This is based on tea-leave reading since we don't have much visibility into what's discussed at Facebook board meetings. 

Question: Were the other FB board members appalled by his active role in trying to drive Gawker out of business, do they support it, or are their views conflicted? 

We can be sure they were not appalled, because he's still on the board, and they won't ask him to step down. At best they were conflicted, and it seems likely they support him.

One big topic at FB board meetings is certainly their progress at getting unblocked in China. We know they really want to be let back in. Their stated mission is to network all of humanity. A substantial part of humanity lives in China. Imagine what the negotiations between China and Facebook must be like.

We know that Chinese citizens don't have anything like our First Amendment. Their right to speak is non-existent. So Facebook would have to help the Chinese government keep people on-topic on Facebook if they have any hope of being unblocked.

So if they're ready to help in China, and they must be, why would they have a problem with Thiel acting in a role similar to the Chinese government here in the US? For all we know he's acting as a proxy for the Facebook board. 

If Facebook develops speech-curtailing features for China, why not make them available to governments all around the world? And perhaps China doesn't limit their demands on speech to just Chinese citizens? Why wouldn't they want assurances that Facebook could control the speech of people all over the world?

Snowden showed us how much collaboration there is between the US govt and big tech companies. I don't think there was ever any promise made that this would stop, or that we have all the information, or that they aren't collaborating in ways we don't know about. 

We got some data yesterday when Facebook's COO refused to comment on Thiel's role in the Gawker/Hulk Hogan trial. We now have a slightly better understanding of who Facebook really is, beneath the hype.