Hulk Hogan’s Biggest Impact May Have Been in Digital Privacy

Hulk Hogan’s Biggest Impact May Have Been in Digital Privacy

By Deni Ellis Béchard edited by Jeanna Bryner

Hulk Hogan died today, reportedly of cardiac arrest, at age 71 in Clearwater, Fla. Born Terry Bollea, Hogan was a star wrestler known for his showmanship and affinity for tearing his shirt off before matches. But he was also a common target of digital manipulation, exploitation and online hoaxes, spurring him to champion privacy rights in the digital age.

For those who have followed Hogan’s life closely, this isn’t the first time his death has been announced. According to the Internet, he died in 2014 and did so again in 2015—both times by gunshot—and then passed away yet again in 2024. (The latter claim appeared on a Reddit subreddit dedicated to lies, though some people took it seriously.) Even in the months leading up to his actual death, online rumors claimed that he was on his deathbed or had died. And during that decade of hoaxes—long after the height of his wrestling career—his image was used countless times for digital manipulations. Photographs of Hogan flexing the biceps that he called “24-inch pythons” were often edited to swap out his face, with its iconic horseshoe mustache, and replace it with the face of one of the many people who wanted to be seen inhabiting his body—or with the face of someone else whom others wanted to see on it for their own reasons.

But while Hogan couldn’t prevent the seemingly endless digital manipulations, he became a landmark figure of the digital era for his efforts to defend his right to privacy. Years before “deepfake” was a household word and artificial intelligence systems could allow anyone to puppeteer the image of a legend, Hogan found himself naked—literally—before the Web. In 2012 Gawker, a digital media company known for gossip scoops, acquired a 2006 sex tape involving Hogan (which he asserted had not been filmed with his knowledge or consent) and posted an excerpt online. Hogan sued, and a jury awarded him a total of $140 million in damages, though he settled for $31 million. Behind the scenes of what looked like a tabloid circus was a proxy battle between tech moguls. Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, who had been outed as gay by Gawker years before, funded Hogan’s lawsuit. The case, which bankrupted Gawker, would become a major test for First Amendment rights in a time when clicks were increasingly becoming currency and online privacy had few protections.

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Having been settled in the lower courts, Hogan’s case didn’t create a legal precedent, but culturally and economically it had a significant impact and emboldened privacy advocates who argued that free speech doesn’t automatically outweigh an individual’s right to privacy. Hogan’s case was built on the “publication of private facts” aspect of U.S. privacy tort law, a branch of civil and not criminal law that deals with wrongs caused by one party to another and where the goal is usually to compensate the victim rather than punish the wrongdoer.

Hogan’s lawsuit in particular put a spotlight on the relationship between privacy and newsworthiness. Gawker argued that because Hogan was a public figure and had discussed his sex life publicly, the tape could be presented as news. Hogan countered that everyone, even celebrities, deserve control of their private lives and whether their intimate moments can be shared online. By deciding in his favor and awarding Hogan such a significant sum in damages, the jury indicated the limits of “anything goes” publishing online.

In the wake of the lawsuit, some publishers have been more cautious about publishing sensational content; many platforms have also implemented stricter consent and takedown practices, all of which foreshadowed today’s battles over personal data security and the legality of synthetic media, such as “revenge porn,” deepfakes, AI voice and image cloning, and web services that create nude versions of photos submitted to them. The case even echoed concerns by those pushing for a “right to be forgotten,” which is recognized in Europe but not in U.S. law.

Even as Hogan’s win showed that an individual could use existing tort law to maintain some control of private details of their lives even without new statutes, the unusual funding by Thiel raised a separate question: could wealthy individuals enable privacy suits that smaller plaintiffs couldn’t afford and could this potentially chill journalism even in cases where the content being published was legitimately newsworthy. Others have argued that the case was unlikely to have much effect on the freedom of the press.

Despite its successes, the case also underscored the challenge of removing content once it has been posted online. The internet’s “regenerative” nature means people can copy images and information and post them again elsewhere; that information can spread organically and often virally across numerous public and private channels, affecting privacy for everyone from public figures to private citizens. Ultimately, the case emphasized the need for clearer and more nuanced laws regarding privacy in the digital age.

Though Hogan’s final headline won’t stop the next hoax video or cloned voice, his life—and the ways it was constantly remixed, misreported and monetized—illustrate how the fight over a single leaked tape previewed the question of individual privacy rights in a world where manipulating pixels has become almost effortless. The years to come will no doubt see Hogan’s image in AI-generated content, and legal cases around digital privacy issues promise to become only more complicated.

Editor’s note: This article was update after posting to add more details about Hogan’s impact on digital privacy and its complicated nature.