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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

#81

Post by bcrosby95 »

BowBun wrote: post #51
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.

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.

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.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#82

Post by eggy »

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.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#83

Post by istjohn »

firebat45 wrote: post #66
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.

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 t…

Just who is buying off these corporations if no one has vast wealth?

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#85

Post by kogus »

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...

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#86

Post by LewisVerstappen »

pwillia7 wrote: post #46
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 about better redistributing wealth -- you know like corn subsidies

[flagged]

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#88

Post by loceng »

j45 wrote: post #80

Colleges and universities are like little countries, rarely answer to anyone and focused on their own insular practices.

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.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#89

Post by hinkley »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #15

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

Yeah. My sarcasm meter broke itself as I proclaimed:

Harvard, breaking rules for people donating new buildings?! Surely not Harvard.

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