Gawker’s Final Post: “How Things Work,” Popular Site Shut Down

After a massive jury award against the site Gawker.com, today the site is being shut down. The final post is up. Nick Denton wrote the post:

Peter Thiel has achieved his objectives. His proxy, Terry Bollea, also known as Hulk Hogan, has a claim on the company and my personal assets after winning a $140 million trial court judgment in his Florida privacy case. Even if that decision is reversed or reduced on appeal, it is too late for Gawker itself. Its former editor, who wrote the story about Hogan, has a $230 million hold on his checking account. The flagship site, a magnet for most of the lawsuits marshaled by Peter Thiel’s lawyer, has for most media companies become simply too dangerous to own.

The site was sued by star wrestler Hulk Hogan after a sex tape was posted online and the company refused to take it down. Enter billionaire Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, board member of Facebook, contractor for the “FBI, CIA, Department of Defense and IRS,” attendee of the Bilderberg group, and supporter of Donald Trump for president.

In 2007, Gawker ‘outed’ Peter Thiel as a gay man. After that, Peter Thiel used some of his money in a crusade of privacy against Gawker with lawsuits that absorbed the profits out of the organization. The verdict will be appealed, but the site is going down for good today.

Peter Thiel is on to his next task, official criminalization of disclosing private conversations. He boasted in an editorial:

The United States House of Representatives is considering the Intimate Privacy Protection Act, a bipartisan bill that would make it illegal to distribute explicit private images, sometimes called revenge porn, without the consent of the people involved. Nicknamed the Gawker Bill, it would also provide criminal consequences for third parties who sought to profit from such material. This is a step in the right direction.

Meanwhile at Gawker, the final post is titled “How Things Work.”