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Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

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Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#381

Post by hash9 »

radlad wrote: post #208
gsmo wrote: post #203

Not 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.

This comment would be more interesting if you provided specifics.

Had 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/

2. https://www.wired.com/story/you-purged-racists-from-your-web...

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#382

Post by tptacek »

drawkward wrote: post #358
qaq wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A shocking number of students openly support Hamas and like to chant "from the river to the sea ..." and that just at the surface level. If you look at say UCLA things are far more grim than posting "tone deaf" msgs.

You are conflating use of the phrase "from the river to the sea..." with support for Hamas. The phrase has been used in many ways, and depending on the context, could have different meanings: Benjamin Netanyahu himself was using a map that espoused a "river to the sea" vision of Israel at the UN. [1] A different version "between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty" was a founding ideological…

The "river to the sea" slogan is deeply poisoned and has been used by every conceivable bad actor, from west bank settlers and supporters of a "Greater Israel" to Hezbollah, and all points between. It is reasonable for people hearing that slogan to assume the worst.

That doesn't mean people who use it are per se antisemitic (or per se Kahanist). But it does obligate its users to explain themselves, and when you're explaining you're losing. Everybody would be better off abandoning those words.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#383

Post by kbenson »

Draiken wrote: post #361
kbenson wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You 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.…

There'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…

> There's no such thing as a "well functioning free market". It's an utopia.

It's relative. You seem to be confusing "well" with "perfect". Depending on your point of view, no economic system is well functioning, because there will always be ebbs and flows where people clash with the system and it works better or worse at time. I'm not sure if our version of a free market in the U.S. is closer to well functioning or not, but I don't see a problem with pointing out how it can be better, and I'm not sure why you would respond with something I interpret as "don't bother, it can't be perfect", especially when you haven't presented a better alternative.

> 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 counter to the invisible hand working against society instead of in tandem or for it is freely available information. In a free market economy, the answer is almost always more information because it allows individuals to act correctly, either through individual actions, or as a group through pressure on the government to regulate.

So yes, what we have today is how a free market operates (although I would argue not very efficiently, due to lots of blocks on information that exist), and this information we're discussing in this post coming out and people being able to respond to it is the first step in being able to act on it to curtail it in the future.

> 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.

The only person here who said that is you, so I'm not sure what you're on about. I certainly don't think it's some utopia, just a system built on emergent behavior that like any other, needs special bounds and constant attention to both keep it functioning as well as possible as well as keep it from going completely off the rails.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#384

Post by teachrdan »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #365
karaterobot wrote: post #349

> [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 ow…

I 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.

I 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!

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#385

Post by anonymouskimmer »

sonicanatidae wrote: post #373
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main problem with issues like this that happened to your partner is people fear making waves so much that they don't even consider going to a lawyer to enforce the implied contract that she had as a grad student with both the university and the original thesis professor. Legal action is used even by unions to enforce their rights and contracts. If you don't have a union, legal action is the only strength…

One of the many things that pissed me off about it was they didn't even try to match her up with a prof in her specialty. Just threw her to the next prof available, because "Fuck it, not my life. That'll be $14k..thanks!"

Wow. Insult to injury. Pretty crappy for the next professor, too.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#386

Post by graphe »

tuwtuwtuwtuw wrote: post #360
graphe wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes information disinformation or fake news? Who decided it?

I don't understand how that is relevant to the question I asked. Are you suggesting that no one can be experts on disinformation because different people have different view on what is true? Sounds a bit silly to me. Is the earth flat or more shaped like a globe?

What is "the truth" about animal fats or plant oils? What is the disinformation for it?

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#387

Post by krick »

joshe wrote: post #380

Harvard'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 da…

More 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.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#388

Post by drawkward »

tptacek wrote: post #382
drawkward wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are conflating use of the phrase "from the river to the sea..." with support for Hamas. The phrase has been used in many ways, and depending on the context, could have different meanings: Benjamin Netanyahu himself was using a map that espoused a "river to the sea" vision of Israel at the UN. [1] A different version "between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty" was a founding ideological…

The "river to the sea" slogan is deeply poisoned and has been used by every conceivable bad actor, from west bank settlers and supporters of a "Greater Israel" to Hezbollah, and all points between. It is reasonable for people hearing that slogan to assume the worst. That doesn't mean people who use it are per se antisemitic (or per se Kahanist). But it does obligate its users to explain themselves, and when you're ex…

>It is reasonable for people hearing that slogan to assume the worst.

Hard disagree. I do not think it reasonable to assume that an American college student chanting "from the river to the sea" is advocating for Jewish genocide. I think a more reasonable interpretation would be one of anti-Israeli excess in their response to the attacks of October 7. To quote from source [3] above:

"'The phrase ‘Palestine will be free from the river to the sea’ suggests a vision of the future without a Jewish state, but it does not answer the question of what the role of Jews would be,' said Peter Beinart, a professor at the City University of New York. He added that the meaning of the phrase, however, 'depends on the context.'

'If it’s coming from an armed Hamas member, then yes, I would feel threatened,' said Professor Beinart, who is Jewish. 'If it is coming from someone who I know has a vision of equality and mutual liberation, then no, I would not feel threatened.'"

Assuming the worst ignores the context of who is saying it.

>That doesn't mean people who use it are per se antisemitic (or per se Kahanist).

100% agree.

>Everybody would be better off abandoning those words.

It would certainly make these discussions and protests less inflamed!

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#389

Post by [deleted] »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #345
jcheng wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not 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 eventu…

Going out and getting Washington Post, New York Times articles about your issues through "Whistleblower Aid" - it brings to mind Barack Obama's great line: When some activists at that meeting said they felt that their voices were not being heard, Mr. Obama replied, "You are sitting in the Oval Office, talking to the president of the United States." https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/us/obama-says-movements-l... I don…

[deleted]

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#390

Post by Vicinity9635 »

washadjeffmad wrote: post #339
Vicinity9635 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 re…

It 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.

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