Billionaire venture capitalist and beach-miser Vinod Khosla has thrown his backing – in spirit at least – behind billionaire PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel s effort to shut down gossip website Gawker. But in a Twitter thread overflowing with snide comments, Khosla s show of support got him smacked by a local tech journalist for spelling Thiel s name wrong.
Venture capitalist and Sun Microsystems co-founder Khosla is famous for his Silicon Valley roles and estimated $1.5 billion net worth. And he is infamous for his drawn-out battle to block the unwashed masses from crossing his multi-million-dollar Half Moon Bay-area property to get to the beach.
Thiel, who had been outed in 2007 by Gawker as gay, was recently revealed as the man with the money behind former wrestler Hulk Hogan s sex-tape lawsuit against Gawker, which netted Hogan a $140 million award from the trial jury, threatening the website with oblivion. Thiel put up $10 million to support Hogan s suit.
On Thursday, Khosla took to social media in response to an article about Thiel by Kara Swisher on tech website Recode.
Click bait journalists need to be taught lessons. Far less ethics and more click chasing in press today. I m for #theil, Khosla tweeted at Swisher and Recode.
Swisher took umbrage, flourished an imaginary red pen, and tweeted: It s Thiel, she wrote, pointing out Khosla s spelling error, and we don t need to be taught lessons or ethics by a billionaire with an ax to grind.
San Francisco Chronicle business columnist Thomas Lee got huffy, too: Spare us the ethics lessons man, he tweeted at Khosla. As if entitled VCs are somehow qualified to mansplain journalism to journalists.
Khosla shot back: Any thoughtful person is, VC or not, he tweeted at Lee. But clickbait revenue incentive drives journalists more & more to unethical headline grabbers.
Lee then tweeted that he was writing a column on Khosla s comments, and asked Khosla for an interview, before issuing a caveat about the column-to-be: It will probably get some clicks. Among several references to Khosla s ethics vis-a-vis the coastal-access dispute, Twitter user Online Sean had this to tweet: Vinod my man, can I crash on your beach later?
Photo: Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, right, leaves San Mateo County Superior Courthouse after testifying in May 2014 about his refusal to open public access to a stretch of beach along the San Mateo County coastline. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
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