Peter Thiel-backed startup Objection, which had launched a system of AI-powered arbitrations forcing journalists to defend their reporting against complaints from unhappy subjects, has abandoned that model and rebranded as The Primary. The new venture instead uses a large language model to score, rank and index journalists and outlets according to the rigour of their reporting, marking a significant shift from adjudicating individual disputes to a continuous public scoreboard.

The company is led by Aron D'Souza, who previously masterminded Thiel's covert funding of Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker and also runs the "steroid Olympics" venture Enhanced Games. Objection's first and only tribunal, launched in April, targeted The Hollywood Reporter over 2021 coverage of a Sackler family heir, but no verdict was ever issued before the pivot. D'Souza said building AI adjudication software proved harder than expected, so the firm switched to a scoring methodology weighing factors such as source attribution, tone and right of reply, insisting the change reflects a continuation of, rather than a retreat from, his long-standing effort to find a way of formally evaluating journalists' work.