Misinformation expert says she was fired by Harvard under Meta pressure::Joan Donovan says funding was cut off for criticizing Meta when university was receiving $500m from Mark Zuckerberg’s charity
Streisand effect, I didn’t even know about this person until the article came out
The irony of getting rid of someone for researching disinformation bcz it makes their donor look bad…
That’s not ironic, it’s just very blatant.
It’s the very definition of ironic
You’re absolutely right, he said, deploying the subcategory of irony known as sarcasm.
The controversial claims stem in part from Donovan’s publication of the Facebook papers, a bombshell leak of 22,000 pages of Facebook’s internal documents by the whistleblower Frances Haugen, who used to work at the company.
Is anyone surprised at all?
Fun fact: for all intents and purposes when a rich person sets up a charity that they own and control fully they are pinky-promising they will use the funds for charitable purposes. When they contribute funds to it they reduce their income tax burden.
When you no longer need income to survive as you have billions and billions and billions of wealth you can just stop paying income tax by giving your “income” of that year to the charity you own and control. You can later conduct business dealings by “donating” to organizations in a quid pro quo manner. You skirt income tax and determine 100% of where your money is spent. As a bonus you can “work” for your charity and expense all of your travel, lodgings and day to day reasonable expenses in the name of your charity because of the good work you are doing. Isn’t that great?
e.g. “my charity will spend 100m building houses in ghana for the needy and i’ll hire your construction company to do it. In return you will build me a mansion here and donate it to the founation I control and I will live there while maintaining the charity” shit like this happens all the time.
Imo this is the problem with modern foundations and charitable organizations. The people who donate the most are typically the owners of the foundation. Don’t forget that you can donate 10m to your buddies’ charities and they can donate 10m to yours… so it looks like you’re not just playing with your own money too. Layers and layers of obfuscation!
With enough money you can funnel all kinds of nonprofit funds into for-profit goods and services “for the people”
With all that power, influence and money sheltered from taxes it should be no surprise that when someone comes around and is going to publish data you don’t want to be seen which would impact your vast network of wealth you talk to your buddies who control the org she works for and try and quietly eliminate her position to minimize the damage.
Add in the fact that donations can also be funneled into political campaign funds… And you get one America.
Harvard acting shitty? Say it ain’t so!
Harvard is not a great educational institution, it’s amongst other things primarily a signalling and filtering mechanism that signals willingness to do what it takes to be a part of the ruling class. It’s part of a filtering system helping to ensure only psychopaths make it to the top.
I use the words “psychopath” and “sadist” often because I’m trying to push the idea that right wingers are not good people that made a few mistakes, or good people that have equally valid but different opinions. They are either victims of lies, or are actually bad people (bad because their mode of operation is to harm or be willing to harm others for gain) and we cannot expect to change them, therefore to make the world a better place, we should stop wasting energy trying to change a psychopath’s opinion and instead recognize the danger and act appropriately to protect ourselves.
I read a few studies a while back that were able to predict if a person self identified as conservative or liberal based off of their brain patterns that were measured. I believe the the distinct areas were the right amygdala (handles instictual behaviour) and the left anterior cortex (which I think was used for intepreting how others will behave). Use of one part decreased the use of the other part. Scientist were able to successfully predict the right amygdala was associated with conservatives about 85ish% and anterior cortex for self identified liberals.
Other studies show that decreased use of the left anterior cortex is associated with childhood abuse (either physical or emotional), so it is reasonable to believe most conservatives had emotional/physical abuse during childhood that left them with an underdeveloped brain. Unfortunantly studies show there is very little that can be done to fix this deficiency once the person reaches mid to early twenties.
I guess the point is that they are not necessarily psychopaths, but they do have defective brain processes and we should improve systems and education that will help reduce childhood abuse, and teach empathy in schools if we want to reduce the quantity of right wingers.
Makes a lot of sense, I think I read that study some time ago. I do want to be clear that I’m not calling all conservatives psychopaths. The psychopaths are the ones in government and executive positions.
Run of the mill conservatives are probably deficient in the ways you describe and likely abuse victims (the one I knew well was in fact) which manifests as fear, hate, gullibility, desire for retribution, etc. Many are also just victims of propaganda, stuck, or too unintelligent to find their own way so follow some strong personality around them.
And there will be no consequences for them cause money.
She has made many appearances on the TWiT network over the years. Always interesting to hear what she had to say. Hopefully she finds somewhere supportive to continue her work.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
One of the world’s leading experts on misinformation says she was fired by Harvard University for criticising Meta at a time that the school was being pledged $500m from Mark Zuckerberg’s charity.
Joan Donovan says her funding was cut off, she could not hire assistants and she was made the target of a smear campaign by Harvard employees.
In a legal filing with the US education department and the Massachusetts attorney general first published by the Washington Post, she said her right to free speech had been abrogated.
“From that very day forward, I was treated differently by the university to the point where I lost my job,” Donovan told the Logic.
Donovan had made a name for herself in part by testifying before Congress and speaking pubicly about how the spread of misinformation financially benefited tech companies.
Donovan claims that Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, both Harvard alumni, have given it hundreds of millions of dollars, including promising $500m to the school’s Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence.
The original article contains 490 words, the summary contains 174 words. Saved 64%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Damn. I would have thought being a misinformation expert would major job security. “What are the reasons you are firing me?” “blah blah blah” “WRONG! I’m a leading authority on misinformation and your info is dead wrong, you have no ground to stand on with your claims against me!”
They should have cut off her meal plan instead!
Sorry… going to hell for that joke. I commend her for standing up against two big institutions and putting herself out there for us.
