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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

#71

Post by tivert »

holmesworcester wrote: post #60
Kapura wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (pla…

> 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.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#72

Post by istjohn »

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.

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...

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#73

Post by pphysch »

Upvoter33 wrote: post #55
downrightmike wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#74

Post by jwestbury »

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.

> 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.)

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#75

Post by whelp_24 »

tivert wrote: post #59
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.

>> 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…

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.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#77

Post by Tempest1981 »

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.

Your comment sounds defeatist. I hope it doesn't cause others to give up on pushing for change.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#78

Post by LewisVerstappen »

yellow_lead wrote: post #32

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 r…

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.

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