[HN Gopher] Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing ...
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Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta
Author : ta988
Score : 325 points
Date : 2023-12-04 14:20 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| ta988 wrote:
| https://archive.is/oKsbi
| jruohonen wrote:
| "The filing raises questions about the potential conflict of
| interest created by Big Tech's influence at research institutions
| that are called upon for their expertise on the industry."
| c5karl wrote:
| Here's a "gift" link: https://wapo.st/3Nb5tm8
| anticorporate wrote:
| Mods: I'm not sure how I managed to grab this URL, but I believe
| the canonical version is actually
| https://whistlebloweraid.org/joan-donovan-press-release/
| hliyan wrote:
| Seems to lead to identical content though.
| ziddoap wrote:
| Probably was changed because of:
|
| <link rel="canonical" href="https://live-whistleblower-
| aid.pantheonsite.io/joan-donovan-...">
| hliyan wrote:
| From regulatory capture through revolving doors and lobbying, to
| media capture through purchase, and now academic capture through
| donation, it seems no activity is safe from large concentrations
| of wealth.
| tonmoy wrote:
| It never has been, there may have been an illusion of it only
| seanw444 wrote:
| And it never will be. This is a human problem. No amount of
| laws and regulations will ever solve it.
| r00fus wrote:
| Is this an appeal for a different form of governance?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Perhaps we can rely on a capricious unaligned AGI to run our
| universities.
| Kapura wrote:
| what if we had laws that prevented people from obtaining
| disproportionate amounts of wealth? Seems like it'd be a lot
| harder to buy a school if being a multi-billionaire is
| impossible.
| random_kris wrote:
| And the party is in charge of enforcing those laws right ?
| meesles wrote:
| Loopholes will be found, wealth will be concentrated in new
| ways, and then the wealth will be used to revert laws to
| benefit the wealthy. The laws won't change in the first
| place since money has captured most political systems as
| well.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Yes, give up and don't try, on the scale of things you
| will be dead and forgotten anyways - a failure in every
| sense of the word regardless of what you do.
| holmesworcester wrote:
| That would tip the balance of power to another corrupting
| influence. Corporations, say. Or professional associations
| representing highly-educated high earners like doctors or
| lawyers. Or to politically savvy deca-millionaires who use
| their money with more focused attention. And that's setting
| aside the question of how and whether you could prevent the
| existence of billionaires, which would lead to offshoring
| and (plausibly at least) dramatic unintended changes in
| what kinds of social and technological change happens. But
| either way, coalitions corrupting institutions is not a
| soluble problem generally. It gets solved with acts of
| effort and courage like this one, and by discussions like
| this.
| tivert wrote:
| > That would tip the balance of power to another
| corrupting influence. Corporations, say. Or professional
| associations representing highly-educated high earners
| like doctors or lawyers.
|
| Even if what you say is true, _which I do not grant_ ,
| your implication is akin to "we should not punish
| criminals, because some other criminals will rise to take
| their place." It's a defeatist meme that mainly serves to
| protect the interests of the already-powerful.
|
| Some work is never done, but that is not a reason to give
| up on it.
| firebat45 wrote:
| This is such a naive viewpoint. Let's say that people are
| not allowed to have more than 10 million dollars, but
| corporations are. Then it wouldn't be Zuckerberg's money,
| it would simply be Facebook's, wielded by Zuckerberg.
|
| I hope you can see the ridiculousness is saying that
| corporations should be limited in wealth as well, but even
| if you can't, let's assume they are limited the same. Now
| it becomes easier to buy them off, because they are
| comparably smaller.
|
| The only logical solution is to allow both corporations and
| individuals to accumulate as much wealth as they are able
| to. Rich people aren't the problem, corrupt people are.
| Instead of trying to make rich corrupt people less rich,
| why don't we try to make them less corrupt instead?
| istjohn wrote:
| Just who is buying off these corporations if no one has
| vast wealth?
| lovecg wrote:
| Foreign entities? Of course, we should ban that as long
| as we're at it. Next you'll have people using vastly
| superior foreign products, we better ban that as well.
| And if people decide to leave the country en masse
| because they're too morally weak and desire wealth, we
| can't have that either, so better build a wall.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Your argument is _founded on_ naivete.
|
| Of course doing something halfway would not accomplish
| much.
| 93po wrote:
| We should just tax income over $10 million at 90% for
| both people and corporations. Maybe then we could have an
| actual healthcare system
| lovecg wrote:
| > We should just tax income over $10 million at 90% for
| both people and corporations.
|
| People - maybe. But why corporations? Isn't that double
| taxation? The only way money leaves a corporation is
| through people which will be taxed eventually.
|
| As for the healthcare system, it doesn't need more money.
| It needs an extreme regulation and red tape shake up. We
| could have vastly better healthcare today for the same
| amount of money that's already there if not for the
| bureaucratic mess and an army of administrators tending
| to it.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| There are some billionaires who are literally asking to be
| taxed more. Not much success convincing US govt.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Because they are full of shit. Where is the "pro
| billionaire tax" think tank and super-PAC they are
| funding?
| pwillia7 wrote:
| What about better redistributing wealth -- you know like corn
| subsidies
| tivert wrote:
| >> From regulatory capture through revolving doors and
| lobbying, to media capture through purchase, and now academic
| capture through donation, it seems no activity is safe from
| large concentrations of wealth.
|
| > And it never will be. This is a human problem. No amount of
| laws and regulations will ever solve it.
|
| Come on. Wealth is _literally_ a creature of "law and
| regulations," and changes to them can definitely "solve it."
| That's trivially shown by the through a thought experiment
| where we imagine legal changes that lead to Zuckerberg having
| his wealth confiscated and Facebook being placed under the
| control of some person or entity who is not its ally and is
| not allowed to profit from it.
|
| I think I need to make extra-clear that my example is an
| extreme one to _clearly_ disprove your point, not the only
| regulatory option available or a policy proposal. Don 't get
| distracted by irrelevant details.
|
| Defeatist memes like what you said circulate widely to
| encourage paralysis, but they're propaganda or its
| derivatives, not truth.
| whelp_24 wrote:
| We shouldn't sit on our hands or whatever but wealth isn't
| a creation of laws, it's a bit of the inverse. Some laws
| can remove wealth and some laws are gonna take a lotta of
| guns and manpower (resources ==wealth) to implement.
| istjohn wrote:
| Without laws, you have anarchy. Laws create the
| institutions necessary to have an economy capable of
| creating wealth.
| sobkas wrote:
| > Without laws, you have anarchy. Laws create the
| institutions necessary to have an economy capable of
| creating wealth.
|
| Without laws you don't have anarchy, you just have rule
| of strongest. Anarchy can have laws but no authority that
| enforces them.
| seanw444 wrote:
| If we moved into a world without government and laws,
| it'd be replaced by a sort of modernized feudalism. Not
| anarchy.
| tivert wrote:
| > We shouldn't sit on our hands or whatever but wealth
| isn't a creation of laws, it's a bit of the inverse.
|
| Huh? Maybe in the deep, deep past; but definitely not
| now. Even back then, where there were no states and
| little social organization, there was still custom within
| groups that worked like law.
|
| > Some laws can remove wealth and some laws are gonna
| take a lotta of guns and manpower (resources ==wealth) to
| implement.
|
| Zuckerberg and Facebook have no army and no means to
| raise one, despite the wealth they have. They are
| totally, utterly at the mercy of laws and regulations.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Mark Zuckerburg's wealth is absolutely a creation of
| laws. Almost all of his wealth comes from his ownership
| of a corporation. The corporation only exists because of
| laws. It is only a sale-able asset because of laws.
| claytongulick wrote:
| I interpret GP's comment to mean "No amount of _reasonable
| /effective_ laws and regulations will ever solve it".
|
| Clearly there are plenty of extreme "solutions".
|
| I interpret GP's point being an attempt to provide their
| insight into human condition, which is an interesting one.
|
| Is graft a necessary condition of human civilization?
| happytiger wrote:
| That's not the point. Corruption (which is what this is) is
| NOT binary, it's a problem that exists on spectrum.
|
| We don't _solve_ spectrum problems, we _reduce_ and
| _minimize_ them. Just because they exist to a degree and
| never are remediated doesn't mean we shouldn't seek to
| minimize them.
|
| Corruption can lead to tax evasion, poor tax administration,
| and exemptions that disproportionately favor the well-
| connected and wealthy population groups in society and must
| be rallied against if we seek civil societies.
|
| We'll never get rid of it. As you say. But if we don't act
| against it these problems will grow like cancer and become
| insidious, infecting every aspect of society, so it's deeply
| important not to embrace an apathetic approach or present
| them as inevitable.
|
| They are intrinsic, but the _level we tolerate_ -- the "
| _degree_ of corruption" -- which I would argue is pretty high
| in this case, is most certainly _counterable_ and definitely
| can be reduced.
| istjohn wrote:
| Well, you can prevent the concentration of wealth in the
| first place.
|
| Thomas Jefferson wrote, "But the consequences of this
| enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of
| mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for
| subdividing property....Another means of silently lessening
| the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation
| below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of
| property in geometrical progression as they rise"[0].
|
| 0. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-08-02
| -0...
| lapinot wrote:
| The good old "we have always been that way". If perhaps hard
| to imagine for you, there are tons of social structures where
| wealth cannot be used to purchase power (ie where currency
| buys you some stuff but not labor from other humans). See the
| recent book
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything. Very
| much a perspective changing book.
| lovecg wrote:
| I'm going to guess that not many of those social structures
| achieved things like low infant mortality, not dying from
| randomly stubbing your toe, the internet, space travel, and
| the like. If I was presented with a choice, I'd pick a
| modern Western state any time, flawed as they may be.
| lapinot wrote:
| Your argument is a straw-man. You're conflating taking
| inspiration from something and adopting it verbatim (your
| first two examples are particularly hilarious in this
| regard). Also i've yet to find a compelling argument
| defending that western capitalism is a necessity for
| high-tech (you second two examples). In particular
| schools, academia and software are fields where not
| commercial-centric relationships are thriving and deemed
| superior by a fair share of practitioners.
| gumballindie wrote:
| Politics (as in the game of power) and corruption are human
| nature. Pushing back against these are equally human nature.
| The worse it gets the more intense the push back. The push back
| seems to be at moment taking the shape of voting in far right
| or trump like politicians accross the world. They won't solve
| the issue. Therefore the next level of intensity may very well
| be revolution.
| doublemint2203 wrote:
| imho, you're wrong: it may not be "human nature" as much as
| it is prisoner's dilemma. few, but some, humans are just as
| inherently averse to corruption as someone may be inherently
| prone to it. it's a matter of "if I don't take this bribe,
| someone else will"
| dinkleberg wrote:
| That is still human nature. Not everyone will exhibit those
| traits, but when looking at the entirety of humanity, these
| traits are certainly part of our nature.
|
| And the prisoner's dilemma is a way of exploring/explaining
| these traits (though I expect these aren't exclusive to
| humans).
| doublemint2203 wrote:
| hmm. I suppose a sentient ant may not reach a Nash
| equilibrium, but the best equilibrium. Then through that
| lens, yeah. I can see how you see it as human nature.
| nomdep wrote:
| Clarify what do you mean by "revolution", because to me that
| words means either a coup, civil war, acts of terrorism, or,
| worse than that, a massacre like China's "cultural
| revolution".
| gumballindie wrote:
| Any of those I imagine, perhaps all. When things reach
| boiling point pressure has to be released somehow. And as
| it stands things are under quite some pressure as of
| recently.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > Everything that we are witnessing now is human nature
|
| Nice way to say nothing of substance.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Universities have been dirty since they embraced price gouging
| on tuition in the 90's. There is no way what they are providing
| can be considered fair or reasonable.
| Upvoter33 wrote:
| I don't think tuition is the problem (in this case!); it's
| the endless need for "fundraising". If you need to get huge
| gifts, inevitably you will be corrupted by the needs/wants of
| the gift givers.
| pphysch wrote:
| Harvard has over $50,000,000,000 in assets. It sure doesn't
| seem like it "needs" to raise another $500,000,000. It's
| greed through and through.
| geodel wrote:
| Huh, and where does that big amount come from? By taking
| huge donations. Its like saying Apple can sell iPhone for
| free since they are insanely rich. They are reach because
| they charge large amount of money for a fucking phone.
| Money either increases or decreases its not gonna stay at
| same level.
| jwestbury wrote:
| > since they embraced price gouging on tuition in the 90's.
|
| (Caveat that the following is US-centric.) I'd love to see
| the data showing actual price gouging, because the data I've
| seen has generally suggested that per-student spending hasn't
| even increased at a pace equivalent to inflation; rather,
| funding didn't increase with enrolment, leading to students
| paying for an ever-higher share of their education.
|
| (As for private universities... fine, I'm okay calling it
| price gouging.)
