After $500m Zuckerberg donation, Harvard university gutted its disinfo team studying Facebook

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Originally published at: After $500m Zuckerberg donation, Harvard university gutted its disinfo team studying Facebook | Boing Boing

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Come on now, Harvard just co-incidentally decided to put money into the MIS (Masters in Influencer Studies) and R.U. (Racist Uncle) faculties instead.

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Rich Racist Uncle. This is Harvard, sir!

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Make it R.U.R. and you can probably get extra AI techbro financing!

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The billionaires have the money to buy and sell all of us.

It’s their world now, we just live in it.

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Perhaps I just don’t understand the best way to derail proceedings, and creating the impression of being agitated and emotional is in fact just that being executed more or less cynically; but does that behavior seem really weird, for a PR flack, to anyone else?

I’d assume that he’s also bought and paid for(or holds enough stock that he’s perfectly capable of understanding where is bread is buttered independently); but if it were just about the money wouldn’t something more along the lines of being the concerned driving trollies adult in the room; rather than an agitated and combative Zuck stan be more in line with expectations?

Again, this could be engineered to produce just that impression; be he’s acting like someone who takes this personally; not like it’s simply business; there. Did he drink the kool-aid about the unquestionable goodness of Facebook’s mission to connect the world and bring ethnic cleansing enthusiasts closer together in addition to picking up a financial interest?

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From someone who never saw or read the play nor any other of Karel Capek’s fine work.

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I miss Joan Donovan’s Meme War Weekly and was very impressed with her work at Harvard. She’s now at BU. I wonder how the Berkman-Klein Center is faring over at Harvard Law. They were also deep into studying Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. Maybe ask Bruce Schneier who is still at Harvard and seems to be an honest person.

By the way, MIT is at least as corrupt but from a different direction. The Media Lab was the site of CityFarm which was a complete scam trying to do agriculture on a Silicon Valley model and accomplished nothing useful. There is also the woeful history of the MIT Energy Initiative which touted natural gas as a “bridge fuel” and spent close to a decade before ever even considering solar energy as a subject for their annual report. Edmund Carlevale (who is on LinkedIn) has been bird-dogging the energy issues corruption at the 'Tute now after working there for years.

To say nothing of MIT’s role in driving Aaron Swartz to suicide.

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To be fair, Harvard really needs that $500 million donation. They only have an endowment of $50 billion (the largest of any American university).

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Perhaps he’s acting out like that because he’s signalling the consequences.

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Cookie purge to get in:

https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-star-misinformation-scholar-says-harvard-pushed-her-out-for-criticizing-meta

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I’m used to the classic issue of research not getting done being of too little money. I hope history will still reflect that the abomination that was the Trump presidency would possibly have not happened without Facebook.

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I see Zuck took the page out of tobacco industry. Hell, he uses their whole playbook as his freaking bible.

Also, $500m is not “donation.” It’s bribe money, or shut-up money, or fuck-you money depend on how you look at it. There is 8 zeros in that that check.

TAX THE RICHES.

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It’s almost as if This F*ing Guy has terribly insufficient communication skills, did no meaningful preparation, and is only in his position due to combination of greed and nepotism.

Really, it almost seems like that.

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Something, something, veritas.

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It is for tax purposes, and he can spread the deduction over a few years if he doesn’t need all of it to reduce his income to zero in one year. :face_vomiting:

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That’s the silly part. They don’t need the money. Their endowment has blown up over the decades and their student body has only grown modestly. They’re in the best position to decline this or accept it on their own terms.

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That seems mighty cheap for such an expensive bastion of academe.

Once again, more scheißberg than zuckerberg.

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I was thinking the opposite. They could’ve bought a few hundred House reps for the same amount. Our politicians go cheap. Well, some of them.

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Oh, rethug politicos are especially cheap. I can’t believe that some can be purchased for as little as mere tens of thousands. SMH

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