Technology

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...

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.

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.

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!"