4 ms·

>There was active prosecution ongoing literally right up until Shirly's video Oh yeah, the prosecution was sooo active that all the daycares listed as operatio

>There was active prosecution ongoing literally right up until Shirly's video Oh yeah, the prosecution was sooo active that all the daycares listed as operational and receiving funding, had no kids in them, had blacked out or boarded up windows, misspelled signs, and if you went in to ask for enrollment 3 angry men would come out shouting at you. How many legit daycares have you seen that look like that?

cogman10 9mo ago
Yes, because when I enroll a child in a daycare I start by wandering around the facilities with a camera man and then I demand to see the children. But sure is suspicious that this place has no kids in it when I visit it outside it's posted operation hours. Nick did a day worth of shooting, didn't follow up, and didn't check basic things like hours of operation.
- tptacek 9mo ago
  Right, everybody, especially the author of this piece, agrees that what Shirley did was bad and stupid. And also unnecessary, because we had documentary evidence from the Minnesota government itself showing the scale of the fraud here.
  - notahacker 9mo ago
    I doubt Patrick is the world's biggest Nick Shirley fan, but that's not really how it's conveyed in the article. Shirley gets acknowledged to have "poor epistemic standards" (which is an almost euphemistic way of describing his approach) but Patrick goes on to say that "the journalism develops one bit of evidence...." and even appears to insinuate the NYT erred in reporting it in the context of the Minnesota government's response that the state's own compliance checks had found them open shortly afterwards but that some of them were under investigation. There's an interesting point to be made that detailed, bipartisan evidence collected by suitably qualified officials that some daycenters were closed at times they were claimed to be open gets less attention than a YouTuber with an agenda rocking up at nurseries at what may or may not have been their opening times, but that's not how it's actually expressed. Rather it seems to be arguing for face value judgements of his video and against journalists that felt compelled to point out that whilst evidence of daycare fraud by Somalis in Minnesota definitely existed, Shirley's videos probably shouldn't be considered part of it.
    - joe_mamba 9mo ago
      [flagged]
      - notahacker 9mo ago
        The mainstream media was reporting on it 6 years ago. They reported on the 50 convictions too, which people whose information environment is YouTube tend to be unaware of. Of all the things that threaten the future of mainstream reporting, YouTubers running round Ohio for an hour trying to find people who think Haitians are eatinng the local pets isn't one of them.
    - patio11 9mo ago
      The way I phrased that point was "The investigators allege repeatedly visiting daycare centers which did not, factually, have children physically present at the facility despite reimbursement paperwork identifying specific children being present at that specific time. The investigators demonstrated these lies on timestamped video, and perhaps in another life would have been YouTube stars."
  - dtornabene 9mo ago
    He does not in fact call what Shirley did "bad and stupid". He calls him a journalist!
- joe_mamba 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - cogman10 9mo ago
    Tell you what, go get a camera man and go visit your local daycare center. Post on youtube how they respond.
    - joe_mamba 9mo ago
      You're beating it around the bush going offtopic and ignoring my question: How does having a camera impact the daycare having a misspelled sign and boarded up windows?
      - cogman10 9mo ago
        > You're beating it around the bush going offtopic and ignoring my question: No I'm not, you just don't like the answer. But at least you've edited to remove the "3 guys yelling at you" portion as I think even you can see how that might be a reasonable thing to do to a creep going around you business filming everything. > daycare having a misspelled sign and boarded up windows? The answer to this question is simple, a poor one. And I suspect that a daycare that primarily gets it's funds from people using government welfare likely isn't rolling in the dough. Broken windows are expensive to fix, boards are cheap. A misspelled sign is embarrassing but again could easily be something that the owner of the facilities just wasn't assed to pay to replace and properly fix. My spouse worked for years in that sort of daycare which is why it's unsurprising to me that a daycare in that state exists. She, for example, did a full summer in Utah without AC while the kids were fed baloney sandwiches every day. Her's wasn't a daycare committing fraud, it was just an owner that was cutting costs at every corner to make sure their own personal wealth wasn't impacted. A shitty daycare isn't an indicator of fraud. It's an indicator that the state has low regulation standards for daycares. Lots of states have that, and a lot of these places end up staying in operation because states decide that keeping open an F grade daycare is cheap and better for the community vs closing it because it's crap quality. They certainly don't often want to take control of such a business and they know a competently ran one isn't likely to replace it if it is shutdown.