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I used to work in Institutional Research at a state
| university and at least for state school's tuition tracks
| pretty closely to the cost of education. In my time working
| there, our funding from the state was reduced by 30%.
|
| Generally Non-resident tuition is the cost it takes to
| educate a student. Resident tuition is cheaper because it's
| subsidized by the state. Every year we would get less and
| less funding from the state and would have to shift more
| burden to the student. We implemented furlough days, and
| cut admin staff compensation to attempt to reduce the
| tuition burden on students. We still had to raise Tuition
| faster than inflation in the end.
| 93po wrote:
| There is no reason why my adjunct professor spending 45
| minutes a week, twice a week for a few months, in some
| old building, should cost me and 70 other people $3000
| each. The tuition problem is one of bloat and greed.
|
| That's nearly a quarter million dollars, of which the
| professor is probably getting a few thousand. where is
| the other $200k+ going?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Yeah, that adjunct "professor" gets $3000 themselves for
| all their hard work
| 93po wrote:
| i can't tell if this is sarcasm or agreement? i mean it's
| probably more than $3k but it's still a very small
| portion of $200k+
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I worked as an adjunct about 10 years ago and ~$2k per
| class was the pay. With a full class load that came out
| to a little over $2k per month. Definitely more work than
| 90mins per week per class though. 4 courses per term was
| definitely a full-time job.
|
| So yeah, not a lot of tuition is making it to the low
| rung teachers.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Your comment sounds defeatist. I hope it doesn't cause others
| to give up on pushing for change.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| the administration taking more money for their hedge fund can
| force students out of their right to a free investigation
|
| kick out the administrators, schooling would cost less without
| them
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Standard tool of the trade in big cos
| intrasight wrote:
| I just read that this morning. I'm interested enough in the
| outcome that I put a calendar reminder 6 months out to check what
| happened. Doing so made me wonder if there's a service that would
| email me updates about legal cases like this that I would like to
| follow.
| sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote:
| Who would pay for this?
|
| Random people like you and me wouldn't pay for something
| they're gonna use twice in their lifetime, and lawyers surely
| have something like this, possibly integrate with all the other
| tools they use.
| gessha wrote:
| > lawyers surely have something like this
|
| Not a lawyer and not familiar with their systems but based on
| my knowledge of other industries I'd say it's not guaranteed
| they have a solution.
|
| Could be good ol sticky notes and manual calendar events.
| sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote:
| This is really really naive.
| freejazz wrote:
| Yeah, check out docketbird. Also, noticed attorneys already
| automatically get all ECF filings.
| graphe wrote:
| Why does it need to be paid?
| johnchristopher wrote:
| There are services that monitors changes on webpages so you
| could plug the "official" page where legal/official information
| about that case lives and wait for a change, maybe it would
| even work with a search engine results page.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Might be a good addition to archive.org, since they will
| index and re-index pages from time to time anyway and detect
| changes.
| natrys wrote:
| I set up cron to run urlwatch[1] once a day on a vps, and it
| emails me updates to pages. It supports CSS selectors,
| various filters (like html2text) and so on. Combined with a
| little elisp to diff highlight emails in Emacs, this has one
| of the highest usefulness/maintenance ratio of things I self-
| host.
|
| [1] https://urlwatch.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
| WaffleIronMaker wrote:
| It's possible that a Google Alert[1] might be enough for your
| use case, depending on how well the legal cases are covered by
| Google.
|
| [1] https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/4815696?hl=en
| beretguy wrote:
| Any non Google alternatives out there?
| alwayseasy wrote:
| This social listening company does one:
| https://alerts.talkwalker.com/alerts/
|
| They might try to call and email you though.
| turminal wrote:
| Unless Google Alert gets shut down by then.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Or bought to silence any alarms with the terms "Facebook"
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| > if there's a service
|
| There are plenty of mailing list services that associates of
| large law firms sign up for. I haven't been around people in
| that world for a while so I don't know the names, but I'm sure
| you can find them if you spend time looking.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| "Follow up on stories we reported six months ago"
|
| Sounds like something that anyone claiming to practice
| Journalism should be doing already.
| bowmessage wrote:
| You might be interested in https://www.courtlistener.com/
| kbenson wrote:
| Anything that provides a calendar and/or timed TODO/list items.
| Just set calendar item or the TODO item's due date 6 months
| out. Any OS you're using whether mobile or desktop probably has
| an app for this shipped with it.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| the age old unspoken donation "coincidence"
|
| this is how many rich people get their kids into Harvard too, the
| only reason parents got caught up in the varsity blues scandal
| was that they were too explicit... old money donates the new
| library and "hopes" for the best
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| > _this is how many rich people get their kids into Harvard
| too_
|
| That's the entire point and feature of these elite institutions
| (more specifically, their undergraduate division and business
| schools), to connect wealth with brilliant people. They are the
| traditional social institutions of innovation and
| entrepreneurship before incubators like YC were a thing. If you
| remove the wealth aspects, then the Ivies are no different than
| any other research state school.
| hinkley wrote:
| They're worse.
|
| Aside from their football programs, none of these other
| schools have gotten as comfortable with looking the other way
| for The Greater Good.
| kelipso wrote:
| It's a great way to further entrench the influence of the
| rich into public life.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > brilliant people
|
| I think you meant "people who'd _like_ to join the wealthy
| ones, or maybe already have. "
| graphe wrote:
| If you wanted to make money, you would choose business over
| academia. I know one brilliant math/physics researcher who
| wanted to go to China because they have better scientific
| research equipment.
| hinkley wrote:
| Yeah. My sarcasm meter broke itself as I proclaimed:
|
| Harvard, breaking rules for people donating new buildings?!
| Surely not _Harvard_.
| apwell23 wrote:
| > the only reason parents got caught up in the varsity blues
| scandal was that they were too explicit
|
| they weren't rich enough to use the route that they used.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| That's what "old money" means. They weren't old money.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Old money means inherited, generational wealth.
|
| New money means wealth that was mostly based on efforts
| (not due to passive investments) by the current holder.
|
| micromacrofoot1 was trying to distinguish "a lot of money"
| from "a little bit of money", but old money is not the
| correct term for that.
|
| From Wikipedia, the varsity blues scandal was about 33 sets
| of parents paying ~$25M total. That is chump change
| compared to donating a whole building, which new or old
| money can do, because they would have access to tens of
| millions of dollars.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| fair, though I was thinking the context that "old money"
| is usually old because there's a lot of it... but new/old
| signaling quantity is probably less true now than ever
|
| there's also some behavior involved, traditionally it
| would be a major social faux pas to ask for special
| treatment in a traceable way
| apstats wrote:
| The linked blog doesn't actually include any details and is
| instead just a vitriolic series of paragraphs from what sounds
| like an angry fired employee.
|
| It's hard to actually believe anything about this without having
| specific examples of what was done.
|
| The title is pretty farcical given this.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| More details in the whistleblower complaint, which is linked
| from the post. https://live-whistleblower-
| aid.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/up...
| loeg wrote:
| There's also WaPo:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/04/joan-
| do...
| forward1 wrote:
| 500MM to avoid Harvard scrutiny - not a bad deal on 40MMM
| quarterly profit. It probably doubles as a tax deduction as well.
| Free market capitalism at its finest.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Free market means businesses decide the regulations placed on
| the public, for private gain
| lainga wrote:
| wouldn't 40MMM be 40 trillion (40M-million)...?
| klyrs wrote:
| I believe that the M stands for "mille," or thousand.
| lainga wrote:
| ignosco, non intellexi.
| astrobe_ wrote:
| If it's thousand, it should be a K with the metric
| system... But I guess 40KKK would raise some eyebrows. Yet
| another reason to keep _imperial_ units.
| klyrs wrote:
| If it's metric, k is not capitalized, M means million and
| G means billion. No need to get Godwin involved.
|
| But it isn't metric, it appears to be a perversion of
| roman numerals.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| Of course this is tax exempt, corporations can deduce up to 25%
| of their tax bill in the US afaik. Long live charitable giving!
| asylteltine wrote:
| Just a coincidence I'm sure!
| Metacelsus wrote:
| Harvard isn't about "veritas", it's about $$$.
| glitchc wrote:
| Omnia vincit pecunia
| jayavanth wrote:
| verita$
| hinkley wrote:
| The best things in life are free
|
| But you can give them to the birds and bees
|
| I want money.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| Her actual whistleblower declaration contains a lot of the
| evidence some may be looking for:
|
| https://live-whistleblower-aid.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/up...
|
| To sum up the first few pages after skimming it, Facebook tried
| to bribe her (well "fund" her research), she refused. Later she
| had a meeting with the former head of comms at Facebook, who was
| now on the Dean's council, where he became incredibly angry with
| her research (page 4, 13). Following this, she got an email from
| the Dean of the Kennedy school which sounds very much like
| someone tattled to them and they now want to "review" her
| research (see page 5, 15). It continues from here.
| LewisVerstappen wrote:
| If you're familiar with this woman's past research, you'd
| realize she is quite.... biased politically.
|
| She strongly believes in increased content moderation by "fact
| checkers".
|
| She's spread misinformation herself like
|
| - Suggesting Russian disinformation on Facebook shifted the
| 2016 election (anyone who's run a facebook ad in their life
| knows how absurdly ridiculous this is)
|
| - Advocating for increased censorship of information during
| COVID on lab leak hypothesis
|
| This is just off a few minutes of reading her past work.
|
| I'm not a fan of Facebook (in the slightest) but also am
| _really_ not a fan of the type of censorship this person wants.
| jcheng wrote:
| Not sure why I decided to spend so much time on this on a
| Monday morning but I've read to page 35, and the picture is
| much more muddled.
|
| It looks like the FB Archive project gains momentum and
| launches but Dr. Donovan and the TASC get sidelined along the
| way (which understandably is very upsetting, you can feel the
| pain on every page). It does seem clear that the Dean doesn't
| approve of Dr. Donovan/TASC and he eventually shuts the group
| down, but if he allows the Facebook project to move forward
| under other groups that are also within the Kennedy school,
| then the title of this post is pretty misleading. (Oh, maybe
| why the actual article title says "initial team" instead of
| just "team".)
|
| BTW, not a particular fan of Meta, no feelings about
| Harvard/Kennedy school, never heard of any of these people
| before except Frances Haugen and Dr. Latanya Sweeney.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| _> Dr. Donovan and the TASC get sidelined along the way_
|
| this is described dismissively and in the passive voice, but
| it's an active action, and quite damning.
|
| who sidelined them, and why?
|
| it seems the answers are: the school, because the researchers
| upset facebook, who was giving the school money
|
| _> if he allows the Facebook project to move forward under
| other groups that are also within the Kennedy school, then
| the title of this post is pretty misleading_
|
| this is misleading: if the research is allowed to continue,
| it should continue under the researchers who did the
| research, unless there's a good reason otherwise
| klyrs wrote:
| "The school" is not a person with motive. Dr. Donovan's
| report strongly implicates the Dean, who maintains a
| personal friendship with Sheryl Sandberg, as the driver
| behind these actions. The remaining actors appear to be
| interest in saving their own necks.
