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Re:Dude,Where's My Donations? Wikimedia gives another $1M to... by mrguyorama on Friday August 18, 2023 @02:56PM (#37180433)
People get so upset that charities do things with money that they don't agree with, but that's like the entire point of charity? That the money is no longer yours? The only people who DO put such limits on their charity are extremely rich people pretending to "donate" for PR reasons while still controlling the money through their own charity or whatever.

If you don't like what a charity does, don't donate to it?

Re:Dude,Where's My Donations? Wikimedia gives another $1M to... by kmeisthax on Friday August 18, 2023 @03:17PM (#37180695)
So, usually when I hear these stories, it's complaining about a charity that isn't spending directly on their mission, but is spending on things vaguely related to their mission. i.e. a charity for scientific research into a disease spending some of their money on care for the sufferers of that disease is technically charity overhead, but nobody would object to it.

My question with these donations are, do they have anything related to do with the core mission of Wikimedia? Stuff like Black Cultural Archives absolutely would count, as they're paying for preservation of knowledge and culture that could then be added into Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons[0]. Same goes for the Filipino American National Historical Society.

On the other hand, the human rights, equity, & advocacy organizations don't quite match what Wikimedia is doing. We can at least argue however that human rights is necessary for Wikimedia to continue operating. i.e. when horrific regimes want to control information Wikipedia is the first to get blocked. Likewise, Create Caribbean Research Institute is going to be promoting digital literacy in the Caribbean, which means more people over there using and editing Wikipedia. Also aligned with the mission, so I can't complain even if it isn't directly related to a Wikimedia project.

Data for Black Lives is the one thing that is genuinely confusing to me. It smells like a Silicon Valley fever dream: if we melt black people down into data we can use the data to make black people's lives better! No, this is just the flipside of the same artificial intelligence snake oil that the "predictive policing" people try to sell. Predictive policing tells you to keep policing the same areas you already police, based on the fact that there's more crime where cops are already looking. If you follow its recommendations, you'll wind up just intensifying enforcement and racial tensions. I see no reason why a "data driven racial justice" system wouldn't have the same problems, and I don't get why Wikimedia donated to this charity.

[0] Wikipedia has had significant systemic bias problems basically since its inception. When you have a bunch of primarily-white tech enthusiasts write an encyclopedia you get an encyclopedia with lots of information about what primarily-white tech enthusiasts want to talk about.

Re:Dude,Where's My Donations? Wikimedia gives another $1M to... by renewiltord on Friday August 18, 2023 @03:14PM (#37180666)
> If you don't like what a charity does, don't donate to it?

I mean, that's the point of this, right? If you donate to a charity thinking it's going to do A but it does B then you may want to stop donating to it. The only way you can do that is if you know they're doing B and not A.

So what's happening here is some people are doing exactly what you're saying but you're saying they should do that? They're already doing that.

Re:Dude,Where's My Donations? Wikimedia gives another $1M to... by zo1 on Friday August 18, 2023 @03:01PM (#37180497)
And people will stop donating, I stopped.

The point of charity is to help the charity you want to help. Having it turn around and misuse your money by spending it on a completely unrelated cause defies the point and is downright fraud.

I donate because I want to advance human knowledge and access for all. I don't want my money spent on downright anti-white propaganda that discriminates against innocent white people.

Re:Dude,Where's My Donations? Wikimedia gives another $1M to... by mrguyorama on Friday August 18, 2023 @04:40PM (#37181806)
> I don't want my money spent on downright anti-white propaganda that discriminates against innocent white people.

Why do you claim this to be anti-white propaganda?

Re:Dude,Where's My Donations? Wikimedia gives another $1M to... by laserdancepony on Friday August 18, 2023 @05:11PM (#37182158)
Because it's been the way the world works for some years now. No need to double-check anymore.