cogman10 9mo ago

Yes, because when I enroll a child in a daycare I start by wandering around the facilities with a camera man and then I demand to see the children. But sure is suspicious that this place has no kids in it when I visit it outside it's posted operation hours. Nick did a day worth of shooting, didn't follow up, and didn't check basic things like hours of operation.

tptacek 9mo ago
Right, everybody, especially the author of this piece, agrees that what Shirley did was bad and stupid. And also unnecessary, because we had documentary evidence from the Minnesota government itself showing the scale of the fraud here.
- notahacker 9mo ago
  I doubt Patrick is the world's biggest Nick Shirley fan, but that's not really how it's conveyed in the article. Shirley gets acknowledged to have "poor epistemic standards" (which is an almost euphemistic way of describing his approach) but Patrick goes on to say that "the journalism develops one bit of evidence...." and even appears to insinuate the NYT erred in reporting it in the context of the Minnesota government's response that the state's own compliance checks had found them open shortly afterwards but that some of them were under investigation. There's an interesting point to be made that detailed, bipartisan evidence collected by suitably qualified officials that some daycenters were closed at times they were claimed to be open gets less attention than a YouTuber with an agenda rocking up at nurseries at what may or may not have been their opening times, but that's not how it's actually expressed. Rather it seems to be arguing for face value judgements of his video and against journalists that felt compelled to point out that whilst evidence of daycare fraud by Somalis in Minnesota definitely existed, Shirley's videos probably shouldn't be considered part of it.
  - joe_mamba 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - notahacker 9mo ago
      The mainstream media was reporting on it 6 years ago. They reported on the 50 convictions too, which people whose information environment is YouTube tend to be unaware of. Of all the things that threaten the future of mainstream reporting, YouTubers running round Ohio for an hour trying to find people who think Haitians are eatinng the local pets isn't one of them.
  - patio11 9mo ago
    The way I phrased that point was "The investigators allege repeatedly visiting daycare centers which did not, factually, have children physically present at the facility despite reimbursement paperwork identifying specific children being present at that specific time. The investigators demonstrated these lies on timestamped video, and perhaps in another life would have been YouTube stars."
- dtornabene 9mo ago
  He does not in fact call what Shirley did "bad and stupid". He calls him a journalist!
joe_mamba 9mo ago
[flagged]
- cogman10 9mo ago
  Tell you what, go get a camera man and go visit your local daycare center. Post on youtube how they respond.
  - joe_mamba 9mo ago
    You're beating it around the bush going offtopic and ignoring my question: How does having a camera impact the daycare having a misspelled sign and boarded up windows?
    - cogman10 9mo ago
      > You're beating it around the bush going offtopic and ignoring my question: No I'm not, you just don't like the answer. But at least you've edited to remove the "3 guys yelling at you" portion as I think even you can see how that might be a reasonable thing to do to a creep going around you business filming everything. > daycare having a misspelled sign and boarded up windows? The answer to this question is simple, a poor one. And I suspect that a daycare that primarily gets it's funds from people using government welfare likely isn't rolling in the dough. Broken windows are expensive to fix, boards are cheap. A misspelled sign is embarrassing but again could easily be something that the owner of the facilities just wasn't assed to pay to replace and properly fix. My spouse worked for years in that sort of daycare which is why it's unsurprising to me that a daycare in that state exists. She, for example, did a full summer in Utah without AC while the kids were fed baloney sandwiches every day. Her's wasn't a daycare committing fraud, it was just an owner that was cutting costs at every corner to make sure their own personal wealth wasn't impacted. A shitty daycare isn't an indicator of fraud. It's an indicator that the state has low regulation standards for daycares. Lots of states have that, and a lot of these places end up staying in operation because states decide that keeping open an F grade daycare is cheap and better for the community vs closing it because it's crap quality. They certainly don't often want to take control of such a business and they know a competently ran one isn't likely to replace it if it is shutdown.