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Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta
- ouraf 3y agoThe problem is that the way the "propaganda scholar" wrote her whistleblower piece kinda like an appeal to emotion. This can go either way, specially since the team and the project still exists, just without her.
- ta988 3y agohttps://archive.is/oKsbi https://archive.is/oKsbi
- jruohonen 3y ago"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."
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- c5karl 3y agoHere's a "gift" link: https://wapo.st/3Nb5tm8 https://wapo.st/3Nb5tm8
- anticorporate 3y agoMods: 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/ https://whistlebloweraid.org/joan-donovan-press-release/
- prosqlinjector 3y ago[flagged]
- nkozyra 3y agoI'm not sure what word would be better since "after" carries the same implication.
- prosqlinjector 3y agoEither make it clear you are speculating about two events being connected, or get evidence that links them.
- lelandfe 3y agoIs a whistleblower’s report speculation?
- prosqlinjector 3y agoThe individual is using the same reasoning as the headline. They weren't getting the fund they wanted and noticed there was a donation recently. They are speculating that that's the cause of their lack of organization support. "whistleblower" is a journalism word meant to imply who the good guy is and endow them with credibility. Rewriting the story with "employee files complaint" doesn't hit the same.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago> They weren't getting the fund they wanted and noticed there was a donation recently. They are speculating that that's the cause of their lack of organization support. If this is really the evidence you think they're using I'd be willing to bet you didn't read their report: https://live-whistleblower-aid.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/2023_1128_Joan-Donovan-Declaration-LOCKED.pdf https://live-whistleblower-aid.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/up... Sure, it's all anecdotal -- it is testimony, after all -- but much of it is backed up by email and text conversations. On the topic of a potential conflict of interest, what do you think about the personal relationship between Doug Elmendorf and Elliot Schrage?
- hliyan 3y agoFrom 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 3y agoIt never has been, there may have been an illusion of it only
- seanw444 3y agoAnd it never will be. This is a human problem. No amount of laws and regulations will ever solve it.
- basedkissinger 3y ago[dead]
- r00fus 3y agoIs this an appeal for a different form of governance?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- renewiltord 3y agoPerhaps we can rely on a capricious unaligned AGI to run our universities.
- Kapura 3y agowhat 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 3y ago
- intrasight 3y agoI 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 3y agoWho 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.
- intrasight 3y agoHow silly of me to not consider that lawyers might have something - considering that my GF is an attorney.
- gessha 3y ago> 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 3y agoThis is really really naive.
- TaylorAlexander 3y agoI do love it when people say "I am not familiar with this situation at all but" and then proceed to speculate about it having made clear they have no basis for their speculation.
- gessha 3y ago
- yieldcrv 3y ago[flagged]
- micromacrofoot 3y agothe 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 3y ago> 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 3y agoThey’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 3y agoIt's a great way to further entrench the influence of the rich into public life.
- AlbertCory 3y ago> brilliant people I think you meant "people who'd like to join the wealthy ones, or maybe already have."
- graphe 3y agoIf 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 3y ago
- stainablesteel 3y agothe 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
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- m3kw9 3y agoStandard tool of the trade in big cos
- apstats 3y agoThe 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 3y agoMore details in the whistleblower complaint, which is linked from the post. https://live-whistleblower-aid.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/2023_1128_Joan-Donovan-Declaration-LOCKED.pdf https://live-whistleblower-aid.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/up...
- loeg 3y agoThere's also WaPo: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/04/joan-donovan-harvard-dismissal-complaint/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/04/joan-do...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- forward1 3y ago500MM 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 3y agoFree market means businesses decide the regulations placed on the public, for private gain
- lainga 3y agowouldn't 40MMM be 40 trillion (40M-million)...?
- klyrs 3y agoI believe that the M stands for "mille," or thousand.
- lainga 3y agoignosco, non intellexi.
