流言憤怒復仇 硅谷和八卦博客的戰爭

Silicon Valley likes to keep the media on a tight leash. Tech executives expect obedience, if not reverence, from reporters. They dole out information as grudgingly as possible. Sometimes they simply buy a chunk of a publication, a time-honored method of influencing what is deemed fit to write about.

硅谷喜歡對媒體保持嚴格的控制。技術高管們希望記者們就算不是畢恭畢敬，至少也要保持順從。他們發放消息時要多勉強就有多勉強。有時候他們乾脆買下某個出版物的大部分股權，這是影響什麼適合發表的一種歷史悠久的做法。

Valleywag declined to play the game.

Valleywag拒絕參加這個遊戲。

It was a gossip sheet for the digital age: abrasive, knowing, cynical, self-promoting, sometimes unfair. It dispensed snark by the truckload, printing things that people knew or surmised but were off the table. It said Google co-founder Larry Page had dated his then-colleague, Marissa Mayer. That the Google chairman Eric Schmidt was a playboy and a scamp. That the Napster co-founder and early Facebook executive Sean Parker’s wedding was seriously over the top.

它堪稱這個數字年代的八卦小報：粗魯傷人、無所不知、冷眼旁觀、自我推銷，有時候還不怎麼公平。它成堆成堆地拋出惡言惡語，發表那些人們知道或能夠猜測出來，但從不公開談論的事情。它說谷歌的聯合創始人拉里·佩奇(Larry Page)約會自己當時的同事梅麗莎·邁耶(Marissa Mayer)。還說谷歌的董事長埃裏克·施密特(Eric Schmidt)是個花花公子兼流氓。Napster的聯合創始人及Facebook的早期執行官肖恩·帕克(Sean Parker)的婚禮搞得太過頭了。

Most notoriously, at least in retrospect, the tech gossip blog said in late 2007 that Peter Thiel, who co-founded PayPal and was an early and significant investor in Facebook, was gay.

最臭名昭著的一件事，至少在事後看來，還要算是2007年年底的那次，這個技術圈八卦博客說，PayPal的聯合創始人與Facebook的早期重要投資者彼得·蒂爾(Peter Thiel)是同性戀。

Outing famous people has a long and not particularly respectable history, but Valleywag said it was celebrating Mr. Thiel. The point, as Valleywag’s then-editor Owen Thomas wrote in his post, was that even in Silicon Valley, “a gay investor has no way to fit into the old establishment. That frees him or her to build a different, hopefully better system for identifying and rewarding talented individuals, and unleashing their work on the world.”

揭露名人隱私的做法由來已久，且並不特別受人尊敬，但是Valleywag說，它是在讚美蒂爾先生。它當時的主編歐文·托馬斯(Owen Thomas)在自己的帖子裏寫道，重要的是，即便在硅谷，“一個同性戀投資者都沒有辦法融入舊體制。這令他們可以解放出來，建立一個完全不同、有可能更好的體系，用於進行身份認同並獎掖有才能者，用他們的工作造福世界。”

This was gossip with an attitude, and an agenda. And what it unleashed was Mr. Thiel’s ire. He secretly financed a suit brought by the wrestler Hulk Hogan against Valleywag’s parent, Gawker Media, which has resulted in $140 million in damages. Gawker is appealing.

這是有態度、有目的性的八卦。然而招來的卻是蒂爾先生的憤怒。他祕密資助了一場訴訟，由摔跤運動員哈爾克·霍根(Hulk Hogan)訴訟Valleywag的母公司Gawker傳媒，最後Gawker被判決賠償1.4億美元的損失費。Gawker目前正在上訴。

The revelation of Mr. Thiel’s involvement in the suit this week brings the complicated relationship of Silicon Valley and the media once again to the forefront. The technology world is ever more important and richer, with smartphones in everyone’s pocket conveying a stream of news that Silicon Valley not only delivers, but helps shape. At the same time, the tech companies are less transparent about what they do.

本週，蒂爾參與該案件的事實被披露，使硅谷與媒體之間的複雜關係再次備受關注。如今這個時代，每個人的智能手機上都在推送一連串新聞，硅谷不僅僅是它們的輸送媒介，也在左右它們的內容，科技界變得愈發舉足輕重，也更加富有。與此同時，科技公司也變得不再那麼透明。

“Silicon Valley is a closed world and has become more closed at the elite levels,” said Fred Turner, chairman of the department of communication at Stanford. “The gossip that circulates between people doesn’t always leap into the media the way it might in New York. So Americans know the Valley primarily through its advertising, its self-promotion and its products.”

