Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 551 posts

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#391

Post by qaq »

drawkward wrote: post #374
qaq wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netanyahhu is student or professor at elite US university? There are jewish students marching with Israeli flags chanting "from the river to the sea Isreal will be free" on campuses? Would equivalent behavior be allowed toward any other group on campus?

I guess you and I see different things: I see people protesting Israel's response to Hamas' attacks of October 7th. You seem to see harassment of Jewish students. I don't think we will ever close that gap.

So in your opinion "From the river to the sea ..." is just a protest slogan ? There are polls showing support specifically for Hamas not for Palestinian liberation cause among students. It's very high. The Hamas goals are articulated very clearly. It's comforting to pretend it's just to support Palestinian cause but it's def not just that.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#392

Post by klyrs »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #213
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…

> Dr. Donovan and the TASC get sidelined along the way this is described dismissively and in the passive voice, but it's an active action, and quite damning. who sidelined them, and why? it seems the answers are: the school, because the researchers upset facebook, who was giving the school money > if he allows the Facebook project to move forward under other groups that are also within the Kennedy school, then the ti…

"The school" is not a person with motive. Dr. Donovan's report strongly implicates the Dean, who maintains a personal friendship with Sheryl Sandberg, as the driver behind these actions. The remaining actors appear to be interest in saving their own necks.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#393

Post by tuwtuwtuwtuw »

graphe wrote: post #386
tuwtuwtuwtuw wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I still have no idea what point you are trying to make. I have not claimed to be an expert on the topic, I only asked why no one can be an expert.

It sounds like your view is that no one can be an expert on disinformation because some topics are disputed. That's an "interesting" take. I guess that reasoning would leave pretty few experts in the world.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#394

Post by gmadsen »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #302
gmadsen wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

im not sure completely. There is probably inherent traits related to leadership/followership , and a cognitive bias to assume integrity of leaders seems plausible. Before society, might literally meant right.

> traits related to leadership/followership , and a cognitive bias to assume integrity of leaders seems plausible Also learned behavior.

sure, my point still stands. It is a reasonable evolutionary hypothesis that groups that err on the side of trusting a leader succeed more that distrustful groups. Obviously there is a learned behavior component. I'm just not certain its completely that.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#395

Post by klyrs »

astrobe_ wrote: post #275
klyrs wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that the M stands for "mille," or thousand.

If it's thousand, it should be a K with the metric system... But I guess 40KKK would raise some eyebrows. Yet another reason to keep imperial units.

If it's metric, k is not capitalized, M means million and G means billion. No need to get Godwin involved.

But it isn't metric, it appears to be a perversion of roman numerals.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#396

Post by stillwithit »

mjhay wrote: post #292
cporios wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noting that the project and all its documents are publicly accessible to anyone at https://fbarchive.org/ .

But further work from the same leadership has been discontinued...

[flagged]

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#397

Post by bena »

scottyah wrote: post #251
bena wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true of a lot of things. You really can't allow a system to police itself. Once you allow that, you've essentially given them carte blanche to run a fiefdom.

But all the other systems are just systems too, and even a system of systems is just a system... Unless we have a God at the top there's no escape from the fiefdoms

Basically a system cannot be accountable to only itself. There must be an outside entity that can hold the system accountable.

However, even if you have two systems accountable to each other, once they realize that there's no third party that's holding the gestalt accountable, they're free to play tit-for-tat and essentially become a single entity.

It's kind of why "internal affairs" doesn't really work in police departments. They are part of the same system. If internal affairs clears the police, the police won't mess with internal affairs.

And I'm not saying there are easy solutions to implement. Because even if you have an entire web of systems configured in such a way that cooperation among some would be detrimental to the others so they would have incentives to keep each other in check, it would only take a sustained imbalance of power in order for the cooperators to neutralize the others so that they could create their own fiefdom.

But anywhere you do have a system that is only accountable to itself, you have a system that is likely rotting from the inside.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#398

Post by fsckboy »

so much drama, but I was not learning enough about what is actually going on so I did some simple searching.

TL;DR if you believe that there is a (quoting Hillary Clinton) "vast right-wing conspiracy" that the govt, media, social media, and academia should be coordinated and marshalled to contain, you're on her side. She is the one who figured out that Jan 6th was "in favor of" Trump, see below. But the skullduggery may be of a more pure nefarious nature, she had a non faculty staff position and got fired, but she wants to be treated as an "academic" in the sense of the academic freedom that goes with professorships.

Here's her wikipedia page trimmed down to essentials.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Donovan

Donovan's expertise is in examining internet and technology studies, online extremism, media manipulation, and disinformation campaigns

As Director, she published a number of impactful research papers and books.

Donovan co-wrote a widely-read study that discovered that a significant number of participants in the January 6 attack on the Capitol were driven by their support for President Trump.

In September of the same year, Donovan released a book titled "Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America," which explores the spread of right-wing political conspiracy theories through online media.

Donovan earned her PhD in Sociology and Science Studies from UCSD, and was a postdoc at the Institute for Society and Genetics at UCLA where her expertise was social movements, technology, and white supremacist's use of DNA ancestry tests.

She later held the role of Research Lead for the Media Manipulation Initiative at Data and Society, and mapped how interest groups, governments, political operatives, corporations, and others use the internet and media to disrupt social institutions.

Donovan went on to lead the Technology and Social Change Research Project at Harvard Kennedy School and teach the class Media Manipulation and Disinformation Campaigns.

She joined the Boston University College of Communication in September 2023 as a tenure-track assistant professor.

Donovan has authored over 35 articles, paper, and books [10] including:

How news organizations should cover white supremacist shootings, PBS NewsHour

Big Tech Companies Are Struggling With How To Best Police Their Platforms

Unlike Us Reader: Social Media Monopolies and Their Alternatives

Navigating the Tech Stack: When, Where and How Should we Moderate Content?

Toward a Militant Ethnography of Infrastructure: Cybercartographies of Order, Scale, and Scope across the Occupy Movement.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#399

Post by drawkward »

qaq wrote: post #391
drawkward wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you and I see different things: I see people protesting Israel's response to Hamas' attacks of October 7th. You seem to see harassment of Jewish students. I don't think we will ever close that gap.

So in your opinion "From the river to the sea ..." is just a protest slogan ? There are polls showing support specifically for Hamas not for Palestinian liberation cause among students. It's very high. The Hamas goals are articulated very clearly. It's comforting to pretend it's just to support Palestinian cause but it's def not just that.

>There are polls showing support specifically for Hamas not for Palestinian liberation cause among students.

Link please? I'm not finding any.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#400

Post by qaq »

drawkward wrote: post #388
tptacek wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fre…

You can hard disagree, but there are polls showing pretty wide spread support for specifically Hamas among students especially at elite UCs. The goals of Hamas are articulated pretty clearly so as comforting as it is to pretend they don't mean it in the bad way a very decent percentage literally do mean it. If you honestly believe they don't mean it do a fun experiment stand with say flag of Israel on UC Berkley or UC LA campus and than with flag of Hamas or Isis see the reaction you get. Or not even Israel flag just US flag.
Post reply on HN