Share this comment
We posted at the same time, but our thoughts are so similar that you might wonder if I just copy-pasted from your comment.
Until Jesse is willing to use existing libel law in exactly the way it was designed to be used, he’s going to get trampled.
Everyone cites Hulk Hogan’s Thiel-funded suit against Gawker as a sinister moment in the death…
We posted at the same time, but our thoughts are so similar that you might wonder if I just copy-pasted from your comment.
Until Jesse is willing to use existing libel law in exactly the way it was designed to be used, he’s going to get trampled.
Everyone cites Hulk Hogan’s Thiel-funded suit against Gawker as a sinister moment in the death of adversarial journalism... but the reality is that most of us 1) want fearless adversarial journalism, and 2) don’t want to live in a world in which the world’s most popular websites can publish secret recordings of us having sex. The “news story” that sunk Gawker was disgusting, destructive, and illegal, and the fact that it destroyed a mini-media empire will serve, like the Richard Jewell case before it, as a memorable deterrent to the worst journalistic abuses.
By sticking up for himself—by coming for these monsters’ money—Jesse would be sticking up for all of us. It’s past time for him to do it.