“硅谷是個封閉的世界，而且在精英的層面變得更加封閉，”斯坦福聯絡部主席弗萊德·特納(Fred Turner)說。“人們之間口耳相傳的八卦泄露到媒體的方式和紐約的方式不一定一樣。所以美國人瞭解硅谷主要是通過它的廣告、它的自我宣傳與它的產品。”

Valleywag challenged that, and the Valley — or at least Mr. Thiel — pushed back.

Valleywag挑戰了這種方式，而硅谷——至少是蒂爾——做出了反擊。

“We should not be surprised that they act like entitled industrialists out here, because they are,” Mr. Turner said.

“他們像外面那些有特權的工業巨頭那樣行事，這不應該讓我們感到奇怪，因爲他們本來就是，”特納說。

Valleywag was born in 2006, an arm of Gawker’s then-expanding empire of blogs, and it died last winter. It had a hiatus or two along the way, with Nick Denton, the Gawker founder, stepping in to write the blog at one point. Its most influential years were in the beginning, especially under Mr. Thomas, who ran the site from 2007 until 2009.

Valleywag誕生於2006年，當時Gawker正在擴張一個博客帝國，Valleywag是其中的一員，它於去年冬天倒閉。這段時間裏它曾經中斷過一兩次，導致Gawker的創始人尼克·丹頓(Nick Denton)一度都要介入爲它寫博客。它最有影響力的年代是在剛開始創建的時期，特別是2007年到2009年，托馬斯經營網站的那段時間。

“On one hand the reporting was terribly caustic and brutal and on the other it was really thorough and investigative and accurate in a lot of cases,” said Brandee Barker, former head of global communications at Facebook. “I would read a story and think, ‘How on earth did they find this information that is correct?’ Other times I’d read Valleywag and think, ‘This is the most evil and unfair characterization of somebody I’ve ever read in journalism.’”

“他們的報道一方面非常尖刻，不留情面；另一方面，它們確實極爲詳盡，經過大量調查研究，在很多情況下都很準確，”Facebook的前全球聯絡主管布蘭迪·巴克(Brandee Barker)說。“我往往看過一篇報道後想，‘他們到底是怎麼發現這個信息是正確的？’有時候我看了Valleywag之後就想，‘這是我從新聞裏讀到的對某人最惡毒，最不公正的描寫。’”

John Cook, executive editor of Gawker Media, who helped put Valleywag to rest last year, said the site “didn’t play the access game.”

Gawker 傳媒的總編約翰·庫克(John Cook)去年協助關閉了Valleywag，他說，這個網站“不玩信息渠道的遊戲。”

Mr. Thomas, now business editor of The San Francisco Chronicle, said the goal of Valleywag was to improve the tech community.

托馬斯如今在《舊金山紀事報》(The San Francisco Chronicle)擔任經濟版編輯，他說Valleywag的目標就是令科技社區得到改進。

“Silicon Valley said it had ideals,” he said. “All we asked was that it live up to those ideals. If you’re going to say that you’re a meritocracy, then don’t hire all of your buddies to launch a start-up who all happen to be young white men. Don’t say you’re apolitical when you’re secretly funding anti-immigration measures.”

“硅谷說它有理想，”他說。“我們想問的只不過是，它是怎麼來實踐這些理想的。如果你說自己任人唯賢，那就別隻僱自己的人，搞一個初創公司，裏面全是年輕白人。不要一邊說自己和政治無關，一邊又偷偷資助反移民議案。”

For Mr. Thiel, taking action against Gawker may be a win. Dan Lyons, an author who was briefly a Valleywag writer, said what Mr. Thiel did “sets a scary precedent,” but “my guess is that most people hate Gawker as much as he does, so he probably ends up looking like a hero among his own crowd.”

對於蒂爾來說，採取行動反對Gawker可能是一着好棋。曾經短暫爲Valleywag撰稿的丹·里昂斯(Dan Lyons)說，蒂爾的確“樹立了一個可怕的先例，”但是“我猜大多數人和他一樣憎恨Gawker，所以最後他可能會在自己的圈子裏被視爲英雄。”

That response was not long in coming. Scott Adams, whose Dilbert cartoon is a satirical look at the modern workplace, wrote on his blog on Wednesday that “this is another example in which I think citizens are taking a more active role in fixing the world when government isn’t the right tool for the job.”