| macksd wrote:
| I think sidelining the lead researcher and giving the project
| to another group is accurately described at "gutting a team".
| No, they didn't end the project, but the series of events
| described seems to be insinuating that she could have led the
| project if she was willing to have her work funded by
| Facebook, listen to one of their former people, etc. So if
| that was their goal, and they just got someone else to do the
| work, is that any better?
| cporios wrote:
| Noting that the project and all its documents are publicly
| accessible to anyone at https://fbarchive.org/.
| mjhay wrote:
| But further work from the same leadership has been
| discontinued...
| stillwithit wrote:
| Ousted propaganda researcher duped by American propaganda
| of free speech, and dreams and stuff.
|
| The smarties are just meat suits angling for clout
| relative to ye olde social memeology. They're smart
| because their propaganda says so.
|
| Cheerio, pish posh, my fellow Harvard propagandist. The
| high minded propaganda is for the outside world! Inside
| it's plain old payola.
| cbsmith wrote:
| Fair, but it raises the question of the motives behind it.
| It would seem they didn't necessarily have a problem with
| the research, but rather with the lead researcher. There's
| complicated issues of academic freedom to parse here, but
| in principle, if you aren't happy with the work someone is
| doing, it's not entirely unreasonable that you'd let them
| go and have someone else pick up the work.
| cortesoft wrote:
| > It would seem they didn't necessarily have a problem
| with the research, but rather with the lead researcher
|
| This is the entire crux of the issue; do they have a
| problem with the lead researcher because she isn't good
| at her job or because she is finding things that their
| large donor doesn't like?
| cbsmith wrote:
| Exactly. It's easy to presume one interpretation, but
| it's far from clear.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| Exactly. The evidence* points to the act being corrupt,
| but the university is free to attempt to convince people
| otherwise.
|
| * _- The researcher being removed without any good cause
| evident_
| tensor wrote:
| That's not quite what I imagine when I hear the term
| "gutting a team." Gutting a team is when then very
| significantly reduce its size and priority. Simply
| switching leadership of a project isn't gutting a team,
| it's normal university politics and infighting.
|
| If they are forcing funding by Facebook/Meta, then that
| does seem like a conflict of interest, but is a quite a
| different headline.
| rrobukef wrote:
| The sidelining is to show damages to her reputation etc.
| Page 50 or so starts the description alleging how the
| administration and the dean gutted her department by
| blocking, reallocating funds, stopping hiring, and
| refusing to extend contracts when funds are available.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| From what I gathered, they didn't simply switch
| leadership, they removed it entirely, along with the
| person doing the most work, replacing them with nothing,
| which effectively shut down the project.
|
| Is there someone continuing it that I missed?
| boringg wrote:
| FWIW that's definitely not gutting a team. Swapping out
| leaders makes a big impact but it isn't gutting a team. It
| could lead to the same outcome.
| zbyte64 wrote:
| Imagine swapping out leaders and expecting the same
| outcomes. Why even bother?
| ajb wrote:
| An academic team isn't the same as a team in a company
| though, right? My understanding (which could be
| incorrect) is that a PI is almost like the CEO of a
| startup which happens to have the goal of doing research,
| and operates in the context of a university. A PI is not
| like a team lead in a company . Each PI-led team is doing
| research independently of the rest of the department. I
| have the impression it's not even expected to outlive the
| PI's employment there.
| Beldin wrote:
| > _but if he allows the Facebook project to move forward
| under other groups that are also within the Kennedy school,_
|
| Move forward in the direction the dean and Facebook want, or
| in the direction the original team wanted to explore?
|
| Because it doesn't seem - at all - that the two are
| equivalent. And it is not misleading to call out replacing a
| non-bribe-able PI with a susceptible or even already bribed
| one.
| jcheng wrote:
| I was not nearly clear or explicit enough in my comment,
| apologies for that. In sections 25 and 26 (page 14), the
| whistleblower report talks about the origins of the
| project. Dr. Donovan acquired the entire archive of the
| Facebook Files, and reached out to Dr. Latanya Sweeney, who
| she calls her "most trusted colleague":
|
| > I chose to work with Dr. Sweeney because she was the
| shoulder I leaned on when I needed to decode the politics
| of HKS. I regard Dr. Sweeney to be brilliant at computer
| science, the foremost authority on privacy in technology,
| and had a vision to build the FB Archive on the base of a
| data sharing platform that she had designed previously.
|
| Donovan's vision was to build "a searchable archive of
| these documents for the public interest" and hold training
| workshops for other researchers. So Dr. Sweeney's lab built
| it, as was the plan; and held training workshops, which was
| a little hurtful to Donovan as she was not invited into
| that process.
|
| After the fact, Sweeney summed up her view of their
| respective contributions in a private email to Donovan:
|
| > The technological IP (design, architecture, and
| implementation) in FBarchive belongs to the Lab [i.e.
| Sweeney] alone. No one can claim IP over the original
| content of course, but the Lab also has IP in the redaction
| strategy used. Your team contributed the citation reference
| used to identify each image and document, and of course,
| you were part of the original concept. This is the kind of
| details that we will document on the history page.
|
| And implies, like it's not even worth asserting directly,
| that TASC's contributions are historical, not current. A
| couple of responses later, Donovan says:
|
| > TASC made many contributions including getting the
| documents and categorizing them, as well as promoting the
| archive in public forums, and having my team write
| testimonies and 1pagers, reviewing abstracts and holding
| office hours with students and so many meetings.
|
| Dr. Donovan's complaints with the project as delivered seem
| to mostly NOT be that she wanted it to be different than it
| was, but rather, that the history page contains blatant
| lies that minimize Dr. Donovan and TASC's contributions.
| And also that it is incredibly unjust that she brought this
| highly valuable asset to the table, and without cause was
| not only shut out, but basically fired, and her historical
| contributions scrubbed. (Section 42.)
|
| (To be clear, this is a sad and frustrating tale and if I
| was Donovan I'd be pissed too.)
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Going out and getting Washington Post, New York Times
| articles about your issues through "Whistleblower Aid" - it
| brings to mind Barack Obama's great line:
| When some activists at that meeting said they felt that their
| voices were not being heard, Mr. Obama replied, "You are
| sitting in the Oval Office, talking to the president of the
| United States."
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/us/obama-says-
| movements-l...
|
| I don't work in PR, the issues I am politically active over
| are very local. This researcher paints a big target on her
| back, in an issue as amply documented as an academic firing,
| it isn't surprising that things are not cut and dried.
| juujian wrote:
| The picture becomes much more clear later on. The Dean
| sidelined and reallocated the very generous funding which
| donors provided specifically for her, while also lying to the
| donors about this. And then winds down her research even
| though there is obviously demand for and interest in it. All
| while stringing her along. She should have been able to take
| her funding elsewhere if the dean didn't want her around,
| there is ample precedent for that. The degree of manipulation
| is unprecedented and amounts to the dean stealing her funding
| from her/her donors.
| amir734jj wrote:
| People forget that private universities are for profit
| businesses.
| 93po wrote:
| while technically non-profits, they are absolutely profit
| focused, as are the people in control of them
| orangesite wrote:
| People also forget how recent that shift was and just how
| brittle the reasoning behind it is.
| h2odragon wrote:
| The "Facebook Whistleblower" media circus consumed a lot of Oct
| 2021.
|
| https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/20/tech-billionaire-ai...
|
| I wonder what the grand total spent was here? "PR expenses"
| sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote:
| > One: Reward and Punishment Superresponse Tendency
|
| > I place this tendency first in my discussion because almost
| everyone thinks he fully recognizes how important incentives and
| disincentives are in changing cognition and behavior. But this is
| not often so. For instance, I think I've been in the top five
| percent of my age cohort almost all my adult life in
| understanding the power of incentives, and yet I've always
| underestimated that power. Never a year passes but I get some
| surprise that pushes a little further my appreciation of
| incentive super-power.
|
| https://fs.blog/great-talks/psychology-human-misjudgment/
| bentt wrote:
| It's fascinating how we've come to this, where we've let our
| society be influenced so profoundly by social media platforms and
| the men who run them. It's bad and I hope we can eventually
| diffuse the power that's been concentrated in their hands.
|
| But they're not the same, these men. Only one of them really
| scares me. What scares me about Zuck is observable in his public
| behavior. He knows EXACTLY what he's doing and saying at all
| times. That's why when stuff like this comes out, you can be
| assured it was no coincidence, and you have to face the fact that
| he doesn't care.
| Upvoter33 wrote:
| Indeed. Honestly, I'm quite sure they were excited to see the
| power of facebook advertising/misinformation during the 2016
| campaign.
| gadders wrote:
| And again in 2020 with the Hunter Biden laptop suppression
| scandal, the lab leak and other suppression during COVID etc.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment, but don't think "let our society
| come to this" is the right framing.
|
| This is how the USA has always been run, except in the past the
| billionaire class _created the whole university_ to shape
| society. Like JD Rockefeller and the University of Chicago,
| which continues to have a profound political influence on the
| entire field of Economics.
|
| It's absolutely pernicious and we normal people do need to
| fight it every way we can.
| loceng wrote:
| "With great power comes great responsibility"
|
| I agree with you that he is at best seemingly being
| indifferent, which is the same act as not caring; inaction is
| an act too; the origin story of TheFacebook lays a firm
| foundation for a continuation of similar behaviours even nearly
| two decades later.
|
| If he hears about this - and he should if he's being caring,
| careful, and keeping his eye on the "empire"- and takes actions
| against this seeming cover up and suppression attempt, then
| that would bode well for him. That doesn't seem to fit into his
| character though, unlike Elon Musk standing up to the
| advertising industrial complex (and the parties it's aligned
| with who want to suppress truths and control the narrative) who
| very publicly will tell bad actors to go fuck themselves; "Hi
| Bob!"
|
| I think or hope we're yet to see the consequences of
| controlling founders and boards of directors of these mammoth
| Fortune 500 companies that a small handful of individuals are
| wielding to control, whether solely for profit motive or evil,
| and arguably captured or corrupt institutions within the US
| government - of which the Twitter Files showed them working
| together to interfere with elections, suppress voices that
| countered the desired mainstream narrative talking points
| (propaganda) from top institutions from Harvard, etc.
|
| The Nuremberg Code and punishment didn't exist prior to the
| Nuremberg Trials, where "I was just following orders" wasn't
| adequate justification, and it was concluded that "they should
| have known better."
|
| The "power" and profits that come from these scalable systems
| are immense-unfathomable - and why you have to work from first
| principles, ethics as a foundation of that, to at least attempt
| to reduce and limit the externalized or collateral damage.
|
| I personally believe the ad industrial complex needs to go,
| allowing people to be too cheaply-shallowly manipulated - where
| consumers are then paying a higher price for products and
| services to be manipulated; Tesla's vehicles would be ~6% more
| expensive if Tesla advertised - their success otherwise being
| attributed to mostly creating a good product that people
| wanted.
|
| I've started to wonder if advertising being allowed in society
| should be considered a form of unnecessary-harmful inflation-
| inflammation, driving up prices, as well as lowering access to
| higher quality of products that everyone - as economies of
| scale for cheap products will not only them more readily
| available but also make better quality products more expensive
| due to lower quantities being in demand, etc.
|
| But it's tricky because a high quality product that doesn't
| advertise could relatively quickly be surpassed by a low
| quality "good enough" product that's willing to advertise and
| flood the market with it, and trickier yet when it's an
| attention economy and reminding people you exist is part of the
| current competitive landscape especially for certain product
| types; the problem being people aren't accounting for to
| include the externalized costs - but where a simple mechanism
| of "don't buy from any brands that advertise" could counter all
| of that.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| Why was Harvard dedicating resources to investigate Facebook in
| the first place? What kind of academic research was it
| conducting? "Our hypothesis is that Facebook censored right-wing
| disinformation campaigns" doesn't have academic value.