- astrobe_ 3y agoIf 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 3y agoIf 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 3y agoOf course this is tax exempt, corporations can deduce up to 25% of their tax bill in the US afaik. Long live charitable giving!
- asylteltine 3y agoJust a coincidence I’m sure!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Metacelsus 3y agoHarvard isn't about "veritas", it's about $$$.
- next_xibalba 3y ago[flagged]
- forward1 3y agoThree conspiracy theorists walk into a bar ... it's definitely no coincidence.
- anticorporate 3y agoI can't speak to the other green users, but I'm a long time poster who recently created a new account because I decided I didn't want my contributions here tied to my real name anymore, after some real-life concerns about harassment (not from HN, but still trying to play it safer online now).
- 93po 3y agoYou never have to explain or justify why you want privacy/anonymity on the internet :)
- blackoil 3y agoThree valid reasons. Person is genuinely new. Person wants to post but not link to original identifiable id. Third someone is posting in official capacity and wants separate work id.
- yellow_lead 3y agoHer actual whistleblower declaration contains a lot of the evidence some may be looking for: https://live-whistleblower-aid.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/2023_1128_Joan-Donovan-Declaration-LOCKED.pdf 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 3y agoIf 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.
- sassy_quat 3y ago[dead]
- jcheng 3y agoNot 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.
- amir734jj 3y agoPeople forget that private universities are for profit businesses.
- 93po 3y agowhile technically non-profits, they are absolutely profit focused, as are the people in control of them
- orangesite 3y agoPeople also forget how recent that shift was and just how brittle the reasoning behind it is.
- rsynnott 3y agoSo, coming from a country where universities are either non-profit or owned by the state… how does this work? Like, surely Harvard isn’t paying anyone dividends? It’s not actually a literal for-profit entity, is it?
- terminous 3y agoBasically the only thing a US nonprofit can't do is give dividends to investors. The nonprofit has to funnel any unspent profit to itself as an endowment, but can also have obscenely high salaries for administrative staff.
- h2odragon 3y agoThe "Facebook Whistleblower" media circus consumed a lot of Oct 2021. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/20/tech-billionaire-aiding-facebook-whistleblower-516358 https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/20/tech-billionaire-ai... I wonder what the grand total spent was here? "PR expenses"
- sertbdfgbnfgsd 3y ago> 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/ https://fs.blog/great-talks/psychology-human-misjudgment/
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- troll555 3y ago[dead]
- butlike 3y ago[flagged]
- bentt 3y agoIt'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 3y agoIndeed. Honestly, I'm quite sure they were excited to see the power of facebook advertising/misinformation during the 2016 campaign.
- gadders 3y agoAnd again in 2020 with the Hunter Biden laptop suppression scandal, the lab leak and other suppression during COVID etc.
- droopyEyelids 3y agoI 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.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- loceng 3y ago"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 3y agoWhy 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 3y agohow does it not? college isn't just engineering and science
- akaij 3y agoInteresting to see lines drawn around academic value.
- say_it_as_it_is 3y agoFor an academic institution?
- akaij 3y agoYeah, the academia. You know, where one tries to explore all possible avenues to research everything to find value.
- tempodox 3y agoNo university education would be complete without a practical demonstration of how corruption works. /s
- Pete-Codes 3y ago[flagged]
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- balozi 3y agoA tiny window into how Harvard's $35 billion endowment was built. The story of why the ultrarich give generously to a an ultrawealthy institution.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cjmb 3y ago$35 billion? I regret to inform you the number has gone up substantially since you last checked it
- j45 3y agoColleges and universities are like little countries, rarely answer to anyone and focused on their own insular practices.
- loceng 3y agoIt 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 3y agoThe 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 3y agoMy 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 3y agoWhy are they so focused on that? It seems like a great way to drive a school into the ground.
- Spooky23 3y agoHonest graft. Awards and recognition for leaders. Where ethics rules are loose, fancy trips and steak dinners, etc.
