Ziff Davis Media has agreed to purchase the media brands currently under the Gawker Media Group umbrella.

This agreement will include the gaming news website, Kotaku, who have been responsible for breaking a number of in-depth, high-profile stories, the most recent of which was the now confirmed leak regarding Sony’s plans to release an upgraded version of the PlayStation 4.

Ziff Davis’ looming acquisition of Gawker Media Group stems from a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by Gawker. That bankruptcy filing was precipitated in the wake of major lawsuit the company lost to professional wrestling icon, Hulk Hogan.

Hogan filed the lawsuit against Gawker Media Group after their flagship website, Gawker, published a secretly sex-tape of Hogan and the wife of radio personality, Bubba the Love Sponge. Racial comments that were made by Hogan following the act resulted in the wrestler being fired from his promotional contract with World Wrestling Entertainment. (WWE)

Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker sought $100 million in compensation over the damage to his reputation, as well as lost income from the termination of his WWE contract.

On March 18th, a Florida Jury awarded Hogan $115 million in compensatory damages, which then swelled to $140 million after punitive damages were added.

The sale to Ziff Davis media will bring Kotaku into the same media family as gaming mega-site, IGN, which is also owned by Ziff-Davis.

In addition to Gawker’s own celebrity gossip website, the media group also operates six other special interest outlets, including:

• Kotaku
• Jalopnik
• Jezebel
• Lifehacker
• Gizmondo
• Deadspin

As if the sorted details of the sexual activities and racial biases of a former beloved professional wrestler were not enough, the fact that Hogan’s mega-suit was funded by billionaire, Peter Thiel, adds an eye-brow-raising layer of intrigue on the whole affair.

In an article published by Forbes on May 24th, Ryan Mac and Matt Drange revealed that Thiel, the co-founder of Pay-Pal, had secretly been footing Hogan’s legal bills as a way to covertly take down Gawker Media Group. The article stated that Thiel, who had one point compared a Gawker-run website to the notorious terrorist group Al-Qaeda, had desired to crush Gawker after the media outlet tried to out him as homosexual in 2007.

“Money may not have been the main motivation in the first place. Thiel, who is gay, has made no secret of his distaste for Gawker, which attempted to out him in late 2007 before he was open about his sexuality. In 2009, Thiel told PEHub that now-defunct Silicon Valley-focused publication Valleywag, which was owned by Gawker, had the ‘psychology of a terrorist.’”

There is a sad irony in the possibility that Kotaku as we know it could cease to be, and the circumstances surrounding the financial troubles of parent company, Gawker.

Peter Thiel’s supposed rage against Gawker was provoked by that company’s invasion of his private life. His sexual preference, which he didn’t want widely known at the time, was published without his consent leaving him feeling violated.

One would believe that someone who had been victimized by an overreaching media organization would be extra diligent in advocating a person’s right to privacy.

However, one of the projects that Thiel backed after the Gawker incident has the singular purpose of gathering information about us, and peeling back the curtains of privacy in the digital age.

In addition to helping co-founding PayPal, Peter Thiel also was one of the original backers of Facebook, as well as a company called Palantir.

It’s the latter of these two ventures in which the irony can be found.

Palantir is a company that specializes in gathering massive amounts of data and then funneling that data into various algorithmic platforms. These algorithm’s are then used to track behavior patterns and build a predictive platform to determine the future actions that a given subject might take.

One use that is described on the corporate website is the ability to track financial trading data and look for various trading patterns that might arise. While that all sounds innocuous enough at a cursory glance, the possibilities for potential misuse arise when you start applying that technology to people.

Palantir’s data-collection techniques can be used to harvest meta-data on any given individual and then create a predictive algorithm that could be used to map that person’s future actions.

The company claims that its technology was able to use existing data in order to pinpoint the location of Osama bin Laden.

There is a great deal of secrecy surrounding Plalantir, who counts government alphabet agencies such as the CIA as clients for their software. One clue as to the purpose of all that data harvesting could be derived from the meaning of the company’s name.

The Palantir was a magical crystal ball from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The device was used by wizards, as well as Sauron, the main protagonist of the books to see what anyone was doing, at any time, anywhere.

So it’s easy to deduce that the purpose of the real-world software that Palantir is producing, could be used for a similar purpose.

Although Gawker’s publication over Thiel’s private life are certainly indefeasible and downright tawdry; Thiel’s subsequent activities in founding Palantir, along with his near decade-long quest for vengeance, border on hypocrisy.

It’s unclear as to what the future will hold for Kotaku. The worst case scenario would be that the site shuts down, or is unable to maintain the quality of its product under the direction of the new management.

For their part, Kotaku remains resolute and focused on business as usual; noting in a post on their website Friday afternoon:

“[W]e and the rest of the sites at our company will be doing what we do under a new owner. That’s a ways off. For now, you can expect us to proceed with business as usual. We will continue to try to put the best possible gaming site out there, one that we hope will interest you for months and years to come.’

Hopefully, Kotaku will be able to rise above this high-profile, corporate cage-match and continue doing what it does best: write about the industry we love.

–source: Hollywood Reporter – CNN – Forbes – Gawker – Kotaku