Thiel is funding a bunch of lawsuits against Gawker and it probably is entirely for revenge. But now the rest of the company is protected by bankruptcy and a multi-billion dollar international corporation, so democracy is safe.
Denton fucked up hard too:
On July 29, 2016, in a meeting with the courts, Denton was chastised by the courts who stated that Denton's valuation of the company had been inflated by him (Denton) to give the impression that the company was worth more than it actually was. In the court records, the judge stated that Denton had informed the court that the value of the stock he himself held was valued at eighty-one million dollars. This valuation was used to give the court and Hogan that the offer of turning over Denton's stock would cover the majority of the money owed by the company. However, the stocks were found to be valued at thirty million, and not the cited eighty-one million. In the wake of this revelation, the court ordered that Denton had not acted in good faith, and issued an order stating that Hogan could begin seizing assets from Gawker.
Denton's always played up the value of the company while also saying "journalism isn't about profits" at the same time. IIRC, the company barely had the assets to pay off Hogan's secondary judgement of $25 million, let alone his primary one.
Univision way overpaid. And Ziff-Davis starting the bidding at $100 million was funny.
