After discussing Peter Thiel’s almost decade-long war on Gawker with many of my close friends and colleagues, I have decided to publicly post my views.

But before I do so, let me get the elephant into the room. I am conflicted up the wazoo.

Peter and I disagree on many topics political, social and economic. At his Dialog retreat in Utah, a weekend-long heated debate about the most pressing problems facing the world, I felt like Sen. Bernie Sanders at a Trump-family Thanksgiving dinner.

Nonetheless, I shared an early vision with Peter about the importance of Facebook as both a business and a global force for positive change. And Peter invested in Buddy Media’s seed round after an introduction by Mark Pincus. Peter was never actively involved in the business. But having Facebook’s first investor and member on our side helped.

Like Peter, I have been on the receiving end of Gawker’s barbs. Gawker was the only publication to question Buddy Media’s premise. The site was right and we eventually pivoted our business.

Many of my close friends and colleagues have received much harsher treatment. It’s not pleasant, I assure you, to have Gawker sniffing around, and there were many days that I just wished Gawker’s tech writers would go away.

Nonetheless, I am a regular reader of Gawker to this day, as well as three of company’s other sites, Deadspin, Lifehacker and Gizmodo. I have been able to separate the company from the person, founder Nick Denton. Both are complex. I have cheered the company’s best work while harshly denouncing the most deplorable.

I had lunch with Nick recently to discuss ways to evolve his business. He agrees that several of his posts have crossed the line. And he is quick to point out the changes he has made (parting ways with the staff involved) as well as the lessons learned.

And, finally, Gawker’s lead backer, Columbus Nova’s Jason Epstein, is one of my first and best friends. We grew up together in the suburbs of Washington, DC. Jason invested in Buddy Media in the same round as Peter. And last month we co-lead an investment in The Odyssey. (For sake of clarity, I was not involved in Jason’s investment in Gawker.)

So with that behind me, let me share why I am disgusted by Peter’s actions.

Peter Thiel’s secret war violated two of Silicon Valley’s most core and fundamental principles, trust and transparency. And he did so for revenge of the most sinister kind -- a prolonged, well-funded, secret and bitter campaign of personal retribution.

And Peter is not alone in his total disregard for these core values. Several mega-rich Silicon Valley leaders have publicly supported his efforts. Many agree with Peter but are afraid to say anything publicly. Others have resorted to only retweeting stories in support of Peter.

Vinod Khosla, a long-time Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor, tweeted, “click bait journalists need to be taught lessons. Far less ethics and more click chasing in press today. I'm for #theil”

Despite what Khosla and others who make the same banal argument may say, Peter was not teaching a lesson. He brought a nuclear bomb purchased on the black market to the school-yard fight of online gossip. He called his enemy Al Qaeda, the writers and editors terrorists and just wished the whole organization would just go away.

Peter justified his secret financial support as “one of my greater philanthropic things that I’ve done,” which says more about Peter’s view of giving than his true motivations.

Peter’s act is not philanthropic. It’s vengeance of epic proportions.

I’m sad for Peter that he was unable to tell the two apart. But I’m scared for all of us and the world that he has plenty of money to provide unlimited funding to additional “philanthropic” efforts like this one.

Peter isn’t the hero his friends and loyalists in Silicon Valley depict. Nor is he the villain loathed by his media critics.

Peter is the classic anti-hero. An imperfect billionaire who lacks any of the positive personal traits we expect from our heroes – courage, selflessness, bravery, trustworthiness, compassion, strength and virtue.

For Peter and other anti-heroes like him, the ends justify the means. How he destroys Gawker doesn’t matter to Peter as much as whether Gawker is destroyed. This is a scary precedent for our community of innovators who place more emphasis on how we act versus what we do.

The largest technology companies – and their founders, investors and executives – have access to some of the most valuable assets on the planet. Piles and piles of personal and corporate cash, deployable at any time. Unique assets that could be used for terrifying purposes if it weren't for core values that drive decision making.

Facebook, backed by and represented by Peter, owns the virtual representation of all the human connections in the world, as well as the messages sent between them, the massive data exhaust Facebook users generate and the algorithms that determine what we see.

Paypal, founded by Peter and his friends, has a database of what you bought and who you paid. Google owns a platform that houses the email of much of the world’s working population. Uber has a living map of where you are and where you are going, and the history of these movements. Apple has your entire life on its devices, information that could be used to hurt you and your family.

Each of the companies have the ability – and often the incentive – to use these assets to compete, to hurt detractors, to revenge past wrongs. But they don’t. They make the right decision because there is an ethical framework, a set of core values, that govern the use of the assets. And these values, I have found, are widely shared by tech entrepreneurs and makes our community so strong.

It’s not that Apple and its employees don’t despise murderers any less than FBI agents. But the company knows that using its power even in such drastic cases would violate its core value of trust, which would be devastating long term.

Apple is not alone. The largest enterprise cloud computing company, Salesforce, lists trust as its #1 core value, as does Facebook, which has aggressively defended this value publicly.

Just this month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with conservative media leaders after Gawker’s Gizmodo site reported former workers say Facebook regularly suppresses conservative news.

In a post on his Facebook page after the meeting, Mark wrote, “I wanted to hear their concerns personally and have an open conversation about how we can build trust.”

We can argue the merits of the Gawker cases Peter has backed. But what can’t be argued is Peter’s lack of commitment to transparency and trust. And that’s most troubling at a time when consumers’ trust of Silicon Valley is at all all-time low and falling fast.

A survey of 10,000 customers fielded by brand consultancy Prophet released earlier this year showed that people don’t trust Google and Facebook anymore.

Poll after poll reveals the same mistrust. But even more troubling for the broader innovation sector is Edelman's 2015 Trust Barometer, which found a link between general distrust of business and positive perception of rapid product innovation. Only 24% of the 27,000 respondents agreed that innovation is making the world a better place.

In an interview about the findings, Edelman global corporate practice chair Ben Boyd highlighted the “atmosphere of distrust,” which has "big implications for Silicon Valley."

"We see the need for the Valley to contextualise," he said. "Respondents want to see more transparency in the rigour of testing behind those innovations and they want more third party voices.”

What Peter and everyone supporting his methods fail to realize is that the media industry is resilient. Trust in us – as people, as organizations, as an industry – is not. And the fastest way to destroy trust is to act without transparency.

If Peter, Mr. Silicon Valley in popular movies and TV shows, can use his power to destroy personal enemies, is it that far of a stretch to think that any of his companies would do the same? Or any company in Silicon Valley?

Maybe or maybe not. But perception is reality. So the question isn’t whether or not they will do it but rather whether or not people think they will do it. That’s all that matters.

Peter may indeed succeed in killing Gawker, though both my hope and prediction is that Gawker will emerge a stronger and more responsible actor in the media landscape. But in seeking personal revenge in violation of these two core values of trust and transparency, Peter has started digging the graves of his and Silicon Valley’s reputation as well.

PHOTO CREDIT: (cc) Kenneth Yeung - www.snapfoc.us. Taken at PandoDaily's PandoMonthly event in April 2012 via Flickr.



