Time Is Tight

GiveWell Astroturfing

Filed under: Astroturfing, Blogging, MetaFilter, Web — Arthur @ 11:24 am

Well-worth-reading summation of the GiveWell astroturfing controversy on the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s website.

Meanwhile, the GiveWell, or Give ‘em Hell? thread rages on on MetaTalk.

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Give Well?

Filed under: Astroturfing, Blogging, MetaFilter, Web — Arthur @ 10:10 am

GiveWell or Give ‘em Hell: The 26-year-old founder of GiveWell, a sort of charity 2.0 startup, is caught astroturfing AskMetaFilter and other weblogs. On AskMetaFilter, he created two accounts to ask and then answer a question on end-of-year donations, recommending his own organization and maligning hits competitors. He didn’t reveal his involvement until caught red handed.

The only honourable course now would be for GiveWell’s board to accept his resignation, but they seem to be trying to squirm their way out of that.

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What goes around, comes around

Filed under: Science News — Arthur @ 3:46 pm

A long, long time ago, when I was a child, my family had a complete set of volumes of the World Book Encyclopedia – I believe they had been purchased for my father when he was a child – that had been published before the discovery of Pluto.

I remember feeling smugly superior, from my perch in the space aged ’50s, when I read the article about the eight planets of the solar system. Turns out they were right all along.

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