| 93po wrote:
| how does it not? college isn't just engineering and science
| akaij wrote:
| Interesting to see lines drawn around academic value.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| For an academic institution?
| akaij wrote:
| Yeah, the academia. You know, where one tries to explore
| all possible avenues to research everything to find value.
| tempodox wrote:
| No university education would be complete without a practical
| demonstration of how corruption works. /s
| balozi wrote:
| A tiny window into how Harvard's $35 billion endowment was built.
| The story of why the ultrarich give generously to a an
| ultrawealthy institution.
| cjmb wrote:
| $35 billion?
|
| I regret to inform you the number has gone up substantially
| since you last checked it
| j45 wrote:
| Colleges and universities are like little countries, rarely
| answer to anyone and focused on their own insular practices.
| loceng wrote:
| It was only in the last few years did I realize the massive
| endowments many universities have make them ripe targets for
| bad actors to make their way into administration.
| 93po wrote:
| The few very large unis i looked into all made massively more
| money off investment returns than any operational income. the
| year i reviewed for the university of texas system showed
| they could have charged zero tuition that year and still make
| a profit
|
| there are absolutely kickbacks for people in control of those
| endowments choosing specific investment options with their
| many billions of dollars
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| My partner works at a major U in the US. Top 200ish.
|
| They are solely focused on revenue. Teacher pay rarely
| raised, but that new upgrade for the stadium at a cool
| $120m, seems like a great idea.
|
| FFS, her dept went past the paper budget for one semester,
| about 5 years ago. The resolution? Do without paper until
| the next semester.
|
| That's what students insane tuition prices bought them.
| Apathy over education.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Why are they so focused on that? It seems like a great
| way to drive a school into the ground.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Honest graft.
|
| Awards and recognition for leaders. Where ethics rules
| are loose, fancy trips and steak dinners, etc.
| 93po wrote:
| because the people controlling those endowments make tens
| of millions off of kickbacks and care a lot more about
| that than the school. additionally, all schools are
| operating in the same shitty way, they're all getting
| expensive and shitty and degrees are fairly non-optional
| for a lot of career paths so it's a captive market
| scottyah wrote:
| It's just so easy to track money as a measurement of
| success, all the other goals are too intangible that they
| tend to get left behind
| dehrmann wrote:
| > Teacher pay rarely raised
|
| There's an oversupply of most PhDs, so there's no need to
| raise their pay. And that's for professors. Grad students
| that teach are practically free.
| xattt wrote:
| > There's an oversupply of most PhDs
|
| Which PhDs are in undersupply?
| golergka wrote:
| AI researchers, by the looks of what tech is willing to
| pay for them.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| Ironically, she stopped at a Masters, after this same
| university forced her to restart her phd thesis 3 TIMES,
| due to changing staff. She worked on it one semester,
| then they changed her major professor. Worked on the 2nd
| one another semester, and they again changed her major
| professor. Considered a 3rd time and she just threw her
| hands up and said, fuck it, which I don't blame, at all.
|
| She's still a full-time faculty member, has
| written/designed 3 courses for them, that are taught by
| herself and others to this day, and gets kudos every
| semester from students she's taught.
|
| The college system is slightly less uncaring than the
| government. The big difference is the college system
| drains 20 years of your future income with insane pricing
| and if you get shit on due to THEIR changes, that's just
| your happy ass.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| 3 times is crazy. 3 times _in one year_ is absolute
| insanity. I 'd simply apply to a new university if I had
| a shred of interest left after that.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| They killed any feelings of finishing it.
|
| They are thorough in crushing dreams.
|
| The best part about all of it? She got to PAY for the
| semesters that the school itself trashed.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| That's nuts.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| What was their consequence?
|
| Nothing, so they really didn't give 2 shits about it.
|
| THATS universities, today.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| 3 times happened to me too but not in one year and not at
| one school.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| I think the main problem with issues like this that
| happened to your partner is people fear making waves so
| much that they don't even consider going to a lawyer to
| enforce the implied contract that she had as a grad
| student with _both_ the university and the original
| thesis professor.
|
| Legal action is used even by unions to enforce their
| rights and contracts. If you don't have a union, legal
| action is the only strength a cog in the machine has. Use
| it, or get run over.
|
| I'm not just writing out of my butt, I've successfully
| done this once. It is risky, but is it realistically any
| worse than what happened in this situation? It's not as
| if there's only one university awarding PhDs. And if
| you're swapping professors left and right, it's not as if
| staying at the university is really benefiting your
| original research goals.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| One of the many things that pissed me off about it was
| they didn't even try to match her up with a prof in her
| specialty. Just threw her to the next prof available,
| because "Fuck it, not my life. That'll be $14k..thanks!"
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Wow. Insult to injury. Pretty crappy for the next
| professor, too.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| There's an oversupply of administrators too.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| Honest question:
|
| When is there not a glut of administrators in any
| industry?
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > Grad students that teach are practically free.
|
| UCLA recently got hammered on this, after people shared a
| bunch of job posting for teaching posts for grad students
| with the disclaimer: "Note: this is an uncompensated
| position".
| pixl97 wrote:
| So what is undersupplied that makes prices high for
| students?
| Spivak wrote:
| > but that new upgrade for the stadium at a cool $120m,
| seems like a great idea.
|
| This doesn't have anything to do with universities
| specifically. There's always money for endeavors that
| have positive ROI. You can tell what a person, group,
| business or institution actually values by the things
| they spend money on that are true losses.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| When a university focuses on everything except education,
| there is a problem.
| golergka wrote:
| This just means that's what their customers, who pay the
| tuition, care about more.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| Yes and no, I think.
|
| If it was laid out, that their education would suffer,
| because the resources that might be put towards it are
| now put into Sports Team, I suspect they would balk more.
| jkestner wrote:
| And here I thought I could stop buying supplies for our
| teachers when my kids go to college.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| It's no longer crayons and construction paper. It's just
| reams of regular old copier paper now, but the same
| thing.
| strangattractor wrote:
| I would occasionally visit some of my high school friends
| attending William and Mary in Va (in the 80s). One year
| the school decided the football stadium needed upgrading
| so the team could play football in a more competitive
| division. The students protested - saying they were happy
| going to watch their not so great team and they did not
| want to see the school divert interest from academics.
| The stadium was not built. The school listened to the
| students.
|
| The problem is many schools are now status symbols
| similar to an iPhone. People go to them precisely because
| other people cannot afford them. There are many schools
| that can provide a similar undergraduate experience -
| William and Mary for example - but simply do not have the
| cachet. The alumni, the students, professors and
| administration all want the prestige. It doesn't have to
| be that way if people would stop buying into the BS.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| That's just it. The University that my partner teaches at
| is already in the top of 2 fields and a major player in a
| 3rd.
|
| They already had reasons for people to attend without
| adding another 50k seats to a stadium that already had
| more than that.
| hanniabu wrote:
| And they still have the nerve to call alumni for donations
| woah wrote:
| > there are absolutely kickbacks for people in control of
| those endowments choosing specific investment options with
| their many billions of dollars
|
| This is a form of corruption that is present whenever
| anyone manages an investment fund, and not only specific to
| school endowments. This is why investment managers are
| licensed, and taking this kind of bribe could result in
| criminal penalties.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| A lot of people are looking for an all controlling force in the
| country or world
|
| instead, I see a lot of demigods that rule their domain,
| curating complete autonomy as long as they stay within the
| confines they finessed
| foobarian wrote:
| Anybody working in University IT can attest to this :-)
| bo1024 wrote:
| Anybody who has to work with University IT can also :)
| j45 wrote:
| So anyone who works in universities sees and experiences
| bureaucracy.
|
| Let's strike a committee to study it until it's
| forgotten.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| You don't need a formal conspiracy when you have an elite
| with converging interests.
| godelski wrote:
| There's a joke from a comedian I forget if it is Louis CK
| George Carlin or not. But basically is along the lines that
| you don't have explicitly collude when you all come from
| the same backgrounds. The interests are aligned already.
| It's pointing out that representatives need to actually be
| from representative populations of people. But he did it in
| a funny way, this comment really isn't.
|
| Edit: thanks lo_zamoyski. Here's a video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAFd4FdbJxs
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| George Carlin, and he wasn't joking. This was a point he
| made during an interview in all seriousness.
| godelski wrote:
| That was it thank! Updated my post
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Might be the comedian Avram Chomsky.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| If you want to read about how the media is also roped
| into these incentive structures, read _Manufacturing
| Consent_ by Herman and Chomsky.
| smolder wrote:
| There's no P in Chomsky, FYI.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Thanks, fixed.
| godelski wrote:
| Lots of corrections in this thread chain haha. It's
| actually a delight to see a chain of "ops, thanks" and no
| one fighting.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| If only the middle and lower class could do that. But
| they argue amongst each other over the relative scraps.
| Even arguing what a "middle class" is these days.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| Yes I basically took verbatim what George Carlin said
| because it's one of the best points of view on
| "conspiracies" I've ever heard.
|
| I don't understand how did you get the impression that I
| was trying to be funny? It's a fairly serious description
| of the reality we live in.
| godelski wrote:
| > it's one of the best points of view on "conspiracies"
| I've ever heard.
|
| It's actually how I often think of conspiracy. Not a
| bunch of men sitting in a room plotting together but a
| bunch of independent actors with convergent incentives.
| Also my litmus test for real bona fide conspiracy
| (Watergate or Contra Affair) vs crackpottery is if it can
| be boiled down to "wizards did it." It's always
| interesting that conspiracies work out to essentially
| making one feel safe in a world of all powerful but evil
| men rather than the discomfort of a chaotic world. Flat
| Earth stands out a bit because I still don't know who
| gains from it...
|
| > I don't understand how did you get the impression that
| I was trying to be funny?
|
| I didn't. I said Carlin was funny and that I was not. I
| honestly wasn't even aware you were referencing Carlin
| (at a direct level at least, since I did make the
| connection). It just reminded me of his statement (which
| now I understand as your intent. The subtle nod
| reference).
| whatshisface wrote:
| Conspiracies of the original kind do happen. Like the
| plot to kill Ceasar.
| godelski wrote:
| Of course, see my reference to Watergate and Contra
| Affairs. Would you not say those are real bona fide
| conspiracies of the original kind?
|
| The litmus test is not about convergence, it is "wizards
| did it." Convergence is just a common kind of thing that
| crackpot conspiracies develop around. It's more rational
| when you understand convergence because crackpot
| conspiracy often is re-framed as a misinterpretation of
| the data.
|
| Qualifiers are also important.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > It's always interesting that conspiracies work out to
| essentially making one feel safe in a world of all
| powerful but evil men rather than the discomfort of a
| chaotic world.
|
| Hmm. Rather the comforting thought is in the mind of the
| so-called conspirators. Systemic theories about things
| like the Media (see mentioned _Manufacturing Consent_ )
| get rejected as "conspiracies" because people (like in
| the Media) interpret it as saying that they, _with full
| knowledge and intentionality_ are doing these things.
| Rather than that they are pawns in a larger system.
|
| They are flattering themselves.
| stareatgoats wrote:
| You mean to say that no one is running the world, not even
| behind the scenes, or even behind behind the scenes? You are
| leaving us without anyone to blame! Daring I must say.
| sroussey wrote:
| Certainly not a way to get clicks. People are eager to see
| patterns--it's in our wetware. For example: two podcasts
| about JFK: one is about a lone gunman, the other a secret
| conspiracy and coverup. Which will be more interesting? Get
| more of an audience?
