PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel says he quietly bankrolled Hulk Hogan’s war against Gawker because he sees the gossip website as a dangerous trend in online journalism.

“It’s less about revenge and more about specific deterrence,” he told the New York Times Wednesday. “I saw Gawker pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attention by bullying people even when there was no connection with the public interest.”