiel's lawyers were positioning themselves to make a bid by complaining about the sale process behind http://Gawker.com . Thiel's lawyers said even though he was the “most able and logical purchaser” he had been excluded from process. https://www.buzzfeed.com/...
Remember that the lawyers overseeing the Gawker estate are still moving forward with discovery to examine Thiel's role in bankrupting the company through secretive lawsuits. Thiel obviously does not want that discovery to happen.
I think it's time to explore the idea that Peter Thiel is actually a stupid person with bad ideas and also is highly reflective of Silicon Valley culture. Having money doesn't make you smart. The ability to make money doesn't either.
“A group of former Gawker employees this week abandoned their effort to bid, one of the sources said. They had launched a campaign seeking $500,000 in donations through fundraising site Kickstarter, but failed to reach their goal.” https://www.reuters.com/...