這樣的反應很快就來了。斯科特·亞當斯(Scott Adams)創作的迪爾伯特(Dilbert)卡通畫是諷刺現代工作場所的，星期三，他在自己的博客上寫道：“這又是一個例子，當政府不作爲的時候，公民在改變世界方面發揮了積極作用。”

Mr. Adams wrote approvingly of Mr. Thiel, “I assume he is acting out of a combination of revenge and a desire to make the world a better place.”

亞當斯贊同蒂爾的做法，“我覺得他的目的不僅僅是報復，也是爲了讓這個世界變成一個更好的地方。”

Without this week’s news, Valleywag’s legacy would be uncertain. Several Silicon Valley figures asked to comment on Wednesday said they had not read it or did not know it was defunct.

假如沒有這個星期的新聞，Valleywag的遺產尚不明確。星期三，若干接受採訪的硅谷人物都說自己從沒讀過它的博客，也不知道這個已經不復存在的網站。

Others, like the Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff, an occasional Valleywag target, said simply about the site and this week’s events, “I don’t care about any of those people.”

還有一些人，比如 Salesforce的首席執行官，曾經短暫充當過Valleywag靶子的馬克·本尼奧夫(Marc Benioff)，簡潔地評價這個網站與本週的這些風波：“所有這些人我全都不關心。”

The news about Mr. Thiel funding the suit against Gawker broke just as the previous contretemps about Silicon Valley and the media — how Facebook shapes the news that its users see, sparked by a story in Gizmodo, another Gawker property — was dying down. Mr. Thiel, as it happens, is a Facebook board member. Facebook declined to comment on Mr. Thiel.

蒂爾資助訴訟Gawker案件一事爆出時，此前一場硅谷與媒體關係的爭論正在逐漸平息——這場爭論是由Gawker旗下的另一個網站Gizmodo的報道挑起的，內容是Facebook是如何操縱用戶看到的新聞。蒂爾恰好也是Facebook董事會成員。Facebook方面拒絕就蒂爾一事做出評論。

Mr. Thomas, who is himself gay, argues that Valleywag was not really outing Mr. Thiel. “I did discuss his sexuality, but it was known to a wide circle who felt that it was not fit for discussion beyond that circle,” he said. “I don’t believe he was in the closet. He was never hiding it.”

托馬斯本人也是同性戀，他說，Valleywag並沒有真正揭露蒂爾的隱私。“我確實討論了他的性取向，但這件事已經被一個很廣泛的圈子所知道了，他們認爲此事適合在這個圈子之外進行討論，”他說。“我不相信他沒有出櫃，他從來都沒掩飾過。”

However much Valleywag said it admired Mr. Thiel for being “the smartest V.C. in the world,” it took a more disparaging view as well. In one post about Mr. Thiel’s claims of hiring only the best to work at his hedge fund, Clarium Capital, Mr. Thomas wrote, “Oh, really? Take a look at their résumés on LinkedIn. Like so many of this outspokenly harebrained libertarian’s theses, the claim sounds good on paper but doesn’t stand up to inspection.”

雖然Valleywag說自己敬仰蒂爾是“世界上最聰明的副主席”，但還是發表了不少貶低他的言論。蒂爾曾說自己的對衝基金Clarium Capital只僱用最佳人才，托馬斯在一篇帖子裏寫道，“啊，真的嗎？看看他們在LinkedIn上的簡歷吧。像很多輕率地暢所欲言的自由主義者們的口號一樣，他的說法聽上去不錯，但是卻經不起推敲。”

Mr. Thiel returned the favor, calling Valleywag “the Silicon Valley equivalent of Al Qaeda.”

蒂爾反脣相譏，說Valleywag是“硅谷的基地組織。”

“It scares everybody,” he said in a 2009 interview with Pe Hub, a private equity publication. “It’s terrible for the Valley, which is supposed to be about people who are willing to think out loud and be different. I think they should be described as terrorists, not as writers or reporters.”

“它令所有人害怕，”他在2009年接受私人投資出版物《Pe Hub》採訪時說。“對於硅谷來說它很可怕，因爲硅谷是一個期待所有人都說出自己的思想，做與衆不同的人的地方。我覺得他們應該被稱爲恐怖分子，而不是作家或記者。”