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Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties

nytimes.com

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Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties

#281

Post by moron4hire »

davrosthedalek wrote: post #271
moron4hire wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, using your professional relationship as a foundation employee to solicit funds for your personal, private ventures is suuuuuper illegal.

Indeed, but I have not seen that he solicited them. Of course the fact that they were made stinks to high heaven.

It doesn't matter if he literally asked or not. Anti-corruption laws are much more concerned with the appearance of impropriety than they are with the actual turn off events. That is to say, they err on the side of caution. Anything that could have come about through abuse of the professional relationship is verboten, even if it was "happenstance".

Simply put, disregarding all of the other issues, given the prior relationship between Ito and Epstein for the MIT Media Lab donations, there was no legitimate path for Epstein to invest in any private venture of Ito's.

Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties

#282

Post by matz1 »

nemothekid wrote: post #239
matz1 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In regards with marijuana, more and more people disagree that it should be illegal therefore its harder and harder for law enforcement to prevent it. With child trafficking, very rarely people want it to be legal. >Hanging out with child trafficker, and accepting money from them and inviting them to your private events is normalization Yes, it is normalization. The normalization of hanging out with child trafficker a…

Your marijuana point makes no sense. Now your logic is circular -- 1. Normilization is when the police stop enforcing something 2. More and more people started to disagree with the legal status of marijuana 3. It became hard for police to enforce drug laws. You are now arguing that step 3 is normalization. What do you call step 2? I think most would agree that step 2 is normalization, and its effect is step 3. If ste…

Normalization is when the occurrence something increase so that it become common.

In regards in marijuana, More and more people started to disagree with the legal status of marijuana is not because the police lessen their enforcement but because people marijuana is not dangerous anymore. So yes you can say the step 2 is the normalization.

In the regards with homosexual, the analogy is : many people disagree with act itself but still fine hanging out with them. Because they the act of hanging out with homosexual and the practice of homosexual itself is a two different thing. This may normalize the act of hanging out with homosexual but not necessarily the homosexual itself.

If I'm hanging out with a child trafficker, does that increase the number of child trafficking to occur ?

While that could increase the number of people who hanging out with a child trafficker but not the child trafficking itself. The number of child trafficking increases when the law enforcement stop doing its job.

Note that child trafficking is still illegal but hanging out with child trafficker is not.

Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties

#283

Post by nf8nnfufuu »

tP5n wrote: post #267
nf8nnfufuu wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read about the first half, which didn't mention that Epstein was already convicted for sex trafficking by the time he arrived at MIT in that story. It didn't occur to me that he would be walking around freely doing deals if he had already been convicted. I didn't have the information that he was let off the hook and there was also no indication I should google for something like that. What search term should I h…

literally, 'epstein' would have been enough

I know about Epstein (superficially at least), I wanted to know what was damning about the quoted paragraph. Those are different things.

Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties

#284

Post by jonstewart »

darawk wrote: post #222
tptacek wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an Epstein Absolutist and feel Ito should have resigned way before Ronan Farrow's article was published, so yes, I think this is all very shady. I don't generally think people have a moral right to hold on to prominent directorships like the MIT Media Lab --- when you take that job†, I think you also undertake an ethical obligation to leave that post as soon as it becomes reasonable to say that your continued pre…

> when you take that job†, I think you also undertake an ethical obligation to leave that post as soon as it becomes reasonable to say that your continued presence is a distraction or disruption from the mission of the organization While that's all well and good when it's an issue you agree with, would you be willing to apply that standard in the other direction? If Joi Ito had created a controversy by standing on pr…

To put it another light, consider Steve Jobs’s Vice President/cross the Rubicon speech about reasons not mattering. When you take on an executive job like this, one of the major job responsibilities is to resign for the sake of accountability when something terrible happens, regardless of whether it’s strictly your fault.*

The other parable is the one of Write Two Letters.

* Clearly, Ito was very much at fault in this instance. The coverup!

Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties

#285

Post by nullc »

Twirrim wrote: post #123
joewee wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok maybe I’m missing something. Joi allowed him to visit the lab after he was banned?

