Gawker founder Nick Denton announced a settlement with Hulk Hogan, following the sale of Gawker and the personal bankruptcy of Denton.
“After four years of litigation funded by a billionaire with a grudge going back even further, a settlement has been reached. The saga is over,” declared Denton in a post on his personal blog. “As the most unpalatable part of the deal, three true stories — about Hulk Hogan, the claim by Shiva Ayyadurai that he invented email and the feud between the founders of Tinder — are being removed from the web.”
“All-out legal war with Thiel would have cost too much, and hurt too many people, and there was no end in sight,” he complained. “The Valley billionaire, famously relentless, had committed publicly to support Hulk Hogan beyond the appeal and ‘until his final victory.’ Gawker’s nemesis was not going away.”
“I will continue to work on topic forums, still convinced that the internet can bring people together in shared understanding rather than just triggering conflict between them,” claimed Denton, before adding that “Hulk Hogan’s retirement will be comfortable.”
Billionaire PayPal co-founder and Donald Trump Supporter Peter Thiel, who financially supported Hogan’s lawsuit against Denton, had his name mentioned four times during Denton’s piece.
Denton previously mentioned Thiel’s name twenty-eight times during his goodbye post on Gawker in August.
“If you make a sex tape of someone with their permission, you are a pornographer. If you make a sex tape without their permission, we were told now you are a journalist,” said Thiel during a press conference on Monday, where he also branded Gawker as a “sociopathic bully.”
“Gawker in some ways perfected it,” claimed Thiel on the topic of bullying. “Where you pick on people, and you would destroy their lives, and write nasty stories. The writers then might even add comments that were even more vicious than the ones in the story, all so as to generate a virtual mob that would go after these people.”
Both Gawker Media and its founder Nick Denton were forced to file for bankruptcy after a court ruled in Hogan’s favor, and Gawker Media has since been bought by Univision, who made it their first act to shut down the media company’s flagship site, Gawker, and rebrand themselves as Gizmodo Media.
Since filing for bankruptcy, Denton was denied the ability to lease his $4.25 million apartment in Manhattan, and he has since moved into a cheaper property. Hogan has since purchased a $1.6 million beach house.
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.