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Consider "Oswald: the man who took on the United States
| Secret Service, and won". I'm not particularly interested
| in US history, but I think I'd find _this_ much more
| interesting than yet another conspiracy podcast.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| funny, but another thing I think people miss is that there
| are opportunists for every outcome
|
| think your controversial head of state is being controlled
| by their buddies from university that run some private
| equity funds
|
| well so would the _other_ head of state if they won the
| election! different buddies
|
| its more like if you dont also have a plan for outsized
| influence, then _thats_ the biggest outlier and inefficient
| way of navigating the system we have
| fooop wrote:
| the world these days is becoming more and more medieval: many
| different actors, all competing with one another, at
| different levels of power.
|
| Imo, it's a good thing: regular ppl will be more suspicious
| about power overall and not make as many bad
| safety/convenience trades.
| j45 wrote:
| Assuming people are educated and aware enough to begin with
| to recognize and then deal with it.
|
| The right to read was literally only locked up a few
| hundred years ago.
| fooop wrote:
| these things are much more transparent than us experts
| like to think they are - people making "uneducated"
| decisions are often just making decisions that don't fall
| in line with the expectations of the "educated". Power is
| legible regardless of whether you know how to read or not
| (or code (or do immunological research)).
| bena wrote:
| That's true of a lot of things. You really can't allow a system
| to police itself. Once you allow that, you've essentially given
| them carte blanche to run a fiefdom.
| scottyah wrote:
| But all the other systems are just systems too, and even a
| system of systems is just a system... Unless we have a God at
| the top there's no escape from the fiefdoms
| j45 wrote:
| Systems for the many, vs the few can be quite different.
|
| It can be different than systems designed for the few
| instead of the many
| bena wrote:
| Basically a system cannot be accountable to only itself.
| There must be an outside entity that can hold the system
| accountable.
|
| However, even if you have two systems accountable to each
| other, once they realize that there's no third party that's
| holding the gestalt accountable, they're free to play tit-
| for-tat and essentially become a single entity.
|
| It's kind of why "internal affairs" doesn't really work in
| police departments. They are part of the same system. If
| internal affairs clears the police, the police won't mess
| with internal affairs.
|
| And I'm not saying there are easy solutions to implement.
| Because even if you have an entire web of systems
| configured in such a way that cooperation among some would
| be detrimental to the others so they would have incentives
| to keep each other in check, it would only take a sustained
| imbalance of power in order for the cooperators to
| neutralize the others so that they could create their own
| fiefdom.
|
| But anywhere you do have a system that is only accountable
| to itself, you have a system that is likely rotting from
| the inside.
| bo1024 wrote:
| "To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a
| problem." -Douglas Adams.
|
| Insularity is both the strength and weakness of academia.
| Unfortunately, I feel we are sliding toward the worst of both
| worlds: an administrative "ruling class" that is insulated
| from consequences, but also allowed to constrain and control
| the educators/researchers.
| j45 wrote:
| I am not so sure of that anymore.
|
| There is some real case for institutionalization and being
| out of touch with the real world.
|
| Add to that where those who can't do but talk instead
| moving up in management to stand over the academics who are
| capable and immensely talented.
| petre wrote:
| You were quite close to a 1917 style red revolution on US
| soil. Only the reds wore maga baseball caps that time and
| most of them were right wingers. Fortunately Trump backed
| down by the time the FBI tactical teams arrived. I don't
| think anyone is insulated by consequences, but I have yet
| to see a former US president go to prison.
| j45 wrote:
| Right but it doesn't lessen it being true about this space.
|
| Bureaucracies anywhere they exist tend to lean this way, in
| their own special way. Whether it's enterprise, healthcare,
| government, education..
| throw4847285 wrote:
| They're more like hedge funds that do some light educating on
| the side. Especially ones as rich as Harvard.
| specialist wrote:
| That's an unfair assessment.
|
| Harvard et al also launder reputations, incubate reactionary
| movements, serve as a finishing school for the rich and
| powerful, stoke credentialing (eg grade inflation), and
| accelerate social inequity. For starters.
| ratsmack wrote:
| Just like so many organizations within government,
| universities have no accountability... status quo rules.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Uhh, reactionary movements are incubated in Christian right
| wing schools, not by Harvard professors writing yet another
| book about post modernism.
| eggy wrote:
| It makes you wonder how much the Zucherbergs influenced the 2020
| election with "Zuckerbucks". They were cleared by the Feds, but
| then even that investigation becomes suspect with these large
| sums of money and influence. Conservatives claimed it went
| towards bolstering voting in largely Democratic regions, or in a
| biased distribution and application of the funds.
| oaththrowaway wrote:
| I hope you aren't insinuating election fraud!!!
| kogus wrote:
| The surprise to me is that anyone would ever expect companies
| like X or Facebook to pay more than lip service to the idea of
| being an open public platform. These are private companies who
| want to 1) Attract a lot of eyeballs 2)
| Sell ad space in front of those eyeballs
|
| That's all. To bastardize a Lincoln quote[1]: My
| paramount object in this struggle is to make a profit and
| is not either to save or to destroy free speech. If I could
| make a profit without promoting any free speech I would do it,
| and if I could save it by promoting all free speech I would do
| it; and if I could save it by promoting some free speech
| and forbidding other free speech, I would also do that.
|
| My point being, if you want to say something controversial, host
| it yourself. It's childish to expect businesses to host your
| content when it attracts the ire of regulators who can threaten
| their business, or when the content directly threatens their
| business by causing people to leave.
|
| [1]http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/greeley..
| .
| monkeeguy wrote:
| The problem is that all hosting is done by companies trying to
| make a profit. When you say host it yourself, likely you mean -
| Build your own website. A few issues with this line of thinking
|
| - Web hosting companies are attacked for hosting controversial
| speech all the time (AWS stopped hosting Parler when they were
| put on blast) - The infrastructure required for hosting large
| controversial websites can also be made unavailable to
| controversial sites (e.g CloudFlare dropping KiwiFarms citing
| its 'hateful user base') - Not to mention some platforms/people
| are literally de-banked, which apparently is a thing, and
| forced to use crypto for all expenses and revenue
|
| Americans value freedom of speech, these are American
| companies. At some point our governing body, which exists to
| shape society according to our collective wishes, needs to step
| in and hold the hands of these companies and make them behave
| in accordance with American values. I don't know the numbers
| but I would imagine it's a very small amount of America that
| isn't pro free speech.
| kogus wrote:
| I disagree with this sentiment: At some point
| our governing body, which exists to shape society
| according to our collective wishes, needs to step in and hold
| the hands of these companies and make them behave in
| accordance with American values
|
| There is a list of things the government should to. "Shape
| society" is not one of them.
|
| At the end of the day, companies can and will decide what's
| profitable for them to do. If a hosting service doesn't want
| to host your site, you should probably speak in some other
| way. The internet is not the only vehicle for public
| communication. You and I should be completely free to say
| whatever we want. Nobody owes me (or you) a platform for
| speech. Those two statements are not incompatible. As I write
| this, I'm aware of the irony that I'm doing so on a public
| online forum. But I acknowledge at the end of the day if
| Hacker News wants to delete this comment, they have a right
| to do so.
| fn-mote wrote:
| > There is a list of things the government should to.
| "Shape society" is not one of them.
|
| All actions of government shape society. Tax break for
| charitable contributions? Laws permitting or forbidding
| certain medical procedures? Drawing lines for voting
| districts?
|
| A completely laissez-faire attitude leads to landlords not
| renting apartments to people explicitly because of their
| skin color and blatant, explicit discrimination in hiring.
|
| I don't want to live in that world.
| kogus wrote:
| All government action is, by definition, an act of
| violence-backed force. I think that should be minimized.
|
| I don't share your cynical view that people only behave
| with kindness because they are forced to at gunpoint. I
| also try to remember that every war ever conducted in
| human history was the explicit act of organized
| government action, ostensibly as an expression of the
| will of the people.
|
| Anyway this isn't the right thread or forum for this kind
| of discussion. I hope you are right; my viewpoint is
| definitely not about to take over the world :)
| afavour wrote:
| I don't really see how your comment is at all relevant to the
| topic at hand. The accusation is that Facebook used a donation
| to Harvard to silence a critic, it has absolutely nothing to do
| with whether that criticism is published on Facebook or not.
| kogus wrote:
| I guess you are right; I kind of fly off the handle when I
| see this kind of topic come up. But the underlying premise of
| the research in question is that Facebook should be an
| unbiased, moderated forum for open public discourse. I just
| don't see how anyone could reasonably expect that to happen.
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| It's always good to see how my fellow tech bros act in interviews
| vs how they truly act.
| meroes wrote:
| Remember students cheating is against our academic integrity
| policy!
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| This isn't unusual in academia btw. It's an open secret that
| economics departments are bought the same way-- a generous
| donation to the department in exchange for the donor hand-picking
| the department chair.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| Invisible Hand indeed.
| miohtama wrote:
| The invisible hand has its thumb up.
| ryeights wrote:
| More like a middle finger...
| kbenson wrote:
| The invisible hand has its thumb on the scale.
| Arson9416 wrote:
| What does this have to do with the free market?
| ajkjk wrote:
| Fairly obvious, right?
| Arson9416 wrote:
| No, which is why I'm asking.
| fmbb wrote:
| The current economic system where (in the US) bribes are
| "speech" and corporations are people unavoidably leads to
| things like this project getting neutered.
|
| "The invisible hand" Adam Smith refers to are the
| unintended consequences from merchants' want to keep
| their capital: increasing the domestic capital stock and
| enhancing military power for the state, i.e.
| protectionism etc.
|
| More broadly and lately it refers to any unintended
| societal consequences from the free market.
|
| Consequently it never means "finding a good price" which
| 99% of everyone using the term seems to believe.
| Arson9416 wrote:
| Bribery exists in every economic system, even before
| economic systems existed, and is not uniquely connected
| to the free market. Nor are they connected to "unintended
| societal consequences", since bribes very clearly have a
| specific goal. So it doesn't make any sense.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Just wanted to say that you're completely correct and
| making a very reasonable statement which is not
| controversial. I would love to hear about an economic
| system in which bribery did not exist or have influence,
| but I have not seen any examples of that yet, in the
| present day or in history.
|
| I don't agree that bribes can't have unintended social
| consequences. They do have specific goals, yes. But some
| unintended consequences of bribery would be things like
| discouraging honest participants, or encouraging the most
| corrupt people (rather than the best, on merit) to place
| themselves in positions of authority, so as to get
| bribes. All of these are unintended in the sense that
| neither the person giving the bribe nor the person taking
| the bribe are trying to bring them about _per se_ ,
| they're only thinking about the immediate consequences (I
| get what I want).
| Arson9416 wrote:
| I agree that they can have unintended consequences, but I
| wouldn't say any more or less than anything else. This is
| why I'm struggling with the "invisible hand" analogy,
| which focuses on a connection to unintended (positive)
| consequences.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Uhh, Singapore? Not everywhere is corrupt you know!
| karaterobot wrote:
| Singapore's not an economic system, but rather a country.
| In any case, it's still got corruption. Bribery is one
| form of corruption, and I have no doubt whatsoever that
| you can bribe someone in Singapore.
|
| https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2022/index/sgp
| shuntress wrote:
| The point is that this type of corruption is inevitable
| when the "invisible hand" is completely unrestrained.
| isk517 wrote:
| Please pay no attention to the hand behind the curtain.
| TheGuyWhoCodes wrote:
| This shouldn't be surprising at all. Harvard and other American
| universities have taken "donations" from foreign countries for
| years to hire the "correct" professors to push agendas (and raise
| the next generation of leaders), just look at the amount money
| flowing from Qatar for example.
|
| Why taking bribes from tech giants is any different?
|
| Veritas indeed.
| scj wrote:
| What I'm hearing is that universities coast-to-coast should start
| "researching" Facebook.
| jonahbenton wrote:
| Solid fundraising strategy, to be sure.
|
| Legit ransomware.
| badcppdev wrote:
| AI software platform for analysing company data files...
| acquired by the company with the most to hide
| geodel wrote:
| That will be excellent research goal. World would be better
| place if we have output 10K PhDs in Facebook every year.
