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Former Harvard disinformation scholar says she was pushed out of her job after college faced pressure from Facebook

A nationally recognized online disinformation researcher has accused Harvard University of shutting down the project she led to protect its relationship with mega-donor and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

The allegations, made by Dr. Joan Donovan, raise questions about the influence the tech giant might have over seemingly independent research. Facebook’s parent company Meta has long sought to defend itself against research that implicates it in harming society: from the proliferation of election disinformation to creating addictive habits in children. Details of the disclosure were first reported by The Washington Post.

Beginning in 2018, Donovan worked for the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and ran its Technology and Social Change Research Project, where she led studies of media manipulation campaigns. But last year Harvard informed Donovan it was shutting the project down, Donovan claims.

trackcharlie ,

Facebook should be seized by the government and the entire c-suite placed in gitmo and tortured to death.

neptune ,

It turns out free speech has been limited on campuses after all!

PrincessLeiasCat ,

Dr. Donovan is a fucking legend. You fucked up with this move, Harvard.

And if you want to see more about her, there’s tons of her speeches and interviews online.

Immersive_Matthew ,

Seems foolish in the face of AGI around the corner. We will be able to have as many disinformation researchers as we desire, even personal ones.

vrighter ,

agi is not around the corner. not by a long shot. We have simbly automated bullshit generators

douglasg14b , (edited )
@douglasg14b@lemmy.world avatar

It’s only a bullshit generator if you use it for bullshit generation…

We’ve automated ways to accelerate problem solving, and now that it’s able to actually reason (AI that can actually do math is a big deal). That acceleration should increase significantly.

Such acceleration can make things like AGI actually around the corner, with that corner being 5-10 years from now. Though I think we have too many hardware limitations ATM, which will definitely hamper progress & capability.

But with companies like Microsoft seriously considering moves like “Nuclear Reactors to power AI” , issues with power consumption may not be as much of a barrier…

Aceticon ,

That’s like saying parrots are only a few generations away from being as intelligent as humans because they can already immitate human speech.

Clearly immitation does not require cognition and by all evidence so far does not lead to it.

Honytawk ,

Why do you think parrots aren’t intelligent or cognitive?

Buddahriffic ,

They are but do you think one will be able to help sort information, misinformation, and disinformation on Facebook any time soon? Or even have a real conversation? They are cognitive but mimicking our speech doesn’t mean they are close to our level.

Honytawk ,

For AGI to be a thing, we first need to have the computer be able to communicate with us.

LLMs are just the first step, an important one at that.

It is like claiming babies learning to talk are bullshit generators, before you know it they surpass you in every way shape and form.

Immersive_Matthew ,

That really has not been my experience with ChatGPT4+. It is getting very good and catches me off guard daily with it level of understanding. Sure it makes mistakes and it laughably off base at times, but so are we all as we learn about a complex world.

phoneymouse ,

Harvard kisses the ring.

Potatos_are_not_friends ,

For $500 million. 😱

lemmy.ca/post/10642626

Yoz ,

I can’t open the link. Can someone please help

kometes ,
@kometes@lemmy.world avatar

…pantheonsite.io/joan-donovan-press-release/

pete_the_cat ,

Yeah, they’re like “sure, we’ll happily shit this down for half a billion, just give us time to make it seem legit!”

nonailsleft ,

It looks like no one is going to push her out of anything from that picture

mctoasterson ,

This picture is exactly what I imagine the output would be if you typed “disinformation scholar” into an AI image generation prompt.

Myro ,

Grow up.

nonailsleft ,

It seems she has been growing for the both of us

TimewornTraveler ,

You don’t believe anyone has anything of value to contribute to society if they’re unattractive?

RestrictedAccount ,

Of course they shut it down, the problem with disinformation is solved!

(/s)

foggy ,

Problem with information solved!

agitatedpotato ,

When the truth makes profit uncomfortable, guess who’s gonna overpower who.

elbarto777 ,

And just like that, I lost a lot of trust on Harvard.

interceder270 ,

I never really trust institutions that put money above all else.

Not sure why people think colleges are exempt from scummy behavior. They’re a business, not a charity lol.

SheDiceToday ,

Most colleges are non-profits, which means they are supposed to be, ya know, not profit seekers. Harvard, like many others, is not a business.

interceder270 ,

You’re beyond delusional if you think people aren’t profiting at harvard.

Harvard, like many others, is not a business.

Okay. Lol.