- eggy 3y agoIt 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.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- oaththrowaway 3y agoI hope you aren't insinuating election fraud!!!
- eggy 3y agoNot fraud, never have. But to see what is coming out about how endemic and deep the censorship and bias was, I would say a lot of voters were manipulated by big tech, government, and media, and I wonder how they would vote now knowing this, but I guess we are seeing some of that with Biden's approval numbers.
- kogus 3y agoThe 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.htm http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/greeley...
- monkeeguy 3y agoThe 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 3y agoI 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.
- I_am_tiberius 3y agoIt's always good to see how my fellow tech bros act in interviews vs how they truly act.
- hyggetrold 3y ago[flagged]
- 93po 3y ago[flagged]
- meroes 3y agoRemember students cheating is against our academic integrity policy!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y agoThis 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 3y agoInvisible Hand indeed.
- TheGuyWhoCodes 3y agoThis 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.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- scj 3y agoWhat I'm hearing is that universities coast-to-coast should start "researching" Facebook.
- jonahbenton 3y agoSolid fundraising strategy, to be sure. Legit ransomware.
- badcppdev 3y agoAI software platform for analysing company data files... acquired by the company with the most to hide
- geodel 3y agoThat will be excellent research goal. World would be better place if we have output 10K PhDs in Facebook every year.
- graphe 3y agoWe should all research Facebook. ;)
- kbenson 3y agoYou 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 3y agoThere'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.
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago[flagged]
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoIf 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 3y agoWow and she is just 18 yo.
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- bko 3y agoMaybe 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 3y ago> 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_ 3y ago> 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 3y agoYou 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.
- srameshc 3y agoI wonder if some non profit org can take this task forward and what would be the challenges ?
- wolverine876 3y agoIt 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-misinformation-jim-jordan/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/09/23/online-... https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/30/biden-foreign-disinformation-social-media-election-interference/ 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.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wolverine876 3y ago@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.)
- hellozomo 3y ago[flagged]
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- 1970-01-01 3y agoLaws 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-colleges-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/221147/the-20-richest-co...
- shuntress 3y ago> $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 https://finance.harvard.edu/financial-overview "Total operating expenses increased by $482 million or 9% to $5.9 billion."
- 1970-01-01 3y agoSame PDF states "The University generated an operating surplus of $186 million"
- shuntress 3y agoI'm not sure what you mean by this. Are you trying to say a school should always lose money? Or that they should always spend exactly as much as they earn? Either way, it cost Harvard way more than $500 million to operate for a year.
- Der_Einzige 3y agoI’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 3y agoComparing MIT and Harvard is apples and oranges. Or perhaps Ivy and Apples.
- saos 3y ago[flagged]
- chernevik 3y agoDoesn'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.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- akaij 3y agoI don't even understand what you mean. Care to elaborate?
- u32480932048 3y agoThe 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™ and The Colonists™ as well as one of those liberal colleges indoctrinating The Children with Communism™ and/or Socialism™. In short, few people actually care what Harvard has to say because it's popularly perceived as a mouthpiece for The Establishment.
- TeeMassive 3y ago"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 3y agoI'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 3y agoI 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 3y agoEvery time I come across a "disinformation expert" they seem to be the ones spreading disinformation.
- mrangle 3y agoBoom
- tuwtuwtuwtuw 3y ago
- joshspankit 3y agoI’m inspired to propose a new term alongside Big Tobacco, Big Energy, Big Pharma, and Big Tech: Big Social.
- xss2f 3y agoThere 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 3y agoBig 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 3y agoI agree with you, but the use of "tech" to mean "computer-centric technology" has already poisoned the term a bit anyway.
- joshspankit 3y agoYeah fair point
- hathym 3y agoIt'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 3y agoWho is exterminating who in the article? It just says harmful to society.
- gessha 3y agoThe 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 3y agoNot 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.