| graphe wrote:
| We should all research Facebook. ;)
| kbenson wrote:
| You jest, but that is how a well functioning free market would
| handle this problem, I think. As long as the information about
| the payments is public (and information being available is an
| _integral_ part of any free market, which some people seem to
| miss), then paying would be a losing proposition for Facebook
| in the long run since there 's always another person ready to
| step and and start looking you'd need to pay off. At best they
| could hope to buy some time.
| Draiken wrote:
| There's no such thing as a "well functioning free market".
| It's an utopia.
|
| What we have today _is_ how a free market works. The
| invisible hand always tipping the scales. They would simply
| find a better way to get the outcome they want, avoiding the
| issue altogether (something at the federal level, make an
| example out of a researcher or institution, etc).
|
| The word utopia is used a lot when anything other than
| capitalism is being talked about, but the free market, which
| is an integral part of it, definitely takes the win. We have
| so many "free economies" around demonstrating how much of an
| utopia this concept is.
| golergka wrote:
| Modern world is a utopia by any reasonable historical
| standard, yes.
| kbenson wrote:
| > There's no such thing as a "well functioning free
| market". It's an utopia.
|
| It's relative. You seem to be confusing "well" with
| "perfect". Depending on your point of view, no economic
| system is well functioning, because there will always be
| ebbs and flows where people clash with the system and it
| works better or worse at time. I'm not sure if our version
| of a free market in the U.S. is closer to well functioning
| or not, but I don't see a problem with pointing out how it
| can be better, and I'm not sure why you would respond with
| something I interpret as "don't bother, it can't be
| perfect", especially when you haven't presented a better
| alternative.
|
| > What we have today is how a free market works. The
| invisible hand always tipping the scales. They would simply
| find a better way to get the outcome they want, avoiding
| the issue altogether (something at the federal level, make
| an example out of a researcher or institution, etc).
|
| The counter to the invisible hand working _against_ society
| instead of in tandem or for it is freely available
| information. In a free market economy, the answer is almost
| always more information because it allows individuals to
| act correctly, either through individual actions, _or as a
| group through pressure on the government to regulate_.
|
| So yes, what we have today is how a free market operates
| (although I would argue not very efficiently, due to lots
| of blocks on information that exist), and this information
| we're discussing in this post coming out and people being
| able to respond to it is the first step in being able to
| act on it to curtail it in the future.
|
| > The word utopia is used a lot when anything other than
| capitalism is being talked about, but the free market,
| which is an integral part of it, definitely takes the win.
| We have so many "free economies" around demonstrating how
| much of an utopia this concept is.
|
| The only person here who said that is you, so I'm not sure
| what you're on about. I certainly don't think it's some
| utopia, just a system built on emergent behavior that like
| any other, needs special bounds and constant attention to
| both keep it functioning as well as possible as well as
| keep it from going completely off the rails.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| If you know anything about public policy, Michael Bloomberg's
| association to Harvard, the Joyce Foundation, and largely
| anything about behind the scenes at Ivy Leagues at all...
|
| You would know this is typical modus operandi for Harvard.
| nazka wrote:
| Wow and she is just 18 yo.
| bko wrote:
| Maybe as an aside, but why should this research be done at
| university level? Is it expensive or require their resources?
|
| Obviously institutions are at risk of capture by special
| interests. We can call them non profit but doesn't stop the
| economics and human nature. Same is true for politicians so
| oversight could make things even worse as it would be even more
| centralized and easier to capture .
|
| So we should look for smaller individuals and groups to conduct
| research. Being public also creates a financial incentive. If
| your research indicates something is a fraud or very harmful you
| can short the stock to fund your research
| ajmurmann wrote:
| > why should this research be done at university level?
|
| If it's important research it's good if it's done by a renowned
| university that brings oversight and credibility for the
| research. Much better than the same researcher doing it in
| their basement, unless they are already famous and have their
| own following. Of course incidents like this and cases where
| research gets influenced into any direction hurt that benefit
| of research being done at a university.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| > why should this research be done at university level?
|
| I think this questions is backwards. This seems very much in
| line with other research already done at universities.
|
| > So we should look for smaller individuals and groups to
| conduct research.
|
| Smaller individual and groups can be much more easily sued.
| It's much easier to spin a story about suing some rogue
| partisan non-profit than it is for suing academic researchers.
|
| > Being public also creates a financial incentive. If your
| research indicates something is a fraud or very harmful you can
| short the stock to fund your research
|
| These sorts of financial incentives provide the easiest and
| simplest way of discrediting these groups (aside from simply
| ignoring them). All Meta has to say is "Don't believe a thing
| they say, they're simply doing it since they're shorting us".
| bko wrote:
| You didn't answer my question. Why should it be done at
| universities? I get that stuff like it is already done there,
| but why?
|
| Short selling has a long history. Obv people don't like them
| but don't know any successful lawsuits. Prob a lot easier and
| cheaper to capture a uni than sue some short seller.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| > You didn't answer my question. Why should it be done at
| universities?
|
| Let me try again. One of the reasons research is supposed
| to be done at universities is specifically to remove
| financial incentives. Tenure is meant to insulate academia
| from having to worry about financial incentives and what is
| popular so they can focus _on what is true_.
|
| > Prob a lot easier and cheaper to capture a uni than sue
| some short seller.
|
| Meta doesn't have to sue a short seller. All Meta has to do
| is point to the now extremely clear conflict of interest.
| Having such a strong conflict of interest makes it easy to
| cause doubt about the validity of the research. And that's
| good enough. Compare two following two headlines:
|
| 1. Prestigious research group at Harvard shows wrongdoing
| on Meta's part.
|
| 2. Opportunistic short sellers put out yet another hit
| piece against Meta for their own financial gain.
|
| It's like going to get your nutritional advice from the
| small sample size and suspect studies put out by supplement
| companies. _Obviously_ they won 't publish findings that go
| against their financial interests, or even run the
| experiments in the first place.
| bko wrote:
| > Let me try again. One of the reasons research is
| supposed to be done at universities is specifically to
| remove financial incentives.
|
| Wasn't this whole thing preempted by financial incentives
| playing a role in Harvard dropping the case. My point is
| financial incentives exist either way. The difference is
| that FB can point and say "Harvard says we're great and
| they have no financial incentives to lie *wink*" or we
| can say "sure I have a lot to gain if I'm right but that
| doesn't mean I'm wrong".
|
| So you kind of made my point for me. It's the high minded
| veneer of objectivity I am most against
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| The deifference for me is that this is, allegedly,
| Harvard acting unethically and against how we expect
| them, as a research university, to act.
|
| There exists no such expectations on other private
| companies.
|
| This is a failure of the model, not business as usual.
| Beldin wrote:
| > _Maybe as an aside, but why should this research be done at
| university level?_
|
| Why not? Universities perform research - typically free from
| outside interference (academic freedom). And there are good
| reasons for academic freedom (which I'm not getting into here).
| As a consequence, academic freedom limits the reasons to stop
| this research from happening at a university.
|
| So what is it in the contents of this research that makes you
| think it is not at an academic level or a violation of ethical
| standards?
| godelski wrote:
| > but why should this research be done at university level?
|
| Where else should it be done?
|
| Supposedly academia is supposed to be the place that is free
| from economic incentives. Think about how we use the word
| "academically." As well as being a third party that is
| independent of the government. Even non-profits have to worry
| about economic value, just not about shareholders.[0]
|
| I say supposedly because lots of academia is already captured
| by industry (or other entities). Computer science is a good
| example considering how common it is to work with industry
| partners. Sciences are mixed and there's good reason to work
| with industry that is highly rational and can provide huge
| benefits. But it does come with risk of capture. It should also
| be worrying if academic research becomes essentially an
| extension of a company's research arm because it does reduce
| innovation and exploration of ideas as research is pushed
| towards profit motivations but that's a very different kind of
| risk than the one discussed.
|
| [0] In the last few decades we've adopted a mindset that
| everything should be a business model. This is true for
| academia. Maybe everything shouldn't be a business model. That
| doesn't mean things have to run at a loss but schools
| definitely are profit seeking in their current forms. The
| priority is not placed on education and research and thus
| presents an existential risk to these institutions. One could
| claim the death has already come but I'm not convinced.
| throwawayq3423 wrote:
| Why are you copy pasting the same question over and over in
| this thread?
| jlg23 wrote:
| > Maybe as an aside, but why should this research be done at
| university level?
|
| In this specific case: Because it started there and
| institutions that claim to be neutral or to use scientific
| methods should not stop research because they are paid to do
| so.
|
| In the general case: When speaking bad about big actors,
| reputation and a big budget for lawyers can make a lot of
| lawsuits go away before they even start.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| > So we should look for smaller individuals and groups to
| conduct research.
|
| Maybe. And maybe not. I think you need both. The larger, public
| institution is the lightning rod. They get all the attention,
| but also all the scrutiny. Smaller groups are difficult to
| track. The more you have of them, the more difficult it is to
| account for their methods and funding and so on. So you pit the
| smaller groups against the large public institution. The
| smaller groups are the chihuahuas barking at the bulldog.
|
| Instead of eliminating the big institution, you subject it to
| higher standards and scrutiny. More severe punishments for bad
| behavior, and perhaps also better rewards for good behavior.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| > Maybe as an aside, but why should this research be done at
| university level? Is it expensive or require their resources?
|
| I guess the question is ... why shouldn't it be? Social media
| is a huge part of modern life in the US, has a massive impact
| and is all both pretty recent and poorly understood. I would
| expect any half decent university with anthropology or
| sociology (or even a political science) departments to be doing
| heavy research in this field.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > Is it expensive or require their resources?
|
| You have a major knowledge gap here. Other than for literal lab
| start up funds for brand-new professors universities typically
| don't grant much money, if any at all, to their professors for
| research. The professors are expected to seek outside funds, of
| which a good chunk then goes to the university for the
| university's costs.
|
| This may not be the same at Harvard, I genuinely don't know.
| But it's typical at most research universities.
| srameshc wrote:
| I wonder if some non profit org can take this task forward and
| what would be the challenges ?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| It fits a larger, apparently organized campaign to suppress any
| counter-disinformation efforts, in government, academia, and
| private organizations.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/09/23/online-...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/30/biden-f...
|
| _The U.S. government has stopped warning some social networks
| about foreign disinformation campaigns ..._
|
| ...
|
| _University academics and disinformation research groups are
| also in limbo. Many are seeking affordable legal representation
| to defend themselves against mounting cases and reevaluating
| their communication with industry and the public._
|
| _"The trust and safety workers are gone. The relationships with
| external researchers is now gone," said Anika Collier Navaroli,
| senior fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at
| Columbia University and a former senior Twitter policy official.
| "And now this third piece of the actual information from the
| government is gone. ... So we're basically unprotected."_
|
| ----------
|
| Think how crazy that is - who is in favor of disinformation? How
| can universities - even Harvard - set precedents of not
| protecting open inquiry or their faculty, which will not stop
| here, and even indirectly support disinformation, the main threat
| to their mission of creating and disseminating knowledge. And as
| usual, there is no leadership; the Biden administration's answer
| to all problems is to avoid confrontation at all costs.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| @dang, if you see this comment: Is there a bug in the ranking
| algorithm? A substantial comment, with an almost immediate
| upvote, drops 3/4 of the way down the page beneath many one-
| liner comments (not criticizing them, just observing).
|
| (I don't need a fix here, just pointing out some apparent bug.)
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Laws capping these massive donations need to pass or nothing will
| change. $500M is more than enough money to operate any school,
| and Harvard simply does not need more money in its pockets.
