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Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#51

Post by BowBun »

Kapura wrote: post #45
seanw444 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it never will be. This is a human problem. No amount of laws and regulations will ever solve it.

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.

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.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#53

Post by johnchristopher »

intrasight wrote: post #13

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.

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.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#54

Post by bentt »

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.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#55

Post by Upvoter33 »

downrightmike wrote: post #30
hliyan wrote: post #9

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.

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.

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.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#56

Post by jmull »

prosqlinjector wrote: post #7

[flagged]

If you're concerned about it, TFA and linked materials go into the potential casual connection. I don't think you can simply dismiss this without a critical examination because all the facts aren't in yet and the story isn't finished. Usually, a whistleblower complaint is really the start of things, not the end.

Hopefully, we'll see over time how much merit this has. It certainly seems worth investigating because we'd all really want to know if/how big donations to prestigious academic institutions can buy their research.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#58

Post by Upvoter33 »

bentt wrote: post #54

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 s…

Indeed. Honestly, I'm quite sure they were excited to see the power of facebook advertising/misinformation during the 2016 campaign.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#59

Post by tivert »

seanw444 wrote: post #18
hliyan wrote: post #9

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.

>> 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.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#60

Post by holmesworcester »

Kapura wrote: post #45
seanw444 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it never will be. This is a human problem. No amount of laws and regulations will ever solve it.

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.

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.
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