I agree with SnoopJ here but I want to put a subtly different spin on this and make a somewhat more non-negotiable request of my audience.
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You can criticize a charity for taking "dirty" money, and there is indeed such a thing. But the money, itself, is not transcendentally dirty. There are specific concerns with accepting it that you can enumerate: 🧵
1. Is accepting this money going to unduly launder the reputation of a bad actor? In particular, Is the actor sufficiently bad that it is *within the mission* of the charity in question *to fight with* the donor, and will accepting it compromise that part of the mission? If that's the case, then it can be worth refusing the donation entirely even if it means shutting down. No point in surviving if you have to compromise your reason for existing. But this is rarely true.
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The entire point of a charity — and many tech foundations[1] the Blender Foundation, the PSF, etc, are charities — is to take donations from people who have enough excess money that they have some available to donate, and to do something better with that money than the donor would have done with it.
I am sure that it is not news to you that *the kind of people who have enough extra money that they can give some away* in our society are not always going to be the most agreeable.
@glyph it’s also good to note, as I may or may not have ranted about recently, that basically anyone can donate to a charity, and if Blender is something people feel strongly about then they can help keep it going the way they like by tossing some cash at it.
Nearly all of us in Big (and Medium) Tech certainly have more than enough resources at hand that some can get sent to Blender, or whoever.
Donations. They’re not just for rich choads and ethically compromised companies.
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1. Is accepting this money going to unduly launder the reputation of a bad actor? In particular, Is the actor sufficiently bad that it is *within the mission* of the charity in question *to fight with* the donor, and will accepting it compromise that part of the mission? If that's the case, then it can be worth refusing the donation entirely even if it means shutting down. No point in surviving if you have to compromise your reason for existing. But this is rarely true.
2. Is accepting the money going to create a situation where the charity now entirely *depends* on the donor, and may more subtly compromise its mission than in point 1?
It feels like this is another place where you should refuse, but in fact the opposite is true. If you have to take problematic money from one kinda-bad actor to keep operating, the best option here is to find a SECOND kinda-bad actor that also is not fully aligned with that first one, so there is a tension between them.
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The entire point of a charity — and many tech foundations[1] the Blender Foundation, the PSF, etc, are charities — is to take donations from people who have enough excess money that they have some available to donate, and to do something better with that money than the donor would have done with it.
I am sure that it is not news to you that *the kind of people who have enough extra money that they can give some away* in our society are not always going to be the most agreeable.
@glyph it is almost always my position that a large donation means that the donor believes the charity is a better steward of those resources than the donor
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@glyph wait is that me or Bradley
@luis_in_brief OR ME -_- @glyph
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2. Is accepting the money going to create a situation where the charity now entirely *depends* on the donor, and may more subtly compromise its mission than in point 1?
It feels like this is another place where you should refuse, but in fact the opposite is true. If you have to take problematic money from one kinda-bad actor to keep operating, the best option here is to find a SECOND kinda-bad actor that also is not fully aligned with that first one, so there is a tension between them.
To put this more simply, *taking* the money is always a good thing. Now the bad actor has less money and the charity has more money, and presumably the world will be a better place for it. Of course it's never that simple, but the question that needs to be asked is, what are the *consequences* of taking the money. Are there strings attached? How bad are they?
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To put this more simply, *taking* the money is always a good thing. Now the bad actor has less money and the charity has more money, and presumably the world will be a better place for it. Of course it's never that simple, but the question that needs to be asked is, what are the *consequences* of taking the money. Are there strings attached? How bad are they?
@glyph sorry there are ALWAYS strings attached. the most obvious unwritten string: you want to appease the donor, so that they donate again
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To put this more simply, *taking* the money is always a good thing. Now the bad actor has less money and the charity has more money, and presumably the world will be a better place for it. Of course it's never that simple, but the question that needs to be asked is, what are the *consequences* of taking the money. Are there strings attached? How bad are they?
@glyph I'll never understand people who are in favor of Robin Hood but draw the line at the rich parting with their money willingly. Concerns should be addressed and I like your list of them, but yeah.
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To put this more simply, *taking* the money is always a good thing. Now the bad actor has less money and the charity has more money, and presumably the world will be a better place for it. Of course it's never that simple, but the question that needs to be asked is, what are the *consequences* of taking the money. Are there strings attached? How bad are they?
If you want charities to refuse "bad" donations, getting mad at the charity *at the moment of the donation* feels like a moment that has high emotional salience, but it's the wrong part of the process to raise objections effectively. But there are things you can do!
- Get involved with fundraising and find better donors (both small-dollar and big ones).
- Help with budgeting and fiscal management of the organization so they need fewer resources and can afford to refuse. -
@glyph something about this sort of reflex reminds me of leftist infighting over ideological purity. I guess it *is* ideological purity testing when you strip it down to brass tacks
anyway, +1, Don't Be A Dick
@SnoopJ @glyph I mean, perhaps as is unsurprising, I don't completely agree here?
I'll start off by saying that no, no one should harass over this (batman snapping gun dot jay pee gee). That said, Blender is definitely looking for tacit approval here, and I don't think silence is an appropriate response to that approval-seeking.
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@SnoopJ @glyph I mean, perhaps as is unsurprising, I don't completely agree here?
