Remember that supposed conspiracy behind Hulk Hogan’s huge Gawker lawsuit we talked about yesterday? Well, it didn’t take very long to move from wild speculation to “oh yeah, that’s totally a real thing.”
The founder of Gawker, Nick Denton, told the New York Times that he suspected someone they had published an unwanted story about in the past was using their considerable financial means to pay for the legal expenses in a series of lawsuits against the website. Now that unseen benefactor has a name: Peter Thiel.
Thiel is a billionaire entrepreneur who co-founded PayPal and was an early investor in a little social media website called Facebook. According to the Times’ anonymous source, Thiel is the one who has been paying for the former WWE Hall of Famer to sue the multi-million dollar pants off of Gakwer Media. Details of their alleged private arrangement are obviously protected by confidentiality, and further details could not be revealed.
It’s said that Thiel is still upset about Gawker outing him against his will back in 2007, though Gawker has written about him plenty of times. Thiel has publicly described Silicon Valley-centric Gawker offshoot Valleywag as “the Silicon Valley equivalent of Al Qaeda,” so…I mean, yeah he probably doesn’t care for them very much at this point.
(Via The New York Times)