- radlad 3y agoThis comment would be more interesting if you provided specifics.
- hash9 3y agoHad 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/ https://checkmyads.org/about/ 2. https://www.wired.com/story/you-purged-racists-from-your-website-great-now-get-to-work/ https://www.wired.com/story/you-purged-racists-from-your-web...
- DeepSeaTortoise 3y agoOn top of that the "Public Interest tech lab" is but a giant data harvesting machine and most of the apps they create are either about physically tracking you, organizing students into various cells that get benefits for "attending events" and communication within those cells or various politics focused applications. Here is their privacy statement (of the app that holds all your centralized data): > MyDataCan may access, use, and disclose Your MDC Data as follows: > To respond to subpoenas, court orders, or other legal process; in response to a request for cooperation from law enforcement or another government agency; to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding actual or suspected violations of our Terms of Service or this Privacy Statement, illegal activities, fraud, security or technical issues, misuse of the Platform or an App, or other misconduct, or to enforce our Terms of Service or this Privacy Statement; as otherwise may be required by applicable law; or to protect our rights, property, or safety or those of others. Also they encrypt none of your data, and the only encryption function they have can encrypt your data only upon your explicit request after uploading it and only the data about yourself shared with you IN YOUR PERSONAL COPY OF THE DATA. Also, they advertise > providing access to technology and data for public interest research and development. ...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- byyoung3 3y agonext post: Y combinator removes Hardvard/Meta post after 1B investment from Meta
- kjkjadksj 3y agoThere have been some comments that were deleted as soon as I hit reply…
- maxwell 3y agoThey did change the link from https://live-whistleblower-aid.pantheonsite.io/joan-donovan-press-release https://live-whistleblower-aid.pantheonsite.io/joan-donovan-...
- skilled 3y agoThe 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38521109
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- myth_drannon 3y ago$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 https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/jwhsqhrat
- abeppu 3y agoSetting 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 3y agoCZI 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 3y agoThey 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 3y agoIsn'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 3y agoI 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.
- 3y ago
- Animats 3y agoHarvard'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-israel-ackman-funding-letter/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/06/business/harvard-antisemitism... [2] https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/02/business/law-firms-antisemitism-universities/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/02/business/law-firms-antisemiti...
- CobrastanJorji 3y agoYou 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 3y agoMaybe rich people want to feel good that they've donated to a prestigious university.
- kevinventullo 3y agoMight make more sense to think of it less as a donation and more as buying fuzzy influence.
- wharvle 3y agoThis 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 3y ago> 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.
- legutierr 3y agoSomehow 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 3y agoThat's nurture, not nature.
- gmadsen 3y agoim 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 3y ago> traits related to leadership/followership , and a cognitive bias to assume integrity of leaders seems plausible Also learned behavior.
- gmadsen 3y agosure, 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 3y ago> 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 3y agoOn 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."
- u32480932048 3y ago> 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 3y ago> 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 3y agoThese 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-condemns-pro-palestinian-slogan-00126419 https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/09/harvard-president-c... [2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2023/11/09/harvard-president-condemns-controversial-pro-palestinian-slogan-and-speaks-out-against-antisemitism/?sh=24cf676b5757 https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2023/11/09/harvar... [3]: https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/7/30/20746983/alan-dershowitz-jeffrey-epstein-sarah-ransome-giuffre https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/7/30/20746983/alan-dersh... [4]: https://www.theroot.com/alan-dershowitz-sure-i-got-a-massage-at-jeffrey-epstei-1836314016 https://www.theroot.com/alan-dershowitz-sure-i-got-a-massage... [5]: https://apnews.com/article/39cfba1a1ed7304d8aab32d63553eebd https://apnews.com/article/39cfba1a1ed7304d8aab32d63553eebd
- blindriver 3y agoIs 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 3y agoI suppose each one of these posts is a lesson to at least somebody about how widespread institutional corruption is.
- ben0x539 3y agoI 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!