And took donations after Epstein was disqualified as a funder (after his 2008 conviction), and deliberately manipulated things to make them anonymous. It's blatant, done with full understanding, and (stupidly) with an email trail of evidence. 'In September, 2014, Ito wrote to Epstein soliciting a cash infusion to fund a certain researcher, asking, “Could you re-up/top-off with another $100K so we can extend his contr…

> And took donations after Epstein was disqualified as a funder (after his 2008 conviction)

Can you point me to where it's described exactly when Epstein was blacklisted by MIT and why? If it's in the newyorker article, I'm missing it.

It points out that Epstein's donations were anonymous and that he was blacklisted but doesn't appear to order the events. It looks like Epstein was anonymously donating back around 2002 also, so was he also blacklisted then? Why?

Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties

#286

Post by cybersnowflake »

CydeWeys wrote: post #139
cybersnowflake wrote: post #138

[flagged]

This is about continuing to maintain ties with Epstein long after how problematic he was was known, to the point that the university had banned having any involvement with him because of his pedophilia conviction and Joichi Ito still associated with him and took his money, while lying to the greater university and covering up that he was still involving himself with him. No, this definitely could not have happened to…

People, happily do things like honor a holiday made by a man who sticks women's toes into vices, Think OJ is an innocent victim of systematic racism, and freely do business with some of the most repressive regimes. Just a few months back some of the same talking heads acting all high and mighty now were whining how Drumpf was hurting business with China. The same china which massacred a bunch of people in fairly recent events as tiananman square and memoryholed it to the point where even most americans aren't aware of it.

If people regularly overlook stuff like this without any shame, maybe possibly getting a massage seems pretty easy to overlook as well especially if you're getting a fat stack of cash.

Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties

#287

Post by liability »

nf8nnfufuu wrote: post #280
liability wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You read the first half of what exactly? From the subtitle of the article you responded to: > New documents show that the M.I.T. Media Lab was aware of Epstein’s status as a convicted sex offender, and that Epstein directed contributions to the lab far exceeding the amounts M.I.T. has publicly admitted. What did you think "Epstein’s status as a convicted sex offender" meant? Are you earnestly confused, or are you try…

I read the first half of this: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/07/business/mit-media-lab-je... That is the original article this while comment thread is attached to. It doesn't mention existing convictions in the first half. I didn't read the article the comment I replied to linked to. I am not a robot. I can not simply recursively read the whole internet. I was curious about the supposedly "damning paragraph", not a…

Do everybody else in this discussion a favor and read this article: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-an-elite-univer...

You already responded to a comment about that article, so you owe it to others, if not yourself, to actually read it.

Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties

#289

Post by CrazyStat »

mrosett wrote: post #25
danso wrote: post #8

Someone who was asked by Ito to be on the MIT Disobedience Award jury wrote a long tweet thread yesterday calling out Reid Hoffman for his defense of Ito: https://twitter.com/anandwrites/status/1169952673988300800

I don't think that thread shows that Hoffman defended Ito, despite the author's claims. I'm basically willing to take Hoffman's responses at face value. Clearly there was an ongoing investigation, as demonstrated by Ito's resignation today. When news broke about Ito and Epstein last month, Giriharadas was pretty far down on the list of people who Ito needed to answer to (since he was just part of what I imagine to be…

>Clearly there was an ongoing investigation, as demonstrated by Ito's resignation today.

That's not clear at all, at least if you're talking about an investigation conducted or commissioned by MIT. Ito's sudden resignation seems likely to have been prompted by the damning New Yorker article published yesterday. Another commenter posted the email sent out by MIT's president today, which refers to yesterday's New Yorker article and indicates that the university has just commissioned an investigation in reaponse to it.

Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties

#290

Post by nf8nnfufuu »

point78 wrote: post #258
nf8nnfufuu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I don't get it. Somebody having assistants who look like models and are from Eastern Europe is suspicious of trafficking women? How? Why? I have heard about Epstein, obviously with hindsight all sorts of things he did can be seen in a new light. I just don't understand what is so damning about the passage above. Would somebody who is trafficking women really take them everywhere he goes? I thought it would be…

A 60 year old American financier who's uglier than a frog has 2 teenage eastern european models as "assistants"....does that add up to you?

Even young East European models have to work somewhere (at least some of them). (Paragraph called them "young women", not "teens", btw).

Should young women only be allowed to work for poor people, if they are attractive? Or maybe only for other young people? I don't think that would be a good rule.

I don't think it would be enough for an accusation. Of course with the background that Epstein was already known as a sex trafficker, it is a very different matter.

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