'social network' attacking pesticide critics shuts down after investigation | Hacker News Reader

'social network' attacking pesticide critics shuts down after investigation

theguardian.com

67 pointsrguiscard18 comments

> part of an effort that was financed, in part, by US taxpayer dollars

The "in part" here is doing a lot of work. I can't tell how big the part is from the detail provided in the article:

> v-Fluence, which also had the former agrochemical firm Monsanto as a client, secured some funding from the US government as part of a contract with a third party. Public spending records show the US Agency for International Development (USAid) contracted with a separate non-governmental organization that manages a government initiative to promote GM crops in African and Asian countries.

> That organization, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), then paid v-Fluence a little more than $400,000 from roughly 2013 through 2019 for services that included counteracting critics of “modern agriculture approaches” in Africa and Asia.

If we count second-degree links like this, I bet we'd find that most organizations (including for-profit companies) are "funded in part by US tax dollars."

The problem you run into is that this is done intentionally. For instance Hanlon's Razor, Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity., is simply completely invalid when it comes to large organizations, because they always consciously ensure some degree of plausible deniability to actions that are intentionally and maliciously done.

USAID has funded a lot of awful things that the government has no business being involved in, but they do it through various sub organizations in order to effectively 'launder' the funding. Jay Byrne is the guy who founded v-Fluence. He's not only a former Monsanto director but also worked at "various high-level legislative and public affairs positions at USAID". [1] And then USAID goes on to fund his little doxing site against Monsanto critics.

[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/26/government-f...

My complaint is with the article. They haven't done the reporting needed to tell me how much US taxpayers actually spent on this. They are happy to leave readers with the impression that we funded all of it. This is how we get distortions like "USAID funds Politico!" spread by bad-faith actors.

The other questions they could have answered: How much did USAID spend on IFPRI? Was the grant from USAID to IFPRI expressly designated for v-Fluence, or was it for other programs as well?

Let's say it turns out that USAID spent a lot of money on IFPRI and only a small percent of it went to fund this little site, which is indeed quite likely. Does that then imply that the other [large percent] was therefore well spent? Or even probably well spent?

No, but it does prove the existence of such corruption and waste which is suggestive of more. And the problem is that a lot of this stuff is near impossible to sort out at scale. For instance the Red Cross spent $1.5 billion in donations 'rebuilding' after the Haiti earthquakes, to ultimately build a total of 6 permanent dwellings. [1]

Obviously everything was not even remotely on the up and up there (and appropriately enough, USAID was also involved), yet nothing was ever proven and no consequences were ever suffered even in an extremely high profile incident like this.

So the only solution here is to ensure any spending is competently scrutinized and overseen from the get go. But these numerous incidents of waste and corruption show that simply wasn't happening.

[1] - https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-...

You're having a different conversation instead of answering them.

I just want to point out the difference between the Red Cross and the American Red Cross, who are known grifters

> If we count second-degree links like this, I bet we'd find that most organizations ...

Well as a generalization, that's just how fractional reserve systems work. The issue is when that reserve constraint is set to 0%, or replaced by systems based in fiat's objective valuation. (i.e. contrary and refuted by Carl Menger's works). There are systemic issues that need to be acted upon.

For the detailed mechanics, you can find the report released in 1994 by Chicago Fed, titled Modern Money Mechanics. Its 44 pages. You can extrapolate from that, taking into account Basel 3 (bis.org) to understand the rest.

The inevitable outcomes backed by history point to a currency crisis based in stochastic chaos. You won't know what individual mechanic sets it off, but once it starts there's no stopping it from burying everyone and everything. The tipping points are very indirect, with objective observation in the structures found in socialism, and its related failures leading to collapse. (ref Mises)

The end of sustainable production (food) is the end of the world in ecological overshoot conditions (ref Malthus).

If you can't exchange labor for needed goods, production doesn't occur. The economic cycle stalls. People starve and die.

