You may not intend it, but when you write, "created by billionaire bankers" it doesn't add to the conversation much (specific behavior influenced by that funding would be more useful, if it exists) and is recalls some kind of unpalatable language/imagery used by far right groups - which I'm definitely not accusing you of, to be clear.
One thing you may not know is that they publish their full financials, in accordance with the mission statement around transparency. You can see their full 2017 finances here: https://assets.propublica.org/2017-Financial-Statements-for-... (and you can see they are financially conservative, but are very much in need of funding to support their operations).
I have no connection to them other than admiration for how they are operated and their mission.
We were discussing whether facebook should fund pro publica like they are supporting struggling local news companies. Since pro publica is supported by billionaire bankers, they aren't struggling for money and if they need it, they can tap the foundation that the billionaire bankers set up for them. Frankly, I don't think facebook should be supporting either, but given the choice between struggling local news and pro publica, I think struggling local news is the proper choice. Also, I'm not accusing you of being a far leftist to be clear, but it's an unpalatable tactic used by the far left to label everything as being far right and it really doesn't add much to the conversation. Also, if a company is financially conservative, they wouldn't be in need of additionally funding. That's the central idea of financial conservatism, the budget drives your needs rather than your needs driving the budget.
First, not accusing you of being far right (to the contrary I specifically stated I was not).
I was responding to specific point in your comment. They don't have a huge trust fund, they have a public budget. They don't run a deficit, but they have areas they would invest in if they had more donations. If they ceased getting donations, they would not be able to operate.
To the point of this article, I think Facebook has approximately zero credibility in this area, whether they donate to local news companies or anyone else. They have done as much as anyone to kill local news (by moving the content into the newsfeed as by creating bad metrics that caused many news companies to pivot to video content).
That preamble in his post was most likely drawing a a connection between "billionaire bankers" and the far-right triple parentheses anti-banker sentiment (to be a bit euphemistic).
Yeah. And your response to my original comment is fair. It is definitely a dog-whistle for some people, but I had ceding ground to people trying to steal common usage words to encode hate speech. I was on the fence about mentioning it.
One thing you may not know is that they publish their full financials, in accordance with the mission statement around transparency. You can see their full 2017 finances here: https://assets.propublica.org/2017-Financial-Statements-for-... (and you can see they are financially conservative, but are very much in need of funding to support their operations).
I have no connection to them other than admiration for how they are operated and their mission.