This article has been imported from chorus.fm for discussion. All of the forum rules still apply. Gawker is shutting down: After nearly fourteen years of operation, Gawker.com will be shutting down next week. The decision to close Gawker comes days after Univision successfully bid $135 million for Gawker Media’s six other websites, and four months after the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel revealed his clandestine legal campaign against the company. Expand - View Original
I used to love io9 before they fired everyone and merged with Gizmodo. Deadspin has it's humorous moments but otherwise I'm stoked they're done.
Questionable ethics and hypocrisy. There are multiple examples of Gawker sharing private photos or videos of people, and then claiming that the site is a credible source of news and not tabloid journalism. Usually criticisms were met with double standards and implications that harassment and slander are okay if it's a public figure a lot of people dislike, such as a conservative businessman or celebrity. Notable examples include Gawker articles condemning people who shared or looked at nude candid photos of celebrities such as Jennifer Lawrence, when only a couple years prior the site itself had published a private video of Hulk Hogan that was recorded without his consent (which is what prompted the lawsuit). In these same articles they enjoyed making jokes at Hogan's expense. They're a sensationalist, clickbait, borderline-tabloid network of blogs, with an unequal sense of justice. I'm quite liberal myself, but you don't get to excuse poor treatment of some group of people and not others based on their political beliefs or "likability". Everyone deserves privacy and to not be harassed, period.
They have a lot of tabloid-esque content and have done unethical things like blackmail people and leak product information. The guy who funded the Hogan lawsuit was a billionaire they outed back in 2007.
I don't care about Gawker. Never read it really. But I love myself some Deadspin once in awhile. Kotaku has its moments too.
They did plenty of terrible things over the years to drive traffic to their site, but I don't feel even a sliver of sympathy for Hogan - he may have won the legal battle that buried them, but there's so much about the circumstances of his situation that make me wish he hadn't come out of it with the satisfaction of taking Gawker down.