There are plenty of ostriches among humanity because its comfortable not knowing the truth. People sense this horror with no future, even if they don't recognize the mechanics that lead to it. When people struggle just to provide for themselves, its enough to notice these things.

This is why so many people aren't having children. The only potential future under existing systems is slavery and the psychological torture inherent in it.

What responsible parent would wish that for their children. It is rational to choose not to have children when that is the prevailing outcome.

In many respects, the boomer generation is largely responsible for the aggregate environment (hellscape) we see today.

They also as a cohort haven't ceded political power to younger generations, holding on to it instead into their senility and death bed. Blocking any changes from being made, and having destroyed the systems that could have righted the ship.

The ultimate legacy of that generational cohort is going to be the generation that stole their children's future. It remains to be seen if we can survive as a species given all the existential risk that's been piled up all at once.

Related The US government-funded 'private social network' attacking pesticide critics (46 points, 4 months ago, 5 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41715728

Remarkable story and a glimpse at how nasty vested interests can become as the world starts to second guess the sustainability of an entire century's worth of "growth" at all costs.

Its not black and white, without pesticides we'll probably all perish from malnutrition within a year or two, but the pressure to contain the collateral damage to environment and people will not go away.

> without pesticides we'll probably all perish from malnutrition within a year or two

I'm unsure if that is true or not. Certainly it would reduce yields initially but some high yield farming in the US has already moved away from pesticides. It seems that we could probably engineer out of pesticide use if we wanted to by combination of more gmo crops and changing the crops grown somewhat.

Robotics might hold promise for ditching pesticides too. There's already laser weed killing machines. Could we target specific insects with smaller robots that can move under and between plants?

There's also just trying to use nature to help use. Beneficial fungus can be fostered to out compete harmful ones. Chickens can be unleashed in the fields at the right times to reduce the insect load. Maybe we could genetically modify sterile predator insects to hunt down the pests and then die off since they can't reproduce themselves.

Honestly this is being tried but we can't even classify emerging new pests (for lack of science funding and staffing). Many engineers have a keyboard view of how the agriculture industry works and only when they are boots on ground do they realize the actual problems faced by farmers. This is not an attack on engineers, but for every person with a weed laser idea, there's very few willing to implement it.

In the longer term various alternatives are conceivable if people put their minds to it. Politically, economically, technically this is very much like the energy transition: There is immense current dependency that cant be just switched off (and vested interests will resist for as long as possible, using every possible means), but there is sequence of low hanging fruit which in time can be expanded. The trick imho is to always apply the highest amount of pressure that wont burst the kettle.

>without pesticides we'll probably all perish from malnutrition within a year or two,

I have my doubts on this. The same is true for the supposed magic of nitrogen fertilizers.

As usual the Guardian reporting is sub-par:

> One client of more than 20 years is Syngenta, a Chinese government enterprise-owned company currently being sued by thousands of people in the US and Canada who allege they developed the incurable brain disease Parkinson’s from using Syngenta’s paraquat weed killers

Syngenta exists since 2000 and has NOT been owned by a Chinese organization from 2000 to 2017. So making it sound like China has been sponsoring them for more than 20 years is not good journalism. Syngenta HQ is based in Switzerland, too.

I had a lot of trouble parsing that title. There was a 'social network'. It attacked pesticide critics. Now the s.n. is shutting down.

Below the headline of the actual article is this:

> v-Fluence halts operations after widespread backlash over private portal profiling environmental health advocates

After reading it five or six times, I parse it as

    (v-Fluence halts operations
      (after (widespread backlash
        (over (private portal
          (profiling (environmental health advocates)))))))

i.e. v-Fluence is halting their operations. This is after there was widespread backlash. The widespread backlash was about a private portal. The private portal was for profiling certain people. Those certain people were environmental health advocates.

Worth watching “Michael Clayton”

Reply on news.ycombinator.com