A Thiel-Backed AI Tribunal Is Putting Journalists on Trial

Hollywood Reporter

06/12/2026

“Someone has filed an objection against something you wrote,” explained Austin Livingston, pointing me to a web page where Purdue Pharma heir Michael Sackler, a film financier and self-styled ethical investor, had paid a new tech startup — fittingly called Objection — to assess the legitimacy of a skeptical article I’d published about him and his business in The Hollywood Reporter five years earlier.

Livingston, a young staffer who describes his job on LinkedIn as, simply, “creating shareholder value,” noted that an AI tribunal would attempt to “adjudicate a determination of truth,” and that the announced outcome “will also affect your Honor Index score, a measure of the veracity of your published work.” He went on, adding, “You can argue your side by uploading your evidence and suggesting your interpretation of the allegation.”

I perused the web page, designated “Sackler v Baum (2026).” It featured a countdown clock ticking toward an apparent verdict. Then I read up on the company, which is backed by the prominent right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel, who waged a legal war against Gawker Media after it published coverage about his business interests and personal life which upset him. The effort led to the outlet’s demise. At first glance, Objection seemed to be a kangaroo court catering to rich and infamous plaintiffs, the latest service in the lucrative sector of digital reputation management.

I replied to Livingston, explaining I’d consulted with my editors and that The Hollywood Reporter believes the article stands on its own. However, I was interested in writing about Objection. Two weeks later, I found myself in a revealing and at times baffling exchange with the Oxford-educated brain trust behind the firm about the nature of truth, trust, transparency and power.

Objection’s Founder and CEO is Aron D’Souza, an Australian entrepreneur and provocateur best known as the mastermind behind Thiel’s litigation strategy against Gawker, which involved a patient, extensive search for the ideal proxy plaintiff to sink the online news outlet. The campaign, quietly funded by the tech investor, culminated in Hulk Hogan’s successful invasion-of-privacy suit and ultimately helped force Gawker into bankruptcy. Thiel’s involvement, with D’Souza as the intermediary to Hogan attorney Charles Harder, was exposed after the verdict.

More recently, Thiel has backed D’Souza’s company Enhanced Games — dubbed the “steroid Olympics” — which offers athletes financial incentives to compete under rules that allow performance-enhancing drugs. The company, which also counts Donald Trump Jr. as a key investor, went public in early May.

To discuss Objection, D’Souza and I convened for a video call along with the company’s chief technology officer, Kyle Grant-Talbot. They played rugby together at Oxford. D’Souza, in the signature quarter-zip of the startup tribesmen, exuded the confidence and finesse of someone long adept at raising money. Grant-Talbot, an Englishman whose CV includes engineering stints at NASA and SpaceX, struck me as his more grounded counterpart.