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<\/p>\nA new venture from the man who helped Peter Thiel bankrupt Gawker is a \u2018chilling\u2019 move into censorship, say critics<\/p>\n
An AI-generated image from the Objection website<\/p>\n
![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Patricia_Clarke.png\")
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Patricia ClarkeTechnology Reporter<\/p>\n
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In October 2009, during his first week at law school in Oxford, Aron D\u2019Souza met American tech billionaire Peter Thiel<\/a>, the man best known for co-founding PayPal and the software company Palantir. Thiel was giving a talk at the university.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHe was the very first billionaire I\u00a0 met,\u201d D\u2019Souza says. \u201cAnd I was like: \u2018Oh, you\u2019re a billionaire<\/a>. You must not have any problems.\u2019\u201d But Thiel replied that he had plenty. His biggest, he said, was the US gossip website Gawker, \u201cthat is writing terrible stuff about me\u201d, D\u2019Souza recalls. Two years earlier, Gawker\u2019s Silicon Valley blog, Valleywag, had outed Thiel as gay. His sexuality was known to close friends, but Thiel considered that information private. He told D\u2019Souza he did not want to sue the publisher himself, for fear of drawing further attention to the negative coverage.<\/p>\n D\u2019Souza, then a fiercely ambitious 24-year-old from Australia, came up with an idea on the spot. \u201cI said: \u2018Well, why don\u2019t you find someone who wants to sue them but doesn\u2019t have the resources? And you could wage a proxy battle,\u2019\u201d he recalls. He laid out how this could work.<\/p>\n A few weeks later, Thiel asked him: \u201cHow much and how long will it take to destroy Gawker?\u201d D\u2019Souza reckoned five years and $10m.<\/p>\n Objection\u2019s Aron D\u2019Souza also founded the Enhanced Games<\/p>\n He was almost right. After Gawker published footage from a sex tape featuring the former wrestler Hulk Hogan in October 2012, D\u2019Souza recruited a celebrity lawyer, Charles Harder, to file a suit on Hogan\u2019s behalf. It was one of several lawsuits against the website that Thiel secretly bankrolled: he spent about $10m over the course of the campaign. In March 2016, a Florida jury awarded Hogan $140m in damages. Three months later, Gawker filed for bankruptcy.<\/p>\n D\u2019Souza has since built a colourful career as a company director and investor. In 2023, he founded the Enhanced Games<\/a> \u2013 in which athletes can use performance-enhancing drugs. But the Gawker case shaped his next big venture.<\/p>\n \u201cGawker was not unique,\u201d reads the website of his new AI startup, Objection. \u201cIt was simply the first large media company to be tested against reality in the age of clicks, outrage, and algorithmic amplification. Since then, the same structural failure has spread everywhere\u201d.<\/p>\n Largely self-funded and backed by Thiel and fellow contrarian entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan, a crypto investor, Objection says it wants to act as a \u201cprivate accountability system\u201d for journalism. For a starting price of $2,000, anyone who feels they have been unfairly reported on can file a complaint. A team of investigators then examine the story and submit their findings to an \u201cAI tribunal\u201d \u2013 a \u201cjury\u201d of large language models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI and Mistral. Journalists are invited to defend their reporting. If they do not, the verdict is issued anyway, and published in a permanent public record.\u00a0<\/p>\n D\u2019Souza envisages a world in which people refuse to give interviews unless the journalist first signs an agreement to be \u201cbound\u201d by Objection\u2019s rulings: if the journalist is found to have made a mistake or misrepresented a subject, they would agree to go to court to defend their reporting.\u00a0<\/p>\n For those who do not sign up, Objection carries no legal force. Its power lies in a supposedly objective AI \u201cverdict\u201d, designed to be weaponised in social media and PR.<\/p>\n NewslettersChoose the newsletters you want to receive<\/p>\n Clear, calm analysis on the stories driving the day\u2019s news.<\/p>\n The very best of our journalism, reviews and ideas \u2013 curated each day.<\/p>\n How to live well \u2013 new writing on food, style, design, travel and shopping from our best writers, including Nigel Slater<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For information about how The Observer protects your data, read our Privacy Policy<\/a><\/p>\n D\u2019Souza says his cause is noble given the collapse in public trust in the media: according to a Gallup survey last year, just 28% of Americans express confidence in news organisations to report fully, accurately, and fairly, down from 68% in the early 1970s. Among Republicans, the figure has fallen to 8%.