That group went on to become power players at such Silicon Valley institutions as Tesla, YouTube, LinkedIn and Yelp. PhotoA billionaire Silicon Valley entrepreneur was outed as being gay by a media organization. A 2007 article published by Gawker’s Valleywag blog was headlined, “Peter Thiel is totally gay, people.” That and a series of articles about his friends and others that he said “ruined people’s lives for no reason” drove Mr. Thiel to mount a clandestine war against Gawker. In a way, if I didn’t think Gawker was unique, I wouldn’t have done any of this. If the entire media was more or less like this, this would be like trying to boil the ocean.” Mr. Thiel said he had not targeted any other media companies.

Source: New York Times May 25, 2016 19:34 UTC