I'll start off by saying that no, no one should harass over this (batman snapping gun dot jay pee gee). That said, Blender is definitely looking for tacit approval here, and I don't think silence is an appropriate response to that approval-seeking.
@SnoopJ @glyph With respect to ideological purity, that's a much longer conversation, but I think that criticizing a tool for artists for endorsing a company founded on undermining artistic labor rights is pretty far on the "this is no longer infighting, you're no ally of mine — it's just fighting now" side of the line.
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The entire point of a charity — and many tech foundations[1] the Blender Foundation, the PSF, etc, are charities — is to take donations from people who have enough excess money that they have some available to donate, and to do something better with that money than the donor would have done with it.
I am sure that it is not news to you that *the kind of people who have enough extra money that they can give some away* in our society are not always going to be the most agreeable.
@glyph In a very broad sense outside of just tech, the purpose of charities is for people with excess money to buy control over if/how services reach people with insufficient money.
In an ideal world, charities would be illegal and we would fund these things publicly, with the source of the money (taxes on ppl with too much) completely divorced from decisions about how to spend it (made by genuinely democratic processes).
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@glyph sorry there are ALWAYS strings attached. the most obvious unwritten string: you want to appease the donor, so that they donate again
@aburka "of course it's never that simple"
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@glyph sorry there are ALWAYS strings attached. the most obvious unwritten string: you want to appease the donor, so that they donate again
@aburka @glyph yeah this is the one. The risk is that you take the money, increase spending because you have more money, and now you need this donor to give again so you do things that will make them happy. Maybe this can be mitigated by exclusively using money from certain donors for a contingency fund, and being disciplined about using it. I don't know.
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@aburka "of course it's never that simple"
@aburka Charities piss off donors all the time and donors fail to show up repeatedly whether or not they are pissed off. I agree that this string always exists but it is not always all that strong. For one thing, just like, totally hypothetically, the donor might be going to inevitably go bankrupt in a couple of years anyway because their input costs vastly exceed their revenues in a way which is unlikely to be addressed, and thus their long-term leverage might be extremely limited.
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@SnoopJ @glyph With respect to ideological purity, that's a much longer conversation, but I think that criticizing a tool for artists for endorsing a company founded on undermining artistic labor rights is pretty far on the "this is no longer infighting, you're no ally of mine — it's just fighting now" side of the line.
@SnoopJ @glyph None of that is to endorse harassment, again, but to be careful about also not endorsing silence of passivity. Blender endorsing Anthropic is wrong, and a fundamental betrayal of artistic labor, even aside from the specific problems of Anthropic being a Palantir collaborator.
I think it's important to criticize them for that, and to make those critiques visible to the foundation that made that decision.
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@SnoopJ @glyph I mean, perhaps as is unsurprising, I don't completely agree here?
I'll start off by saying that no, no one should harass over this (batman snapping gun dot jay pee gee). That said, Blender is definitely looking for tacit approval here, and I don't think silence is an appropriate response to that approval-seeking.
@xgranade I definitely agree that it's okay and even good that people are voicing their displeasure, but to @glyph's point, there are even more fruitful avenues: https://mastodon.social/@glyph/116484207353811439
In the context of Blender accepting money from Anthropic specifically, a lot of what bothers me and seems to resonate for other people too is that Blender is framing all this as being so excited to partner with Anthropic, and the implication that Blender agrees with Anthropic's self-description as "reliable" and amazing and blah blah
And *that* kind of thing—how an org interacts with sponsors, how partnerships are announced—is the kind of rolling org policy that gets changed by other means.
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@xgranade I definitely agree that it's okay and even good that people are voicing their displeasure, but to @glyph's point, there are even more fruitful avenues: https://mastodon.social/@glyph/116484207353811439
In the context of Blender accepting money from Anthropic specifically, a lot of what bothers me and seems to resonate for other people too is that Blender is framing all this as being so excited to partner with Anthropic, and the implication that Blender agrees with Anthropic's self-description as "reliable" and amazing and blah blah
And *that* kind of thing—how an org interacts with sponsors, how partnerships are announced—is the kind of rolling org policy that gets changed by other means.
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@SnoopJ @glyph None of that is to endorse harassment, again, but to be careful about also not endorsing silence of passivity. Blender endorsing Anthropic is wrong, and a fundamental betrayal of artistic labor, even aside from the specific problems of Anthropic being a Palantir collaborator.
I think it's important to criticize them for that, and to make those critiques visible to the foundation that made that decision.
@xgranade @SnoopJ I am not opposed to people voicing their displeasure and I understand the criticism. In this case, my own moral calculus is such that the level of endorsement received vs. the amount of dependency induced and the amount of reputational laundering provided is a worthwhile tradeoff. But there *IS* a tradeoff, and the net result could change dramatically, of course, like if Blender were to start shipping with a Claude Code integration OOTB.
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@aburka Charities piss off donors all the time and donors fail to show up repeatedly whether or not they are pissed off. I agree that this string always exists but it is not always all that strong. For one thing, just like, totally hypothetically, the donor might be going to inevitably go bankrupt in a couple of years anyway because their input costs vastly exceed their revenues in a way which is unlikely to be addressed, and thus their long-term leverage might be extremely limited.
@glyph well hypothetically, if the receiving org copy pasted the donor's marketing blurb with no commentary, one might suppose that they believe the hype and don't realize that the funding will dry up soon
