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Comment by FillardMillmore | Hacker News Reader

This article accentuates the need to always look for the source of the funding when it comes to non-profits, think tanks, and "public interest" groups. Unfortunately, the goals of these groups are not always as transparent as their names would have you believe.

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The same goes for all UNGOs and NGOs that operate around the world for various humanitarian causes. I have interned at places like World Vision, World Concern, and Save the Children; my sister has worked for almost three years at a well-known French NGO that operates in my home country (in SE Asia). A few other people I know work for various non-profit orgs like UNICEF and UNOCHA etc.

We notice one consistent thing: these purpose of organizations/institutions isn't as simple as "serve the best for the native population that they are supposed to save from natural/economic/humanitarian disaster". The need (say, for regional/program directors) to find the next funding to keep the project going trumps EVERY OTHER altruistic purpose. Also, these program directors don't stay for longer than 2-3 years (let alone getting to know the native population they are trying to help) and most of them are always trying to get in on the next action/conflict in another country, and/or to simply move to a better pasture (a more developed country). The management in these non-profit orgs--such as save the children, world vision, UNICEF--are always whitewashed (I do not intend this to come out negatively, but have to keep it real here) and they rarely promote native workers to have a say in things that matter (although native workers are the ones who have to do the day-to-day, on-the-field hard work). On Facebook, there has been a growing resentment by native workers toward these 'foreigners of ruling hierarchy' that work for non-profits (while taking up most of the salary+benefits and wasting donation money). I don't know how far it will go and am interested to see it out.

And even political parties. In Belgium the "Green" party (Groen) after the last election finally admitted they were not and never have been an environmental/ecological party after they grabbed control of the former real environment party (AGALEV) in 2003. They successfully bamboozled the green vote just by semantically squatting the name for 16 years.

Never trust a name, as more often than not it just has been hijacked by the most powerful/lucky marketing group.

Sad truth. I'd like to see something label itself as a public-interest group and be able to trust it immediately, but it's not as simple as that.

It's not very difficult either. For most of these organisations, you can just check their Financials page, and it's very clearly stated. Example:

https://www.accessnow.org/financials/

https://cdt.org/financials/

Trusting anything immediately is a bad habit to develop anyway.

I was once approached by someone representing (or at least claiming to) the Nature Conservancy. They had a worthy-sounding pitch but I told them that as a rule I didn't donate on knee-jerk reactions, but that I would be happy take down their info, have a closer look, and consider a donation. They guy said, "oh like on Charity Navigator", whipped out their phone and showed me near-perfect scores for them on Charity Navigator. I stuck to my rule, got home, and looked them up. At the time they had 2/4 stars on Charity Navigator. Guy was using an old screenshot or something.

Wow, that's pretty sneaky.

Finding the information can be easy, but coming to a conclusion from it is harder.

For example, in the links you provided, we can see that AccessNow is supported by Google and Facebook, but also by Mozilla, which is generally considered to be a strong privacy advocate. Similarly, CDT is supported by Google and Facebook, but also by DuckDuckGo and Mozilla.

So what can we conclude from this? I'm not really sure. It could be any of:

1. Mozilla, DuckDuckGo, etc. are supporting organizations that are working against the interests of privacy.

2. Google and Facebook actually care about privacy.

3. Privacy is a complicated issue and there aren't really well-defined "sides" to take.

4. The lobbying group is not a side, but the field of battle. It may naturally favor a side, but money moves the front.

Even if they performed as advertised, it's not the only problem from this pattern. The bigger issue is how in our society giving away money somehow magically washes away all the harm done.

Here's the pattern: "First, do some harm. Reap gains from it. Then atone, and reap power from the atonement."

Anand Giridharadas has this all down. Best book you can read right now if you're interested in this topic.

The same goes for all media. Who is funding them, who is running them and what are their goals.

This is why it's important to view a wide range of sources, but who has time for that really.

Sadly, people are removed from civil society today (as they are removed from society in general), which leaves a lot of space for various snake oil salesmen selling them "safety" and "truth". We know well that these things can't be bought but earned.

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