Zahille7 ,

I didn’t go to college at all after high school because I think universities are a scam.

Aceticon ,

The US implementation of University Education is prone to scams.

The actual concept of higher education to train people to have certain highly complex expertises necessary for high value added industries is not a scam, as the facts on the ground make clear: it’s not by chance that even in the ultra-Capitalist United States companies in advanced areas such as Tech hire lots of university graduates with degrees applicable for those areas, rather than go for the much more abundant and hence cheaper people with just high-school which would yield them bigger profits if the university degrees in those areas did not justify the higher cost of hiring those with such degrees (in fact you’ll notice them trying to contain manpower costs by hiring foreigners with such degrees, but not by hiring high-school graduates)

Ultimatelly your own educational choice was good or bad depending on which university degrees were available in the area for which you have a knack (and indeed in certain areas there really is no point in higher education) and how much would it would cost you: many degrees are effectivelly worthless, many more are not worth the cost in work-experience years lost whilst taking that degree and quite a lot are not worth the monetary cost charged by US universities for them, but some are still worth it even at the ridiculously high cost of getting a degree in the US.

In summary, if you meant that all higher education is a scam, that’s a ridiculous generaliszation that goes against observable reality, but if you meant that some (maybe even most) university education in the US is a scam, I agree with you.

Zahille7 ,

I’m in the US, so yes, most universities here are a scam.

Aceticon ,

Well, in that sense I was lucky to have been born in a Western nation where society values Education highly and were the State actually serves people not “business” (at least back then, it’s worse now) so all I had to do was have high enough grades in the relevant areas in high-school and in my Physics and Maths entrance exams to get 5 years of Science and Engineering higher education pretty much for free.

I suspect that, given my low income origins, had I been born in the US or even UK (were universities are also expensive and access is nowhere as meritocratic as my own country), given my natural propention the top range of my professional qualifications would’ve ended up as Car Mechanic or maybe Hacker, rather than Engineer.

Zahille7 ,

Good for you?

Aceticon ,

I wish it was more like that everywhere: people should all have the opportunity to be all they can be.

I ended up involved in a leftwing political party when I lived in the UK because I concluded that local kids with the same kind of origin and skills like me over there had nowhere the same opportunities I was lucky to have, whilst the well-connected children of the upper classes had a veritable red-carpet all their lifes, no merit whatsoever required - and that shit really goes against all my principles when it comes to fairness.

Mind you, Hell would freeze over before a party following the principle of Equal Opportunity got power in the UK, so me putting some effort into helping a small leftwing party there was hopeless from the start, but I did it anyway.

the_post_of_tom_joad ,

Can i have some of what youre smoking? Reality is too real today

SheeEttin ,

You’re right, it’s a real estate trust.

rwhitisissle ,

Colleges don’t have external investors or are technically “owned” in the same way a business is. But they do functionally operate in the same way as profit based institutions. This is because the people who run them understand that industry connections can be immensely profitable. You help fudge some numbers or put out dubious research backing a particular industry and you might find yourself in a position in which you get paid to “consult” for those companies later on.

the_post_of_tom_joad ,

Harvard is where they got caught taking money from the sugar lobby and put out a paper pointing away from sugar as a leading cause of heart disease and towards saturated fat. This changed health policy in America, killing who knows how many.

Harvard has deserved no credibility for longer than we’ve been alive.

Wooster ,
@Wooster@startrek.website avatar

Reminds me of cigarette companies burying research on lung disease.

WashedOver ,
@WashedOver@lemmy.ca avatar

Or the Oil industry hiding and then discrediting their own research into climate change?

supercritical ,
@supercritical@lemmy.world avatar

Or the oil industry hiring economists to refute other economists conclusions when it comes to damages from oil spills (see Exxon Valdez)

Montagge ,
@Montagge@kbin.social avatar

Or the sugar industry convincing everyone that fat was the problem

ItsMeSpez ,

Not to mention hiding the huge amount of slave labour that goes into sugar production.

agent_flounder ,
@agent_flounder@lemmy.world avatar

Or the sugar industry burying studies blaming obesity on sugar (and blaming fatty foods instead)

XpeeN ,

Oil is your friend! /s

negativenull ,
@negativenull@startrek.website avatar

thank you for smoking

interceder270 ,

This is a fantastic movie and everyone should see it in our age of grifters and misinformation.

It should be shown in schools, but it’s a little risque sometimes.

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