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/221147/the-20-richest-co...
| shuntress wrote:
| > $500M is more than enough money to operate any school
|
| I'm not saying I disagree with regulation related to massive
| donations but you need to check your numbers.
|
| https://finance.harvard.edu/financial-overview
|
| _" Total operating expenses increased by $482 million or 9% to
| $5.9 billion."_
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Same PDF states "The University generated an operating
| surplus of $186 million"
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| I'd support the full destruction of Harvard and MIT taking all
| of its assists and land. I want our universities to accept
| based on merit, not fat donations. The traditional ivys are
| simply bad for society and our elite schools should be elite
| because the majority of students their are truly gifted (i.e
| Stanford, caltech, MIT) not because their from the ultra rich
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Comparing MIT and Harvard is apples and oranges. Or perhaps
| Ivy and Apples.
| chernevik wrote:
| Doesn't matter even if true.
|
| Anyone wanting to be taken seriously on "disinformation" would
| get as far away as possible from a place like Harvard in the
| first place.
| akaij wrote:
| I don't even understand what you mean. Care to elaborate?
| u32480932048 wrote:
| The epitome of hegemony and privilege can't credibly act as
| an arbiter of truth, particularly in the current milieu,
| where it's simultaneously a bastion of The Oppressors(tm) and
| The Colonists(tm) as well as one of those liberal colleges
| indoctrinating The Children with Communism(tm) and/or
| Socialism(tm).
|
| In short, few people actually care what Harvard has to say
| because it's popularly perceived as a mouthpiece for The
| Establishment.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| "prestigious team of online disinformation experts"
|
| Not being the devil's advocate here, but "online disinformation"
| is not a credentialed field. That's like calling yourself a
| "truth expert".
|
| Also the prestigious part is bogus at best. If they are then they
| sure don't make the headlines often.
| tuwtuwtuwtuw wrote:
| I'm not following your reasoning here. There are people working
| with the topic that is online disinformation. I know Swedish
| government have some teams who analyze disinformation
| campaigns, as an example. Are you saying that people who work
| with this area cannot be experts on the area?
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| I can't speak for the OP but take into the current Media
| Matters "outing" of X over the ad placement next to anti-
| semitic content.
|
| Basically Media Matters juiced the X algorithm to give them
| less than 10 impressions of big ad spend clients ads next to
| anti-semitic comments they entered on their own sock puppet
| accounts (with few or little followers), then passed that
| contrivance off as truth, stating brand-destroying anti-
| semitic content is rampant on X. Where are the disinformation
| experts now decrying MM's bullshit? Where will they be in
| 30-36 months after X sues MM into oblivion? Hint: likely
| silent at their desks. Just as they have been over numerous
| lies targeting non-liberal narrative-busting realities.
| Vicinity9635 wrote:
| Every time I come across a "disinformation expert" they
| seem to be the ones _spreading_ disinformation.
| tuwtuwtuwtuw wrote:
| I am not sure what point you are trying to make. It seems
| quite US-Politics-centric and really doesn't answer the
| question I asked. If you're upset about things then that's
| fine but please try to stay on topic.
| graphe wrote:
| What makes information disinformation or fake news? Who
| decided it?
| tuwtuwtuwtuw wrote:
| I don't understand how that is relevant to the question I
| asked. Are you suggesting that no one can be experts on
| disinformation because different people have different view
| on what is true? Sounds a bit silly to me. Is the earth
| flat or more shaped like a globe?
| graphe wrote:
| What is "the truth" about animal fats or plant oils? What
| is the disinformation for it?
| tuwtuwtuwtuw wrote:
| I still have no idea what point you are trying to make. I
| have not claimed to be an expert on the topic, I only
| asked why no one can be an expert.
|
| It sounds like your view is that no one can be an expert
| on disinformation because some topics are disputed.
| That's an "interesting" take. I guess that reasoning
| would leave pretty few experts in the world.
| graphe wrote:
| Saying they are experts are like telling you who is sexy
| or not. It's subjective. Some people really consider Marx
| or Friedman as the truth for instance. Digging deeper in
| the weeds we can make claims either way.
|
| Experts are often self appointed as well. If I was to
| declare myself an expert in an obscure area you don't
| understand by making wild claims that sound plausible it
| would be hard to say I wasn't and if some peers accepted
| it it would be even harder to deny it.
|
| An expert shouldn't be self appointed and if nobody
| trustworthy calls someone an expert they shouldn't be
| considered one too. If you consider someone an expert on
| your own by their knowledge it's different.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| Because it implies of knowing the truth as a matter of
| expertise, which is just arrogance even for experts.
| Expertise is about knowledge, not truth.
|
| There was also experts on lobotomy who won Nobel Prices.
| All of whom were assumed to be truthful and knowledgeable
| and yet was disinformation in its own right.
| u32480932048 wrote:
| She discovered the link between support for Trump and
| attendance at the J6 riots.
|
| She's basically the Francis Crick of declaring Facebook memes
| not entirely true.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| Sorry but what you said doesn't mean anything.
|
| Links can be "discovered" ad infinitum.
| joshspankit wrote:
| I'm inspired to propose a new term alongside Big Tobacco, Big
| Energy, Big Pharma, and Big Tech:
|
| Big Social.
| xss2f wrote:
| There is 'Big Tech' already available. Plus America has raised
| interest rates, which means market capture/empire defense is
| getting more and more expensive, so expect all of them to
| become small soon.
| joshspankit wrote:
| Big Tech as a term doesn't feel like it encompasses the
| specifically social influence of some of the social media
| companies (Meta could almost be called Big Social just by
| itself, but that's a different conversation).
|
| The reason it made sense to me is that when the article said
| "Big Tech" it didn't feel right.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| I agree with you, but the use of "tech" to mean "computer-
| centric technology" has already poisoned the term a bit
| anyway.
| hathym wrote:
| It's hard to beleive why such an immense sum of money is being
| funneled into warping the truth, and to make the extermination of
| an entire population of innocent people appear justified.
| graphe wrote:
| Who is exterminating who in the article? It just says harmful
| to society.
| gessha wrote:
| The better move for the Harvard team is to pivot to investigating
| Facebook's big name adversaries (Apple?) and aim to get them on
| the board turning the university into a corporate influence
| battleground. \s
| gsmo wrote:
| Not excusing what Harvard and Zuckerberg did. Joan Donovan is not
| an advocate for transparency and open discourse, either. Google
| her name and you will find she is quite alright with censoring.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| This comment would be more interesting if you provided
| specifics.
| hash9 wrote:
| Had a quick look and Donovan is a board member of Check My
| Ads [1], "an organization that pushes advertisers to ditch
| right-leaning media" and they've wrote articles in favour of
| social media bans [2]. They're probably referring to that.
|
| 1. https://checkmyads.org/about/
|
| 2. https://www.wired.com/story/you-purged-racists-from-your-
| web...
| byyoung3 wrote:
| next post: Y combinator removes Hardvard/Meta post after 1B
| investment from Meta
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| There have been some comments that were deleted as soon as I
| hit reply...
| maxwell wrote:
| They did change the link from https://live-whistleblower-
| aid.pantheonsite.io/joan-donovan-...
| skilled wrote:
| The comments were moved from another thread to here since the
| original submission didn't have a lot of substance and some
| people were complaining.
|
| A bit of a dilemma in the karma sharing department as that
| feature is not yet implemented.
|
| But seeing as how this story got 1,000 points in 2 hours in the
| original submission, it should probably be back on top.
|
| ----
|
| E: More context here,
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38521109
| myth_drannon wrote:
| $500M is a lot of money for one university, especially as bad as
| Harvard. Insane. But let's not forget that's a common practice.
| Qatar and et al. compromised many humanities departments. Oil
| money helps fund pro-Palestine protests in these universities.
| Now they need to show the money was well spent.
|
| https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/jwhsqhrat
| abeppu wrote:
| Setting aside the institutional failures within Harvard,
| shouldn't this also pose legal problems for the Chan Zuckerberg
| Foundation? I am certainly not a lawyer, but I thought the tax-
| benefits of a non-profit were supposed to be tied to some
| governance requirements and operating in pursuit of some mission
| other than profit. If when the Chan Zuckerberg foundation gives a
| donation to a school, an exec from Meta is then put on some
| Dean's council, and if the foundation's donation is used to
| pressure the school to advantage the corporation, then it seems
| like the foundation is operating as an arm of Meta, and is
| compromised as an independent philanthropic org.
| jonchang wrote:
| CZI and CZF are structured as a for-profit LLC and a non-profit
| arm, respectively. Depending on where the money came from, it
| might not be a problem at all, though it could potentially
| jeopardize Harvard's nonprofit status. I'll leave it up to you
| to figure the odds of the IRS revoking that designation.
| scottyah wrote:
| They purposely did not make the Chan Zuckerberg Foundation a
| non-profit so as to not be encumbered by all the laws that
| affect those organizations.
| capableweb wrote:
| Isn't "Foundation" a word that is usually for non-profits? I
| understood the different between "Charity" and "Foundation"
| just to be about "Public" vs "Private" organization, but both
| of them being non-profits. Am I misunderstanding what
| "Foundation" means here?
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I think I could start the Evil Foundation and as long as I
| don't file for 501(c)(3) status, I'm still for-profit.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Also NAL but there's a wiiiiide gap between committing what may
| be a crime, and the federal government charging a crime.
| Simon_ORourke wrote:
| It's deeply dirty, in a sort of teflon get-away-with-anything
| way. Of course Harvard needs money to run, and has in the past
| accepted all manner of dubious donors, but implicitly receiving
| a payment quid pro quo to kill research is pretty low.
| Animats wrote:
| Harvard's top management seems to be caving in to donors a lot
| lately.[1][2] Those were over the Israel/Palestine war. Now it's
| over Facebook.
|
| [1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/06/business/harvard-
| antisemitism...
|
| [2] https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/02/business/law-firms-
| antisemiti...
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| You know, donating money to Harvard is weird. They've got a $50
| billion endowment. They have enough money to do anything they
| want. What good would donations do in the first place?
|
| And yet, Harvard receives something like $500 million per year
| in donations. Why?
| elbear wrote:
| Maybe rich people want to feel good that they've donated to a
| prestigious university.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| Might make more sense to think of it less as a donation and
| more as buying fuzzy influence.
| wharvle wrote:
| This makes more sense when one recalls that a whole lot of
| powerful people, including and perhaps especially
| politicians, come from a handful of prestigious schools,
| and are surrounded by advisors and assistants largely from
| those same schools.
|
| [edit] and of course the real rabbit hole is private prep
| schools. Good luck becoming president in this century
| without attending one. Wonder what their donor lists look
| like.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > Good luck becoming president in this century without
| attending one.
|
| Bill Clinton made it last century, and Hillary almost
| made it this century. I don't think the odds are that
| stacked against public school attendees even now.
| wharvle wrote:
| It's mostly a recent problem, oddly enough. Only one of
| the last nine big-two party candidates didn't go to prep
| school (Hilary, as you mention). Typically more than half
| the primary candidates "prepped", over the same period.
| Most VPs have, too, though it's been less totally-
| captured than the big chair (and you've got edge cases
| like Harris who didn't technically "prep" but had a
| pretty similar situation) Seems like damn well-stacked
| odds, considering fancy prep school kids are a small
| minority of all kids. But maybe this is just a multi-
| decade weird run of strange fortune, and not a persistent
| trend.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| I'm sure there are social factors both driving prep
| school graduates to run, and helping them stand out from
| the crowd. Outside of just family money.
|
| I do wonder if "prep" schools are recruiting more of the
| socially outstanding non-rich students than in previous
| years. Even so this can only have so much of an effect,
| as non-prep schools will always have valedictorians and
| social organizers regardless of who's pulled out
| beforehand.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| One reason (as indicated by these events) is to gain
| influence with the administration of one of the most
| influential universities in the world.