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSomeone needed to fix it,\u201d he says. His argument is that, by subjecting journalism to the kind of scrutiny courts apply to evidence, Objection will force higher standards on reporters and, in doing so, rebuild the public\u2019s faith.<\/p>\n Press freedom groups and media lawyers are not convinced. Fiona O\u2019Brien of the Committee to Protect Journalists calls the platform \u201cdeeply chilling\u201d, not because of the concept, which could be considered \u201cgimmicky and crass\u201d, but because of the moment in which it arrives.<\/p>\n \u201cPress freedom is already under extreme pressure<\/a>,\u201d she says. \u201cThis is another avenue for those who would dismantle a free and diverse media.\u201d A record 129 journalists and media workers were killed worldwide in 2025. Across Europe, the number of legal actions designed to silence journalists continues to rise, with more than 1,300 documented strategic lawsuits against public participation \u2013 otherwise known as Slapps \u2013 between 2010 and 2024.<\/p>\n Jessica N\u00ed Mhain\u00edn of Index on Censorship says Objection is a form of \u201cprivatised censorship\u201d, allowing wealthy individuals to challenge and discredit journalism. D\u2019Souza says tech bros are queuing up to support Objection, with \u201cmore billionaires than I can count\u201d reaching out to him. \u00a0<\/p>\n Even if no journalist signs up (and so far, it seems none has), Objection\u2019s backers have immense resources and reach. Thiel is one of the US\u2019s best politically connected billionaires. Vice-president JD Vance speaks with Thiel monthly and owes his political career to his campaign donations, and Palantir provides core infrastructure for the Pentagon.<\/p>\n Peter Thiel speaking at a bitcoin conference in Miami, Florida, in 2022<\/p>\n D\u2019Souza has said Objection \u201cindustrialises\u201d the process that took down Gawker all those years ago. But where the Gawker stories concerned gross violations of individual privacy, Objection is designed to challenge reporting that its clients consider unfair or defamatory.\u00a0<\/p>\n D\u2019Souza brushed off the distinction and instead cites a recent article in the New Yorker by Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz. The piece, about the chief executive of OpenAI, was headlined: \u201cSam Altman may control our future \u2013 can he be trusted?\u201d It drew on more than 100 interviews with on-the-record and anonymous sources, some of which portrayed Altman as mendacious and, at the extreme, \u201csociopathic\u201d<\/a>. D\u2019Souza blames the article for a molotov cocktail that was allegedly thrown at Altman\u2019s house. \u201cThat\u2019s the power of narrative.\u201d D\u2019Souza says, implying that the reporting is radicalising readers.<\/p>\n When I point out that Altman has spent years cultivating a narrative about AI that has arguably contributed as much to public fear as any magazine profile, D\u2019Souza doubles down. \u201cRonan Farrow is as powerful, if not more powerful, than Sam Altman,\u201d he says. \u201cIn the current environment, he can use a string of anonymous sources\u2026 that can construct a narrative that could literally destroy one of the most important companies in the world and kill its CEO.\u201d<\/p>\n The New Yorker, for which Farrow writes, employs a factchecking team that independently verifies every claim, including calling each anonymous source, before publication. D\u2019Souza says this is not enough; he argues that full transcripts of on-the-record interviews should be published alongside any story, so\u00a0 readers \u2013 or AI \u2013 can assess the raw material for themselves. Objection invites journalists to submit evidence about anonymous sources for AI verification. Those who refuse risk being \u201cscored\u201d as less credible.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt puts journalists under incredible pressure,\u201d says Ni\u0301 Mhaini\u0301n. If they do not submit their sources, they will be seen as having something to hide, but \u201cif they do, they\u2019ll be completely betraying the ethics of their\u00a0 profession\u201d. She warns that sources would be deterred from coming forward.\u00a0<\/p>\n You are the factory worker of this era. Just as peasant farmers were displaced by agricultural machinery, white-collar professional workers are now seeing their careers decimated. There won\u2019t be journalists in 20 yearsYou are the factory worker of this era. Just as peasant farmers were displaced by agricultural machinery, white-collar professional workers are now seeing their careers decimated. There won\u2019t be journalists in 20 years<\/p>\n Aron D\u2019Souza<\/p>\n![\"Objection\u2019s](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/WEB_d0fc9e44ee6ea5fdfb82cb328999927ae5fe8336.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Peter](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/WEB_ae0787b4b992b03d85530403263bbe9729b1b4e5.jpg\")
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