Billionaire with a grudge shouldn’t claim to be philanthropic

When Peter Thiel helped Hulk Hogan sue news website Gawker he said it was for the public good. It was really about settling an old score writes Keith Emmer

THROUGHOUT history, wealthy industrialists have engaged in vendettas. The venture capitalist Peter Thiel, we now see, is no different. What’s different is the public’s expectations.

What the public is seeing is the disruption of the belief in Silicon Valley exceptionalism — that, unlike Gilded Age robber barons, 21st-century digital plutocrats are transparent in their dealings while building and using their great wealth. Thiel did not cause the growing public disillusionment with Silicon Valley. But his secret funding of the privacy lawsuit of Hulk Hogan, the former pro-wrestler, against Gawker may help accelerate it.