| low_tech_love wrote:
| You can _always_ spend more money, especially at an academic
| institution, where the money spent is not directly tied to a
| concrete, specific product. The staff can always go to one
| more conference a year, or take one more sabbatical, or buy
| newer computers more frequently, hire more people (whether
| they are needed or not; takes some weight off seniors'
| backs), organize more events, spend more with communication,
| outreach, build something, or improve existing buildings,
| create a new research group, raise some salaries, etc.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| I don't think most of the options you listed are really
| going to put a dent in that figure.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| A lot of donation and endowment money is legally tied up, due
| to the original terms of each endowment, for specific
| purposes. So even though Harvard has $50 billion, it can't
| just spend that $50 billion on anything it wants.
|
| This is both _why_ people keep donating to Harvard, and _how_
| Harvard keeps marketing a 'need' for more donations. Along
| with, of course, either naming rights, or as an incentive to
| accept their child into the school (previous research has
| shown the ability and/or willingness of families to donate
| does add to the likelihood of admission).
| legutierr wrote:
| Somehow the human brain by default conflates the concepts of
| "being prestigious" and "having integrity".
|
| It's difficult to fight this cognitive bias that, I think, we all
| carry--but we must.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| That's nurture, not nature.
| gmadsen wrote:
| im not sure completely. There is probably inherent traits
| related to leadership/followership , and a cognitive bias to
| assume integrity of leaders seems plausible. Before society,
| might literally meant right.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| > traits related to leadership/followership , and a
| cognitive bias to assume integrity of leaders seems
| plausible
|
| Also learned behavior.
| gmadsen wrote:
| sure, my point still stands. It is a reasonable
| evolutionary hypothesis that groups that err on the side
| of trusting a leader succeed more that distrustful
| groups. Obviously there is a learned behavior component.
| I'm just not certain its completely that.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Before society, might literally meant right.
|
| "Before society"? How many times have you seen someone
| argue that a particular action was morally wrong for no
| other reason than that it was illegal?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| On the other hand, I have a _Grimm 's Fairy Tales_ including a
| story that tells how the hero visits a petty king's court and
| receives a promise conditional on accomplishing something
| impossible. Off he goes and does the thing, and the narrator
| makes an aside saying "Now the king would gladly have blown off
| the promise, but he was trapped because other people in the
| court had heard him make it."
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Regicide, and even just murder in general, is highly frowned
| upon these days. Back then it was de rigueur when the concept
| of fealty required reciprocity in the keeping of one's word.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| The fact is that the opposite is usually true
| dylan604 wrote:
| i must be an outlier to this default. there has been enough
| evidence over the years that the ivy league schools are just as
| shady as any other school. they just have more money to make
| hiding things easier. with as many laps around the sun as i
| have now, i'm just super suspect of pretty much anything at
| this point.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38519267.
| u32480932048 wrote:
| > Donovan co-wrote a widely-read study that discovered that a
| significant number of participants in the January 6 attack on the
| Capitol were driven by their support for President Trump. [1]
|
| It's outrageous that Harvard won't fund such an insightful,
| groundbreaking researcher.
|
| Hopefully, another university will step up and help us discover
| if there is any possible link between Zuck and Meta.
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Donovan
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > It's outrageous that Harvard won't fund such an insightful,
| groundbreaking researcher.
|
| TFA flatly tells that she brought in her own funding from
| outside grants. Like the vasy majority of academic researchers
| do. She claims that Harvard is keeping this money even though
| it was dedicated to her research agenda.
|
| > Though Donovan's contract was supposed to keep her on the job
| through the end of 2024, her superiors took away her ability to
| start new projects, raise money or organize large events, she
| alleges. They kept the money she had brought in, including more
| than $1 million from Craigslist founder Craig Newmark that he
| wanted specifically to go to her research project, according to
| documents quoted in the declaration. Newmark declined to
| comment.
|
| It's right there in the article.
|
| People have wrong ideas as to what kinds of funds and resources
| academic researchers actually have access to from their
| employing institution.
| jmyeet wrote:
| These elite institutions have shown themselves to have absolutely
| no credibility on independence, freedom of expression or any of
| the other virtues they continaully extol after their actions of
| the last 2 months [1][2].
|
| Take a look over the law faculty and you'll find famed Jeffrey
| Epstein defender and hospitality enjoyer Alan Dershowtiz [3] but
| it's OK, he kept his underwear on while getting a massage [4].
|
| Epstein himself bought influence at Harvard and even had his own
| office there [5].
|
| As for the whistleblower claims, they might be true. I wouldn't
| be surprised. Never forget though that you're only hearing one
| side. Would Mark Zuckerberg really spend $500 million to silence
| a study where the researcher could no doubt walk out and find
| someone to fund it without too much trouble?
|
| [1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/09/harvard-
| president-c...
|
| [2]:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2023/11/09/harvar...
|
| [3]: https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/7/30/20746983/alan-
| dersh...
|
| [4]: https://www.theroot.com/alan-dershowitz-sure-i-got-a-
| massage...
|
| [5]: https://apnews.com/article/39cfba1a1ed7304d8aab32d63553eebd
| blindriver wrote:
| Is this a surprise? All of these universities are known to bow
| down to the biggest wallets, so why on earth would anyone expect
| that they wouldn't can any investigations to someone who donated
| $500 million? I'm shocked that anyone else is shocked.
| LightHugger wrote:
| I suppose each one of these posts is a lesson to at least
| somebody about how widespread institutional corruption is.
| ben0x539 wrote:
| I assume people are less shocked and more upset in, you know,
| that weary and disappointed way. Sometimes it's good to loudly
| complain about bad things happening even if you're not
| surprised about them happening!
| Dowwie wrote:
| What happened here was a massive donation was made. At some
| random point, someone in a position of power at Harvard noticed
| that a team was pissing on Mark's leg, and so put an end to it.
| Mark probably couldn't care less about the research, yet the
| optics about Harvard's treatment of him were at stake.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > [Harvard] also denies that she was fired, saying she "was
| offered the chance to continue as a part-time adjunct lecturer,
| and she chose not to do so."
|
| I have not read her filing, or followed her specific research, so
| I have no opinion about the possible merits or conspiracy
| theories regarding winding down her project. But, that statement
| by Harvard is suspicious. You take someone who is high profile,
| doing their own research, and offer them basically an insulting
| part time job (sorry to my adjunct lecturer friends, you know
| what I mean) and say "well, we didn't fire her, it was her
| choice." It would be like having a Director level position at a
| company, and being told your department was shutting down, but
| you could stay on as a part time contractor if you want. You just
| soft-fired her and tried to give yourself cover.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Yeah, this is called "constructive dismissal" in the real
| world.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| I don't know how it would be at a Harvard school, but all the
| adjunct professors I have ever known (working for large, but
| not ivy-league universities) were making significantly less
| than the part-time software contractors I have known.
| teachrdan wrote:
| I went from being an adjunct instructor at a California
| community college to a software engineer. Now I earn more in
| a month than I used to make in a year. And the more
| prestigious a school, the worse the pay in a lot of cases.
| Like I made more at my CC than I would have made teaching at
| UC Berkeley, which is by some measures the #15 university in
| the US!
| rf15 wrote:
| Sadly the current normal, and has been for some time. It's sad to
| see an educational institution deal so wholeheartedly in
| intentional and active disinformation.
| cced wrote:
| was the title changed to say that the person is a propagandist?
| seems like this is trying to discredit them
| skilled wrote:
| Not at all. Propaganda as in disinformation, as in that is the
| title of the Washington Post article.
| ben0x539 wrote:
| Uh, I'm reading it to mean a scholar researching propaganda
| committed by other people, not a scholar engaging in propaganda
| or developing new propaganda tech.
| krick wrote:
| Honestly, not sure on which side I am. Facebook being a criminal
| organization is nothing new. Harvard (and pretty much any other
| university) being a criminal organization is nothing new as well.
| But, man, "propaganda scholar"...
| joshe wrote:
| Harvard's actions are also consistent with her not doing good
| research. Note that she was not snapped up by another institution
| to be faculty, just a "tenure track position". One red flag is
| that the reporter cites all the times she talked to media and
| congress. A good indicator that it was superficial and headline
| driven work.
|
| I'm sure she was a valuable source for reporters needing dramatic
| quotes on a slow news day, but really there should be more heft
| than that.
| krick wrote:
| More than that, the reporter mentions "donors who contributed
| millions of dollars to her work", implying how valuable her
| "research" was. But given the nature of that "research" you
| could also ask yourself, if this isn't basically the same kind
| of "donation" as Facebook being accused of here, just different
| beneficiary.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > Donovan was recently hired for a tenure-track professorship
| at Boston University.
|
| A tenure-track professorship is faculty. So probably an
| assistant professorship.
| fsckboy wrote:
| so much drama, but I was not learning enough about what is
| actually going on so I did some simple searching.
|
| TL;DR if you believe that there is a (quoting Hillary Clinton)
| "vast right-wing conspiracy" that the govt, media, social media,
| and academia should be coordinated and marshalled to contain,
| you're on her side. She is the one who figured out that Jan 6th
| was "in favor of" Trump, see below. But the skullduggery may be
| of a more pure nefarious nature, she had a non faculty staff
| position and got fired, but she wants to be treated as an
| "academic" in the sense of the academic freedom that goes with
| professorships.
|
| Here's her wikipedia page trimmed down to essentials.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Donovan
|
| Donovan's expertise is in examining internet and technology
| studies, online extremism, media manipulation, and disinformation
| campaigns
|
| _As Director, she published a number of impactful research
| papers and books._
|
| _Donovan co-wrote a widely-read study that discovered that a
| significant number of participants in the January 6 attack on the
| Capitol were driven by their support for President Trump._
|
| In September of the same year, Donovan released a book titled
| "Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending
| Democracy in America," which explores the spread of right-wing
| political conspiracy theories through online media.
|
| Donovan earned her PhD in Sociology and Science Studies from
| UCSD, and was a postdoc at the Institute for Society and Genetics
| at UCLA where her expertise was social movements, technology, and
| white supremacist's use of DNA ancestry tests.
|
| She later held the role of Research Lead for the Media
| Manipulation Initiative at Data and Society, and mapped how
| interest groups, governments, political operatives, corporations,
| and others use the internet and media to disrupt social
| institutions.
|
| Donovan went on to lead the Technology and Social Change Research
| Project at Harvard Kennedy School and teach the class Media
| Manipulation and Disinformation Campaigns.
|
| She joined the Boston University College of Communication in
| September 2023 as a tenure-track assistant professor.
|
| Donovan has authored over 35 articles, paper, and books [10]
| including:
|
| How news organizations should cover white supremacist shootings,
| PBS NewsHour
|
| Big Tech Companies Are Struggling With How To Best Police Their
| Platforms
|
| Unlike Us Reader: Social Media Monopolies and Their Alternatives
|
| Navigating the Tech Stack: When, Where and How Should we Moderate
| Content?
|
| Toward a Militant Ethnography of Infrastructure:
| Cybercartographies of Order, Scale, and Scope across the Occupy
| Movement.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| I'm hesitant to share this because it's completely unverifiable
| in any way I'd be comfortable documenting. Not my life, not my
| secrets to tell.
|
| I had a close friend who did undergraduate research in a
| fisheries department.
|
| They had been researching plant selection for aquaponics to
| increase the yield of tilapia. They had a filtration system that
| pushed tank water through a bed of plant roots. The plants would
| be harvested, processed into fish food, and fed back to the fish.
| On top of this platform, they'd experiment with different plant
| combinations to measure the impact on water quality and protein
| conversion.
|
| They were seeing very high protein conversion with their plant
| choices (numbers high enough they gave me pause at what it would
| mean for society, but if I tried to throw out a number now I'd
| certainly get it wrong).
|
| Recycling energy like this reduced the amount of food you'd have
| to put into the system, and the plants handled a good portion of
| the filtration for the system.
|
| At some point, a large agriculture business with strong ties to
| the department offered a large grant that was understood to be
| contingent on this project being discontinued.
|
| The project was abandoned and my buddy dropped out of his degree
| program.
| jurynulifcation wrote:
| Can you give any further details? This might be worth
| experimenting with, and I do already have an aquaculture setup.
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