- harry8 3y agoWhether you are surprised or not is barely relevant. It is newsworthy and worth discussing particularly when there is concrete evidence on which to make or fail to make a case. "This surprises you?!" Is a statement that contributes nothing. The occurrence of people doing wrong is not surprising, it is frequently shocking. The fallout when such people are caught out is worth noting.
- Vicinity9635 3y ago[flagged]
- mynameisash 3y agoWho says that social media disinformation didn't exist four years ago? And even if one were to grant that, how long should a field exist before there can be an expert?
- Vicinity9635 3y ago>Who says that social media disinformation didn't exist four years ago? I've seen zero evidence that it did. Propaganda, sure. But 'disinformation'? No. >And even if one were to grant that, how long should a field exist before there can be an expert? Probably more than three years. It feels like people latching onto the profit opportunity to shore up eastablishmen narratives under a fancy new buzzword more than a real objective science.
- washadjeffmad 3y agoIt used to just be called corporate propaganda, hush money, or simply "advertising". Maybe we should consult a social media misinformation expert? I hear they usually work in media and communications.
- Vicinity9635 3y ago[dead]
- graphe 3y agoIf string theory was disproven we could still have experts that were former string theory experts. The best programmer-musician-firefighter-chef in the world might be less impressive than you think. But you have a good point. What are her credentials? She's being censored so it makes it interesting.
- Dowwie 3y agoWhat 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 3y ago> [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 3y agoYeah, this is called "constructive dismissal" in the real world.
- thomastjeffery 3y agoI 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 3y agoI 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 3y agoSadly 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 3y agowas the title changed to say that the person is a propagandist? seems like this is trying to discredit them
- krick 3y agoHonestly, 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"…
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jongjong 3y agoI had the same thought. There's no good side. Just the corrupt going against the corrupt and seeing who can spin the most elaborate tangled web of lies to 'prove' their point.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- joshe 3y agoHarvard'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 3y agoMore 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 3y ago> Donovan was recently hired for a tenure-track professorship at Boston University. A tenure-track professorship is faculty. So probably an assistant professorship.
- fsckboy 3y agoso 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 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.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- r3trohack3r 3y agoI'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 3y agoCan you give any further details? This might be worth experimenting with, and I do already have an aquaculture setup.
- r3trohack3r 3y agoWas a long time ago and not my research. Superficially, focus on driving down net waste in the system. Take the nutrient profile of tilapia waste. Compare that with the nutrient demands of plants to find candidates. Then look for plants where the majority of the biomass can be converted into food that the tilapia can digest (i.e. edible roots, stalks, leaves; the more the fish can eat the less energy you take out of the system). IIRC at least one of the plant choices had a tuber. IIRC there is also something about the efficiency of waste->biomass conversion for the plants at different stages of development; figuring out when the ideal time to harvest is to minimize energy loss.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gigatexal 3y agoAll the researcher who fudged data needed to do to save face is to own it and make amends. But lashing out and blaming doesn’t help.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoIt's SOP for honest, factual dissidents who speak out in academia to be ground into the dust because institutional reputation and money must flow.
- midtake 3y agoThrowaway account because this is an honest question. Why did the researcher have to look like that? It makes the person an easy target for further disinformation. I could post that the person hates white males and people would believe it without question, even though I have no basis for that statement. Facebook and Harvard got lucky that this person was a non-obstacle to removal by appearing so uncharismatic. It is a near certainty that most of you who opened the link formed your opinion of the matter shortly after looking at the picture of the propaganda researcher in question. I almost wonder if this is some sort of advanced test, since I have never heard of this researcher. For whatever reason though this is a controversial element, even though a change in the person's appearance would make a greater impact to their career than anything else. If it were okay to discuss, someone would have told the person by now. On a lighter note, propaganda research is not a new field at all, even if it is being rebranded as disinformation studies. Noam Chomsky comes to mind.