Comments - Is all charity good?

#1 /* 14 months, 25 days ago */

Imagine my surprise when by looking at your homepage I found out that my favorite moral philosopher for this week was a 22-year-old year-old. Since I'm old enough to be your grandmother (if a couple of generations planned badly) you may be surprised too.

I like your skepticism and your generosity of spirit. It's good to be able to discern when something is "morally fucked." Have you taken a course or two in economics? Clicking to fill that rice bowl is really inefficient.

Someplace on the FreeRice website is the statement that "FreeRice and its sister site Poverty.com do not make any money from this." John Breen may have thought that would be the case when he set the site up. Since it has become such an Internet phenomenon, that may have changed.

I hope Freerice won't set questionable precedents for Internet charitable efforts. The lack of transparency isn't good. If he is raking in the bucks, "some for the poor and a lot for him" isn't such a great motto. We'll see what develops.

That said, the game to encourage vocabulary building is a brilliant idea. I reached level 48 once.

Joan

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Joan Sweeney Anonymous User

#2 /* 14 months, 25 days ago */

don't have that much time, so i'll be brief.

the key point that i think you fail to consider is to /correctly/ calculate the opportunity cost. you assume that if someone is not playing the game, they would be doing something more worthwhile and productive, earning about $30/hour. however, the thing is, people only spend their downtime, their "play around on the net" time, playing freerice, not their otherwise-productive work time. if they were not playing freerice, they'd just be playing something else - they wouldn't be using that time to do real actual work for an extra hour.

people need some amount of unproductive downtime to relax, so the point of freerice is to harness this normally-unproductive downtime into producing something of value. it is a similar idea as http://recaptcha.net/ - parsing small bits of text is not the most productive thing to do, but since people will have to do it anyway, they might as well harness that time and produce something out of it.

so, you are right in that people shouldn't use the time they'd otherwise spend being productive on playing freerice, because freerice is just not productive enough to justify that. however, spending your otherwise-unproductive downtime on freerice may actually be an economically efficient thing to do. inasmuch as freerice gives you an opportunity to be productive during downtime, it provides a valuable service.

well, i guess i was less brief than i thought i'd be. :)

p.s. using ricebots, like http://smokyflavor.wikispaces.com/RiceMaker, increases the "productivity" of freerice even further (though the long-term sustainability of that practice is uncertain.)

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nano Anonymous User

#3 — Author comment /* 14 months, 25 days ago */

Joan: I'm touched that I'm somebody's "favorite moral philosopher for this week". I haven't taken any economics classes but I'm familiar with the concepts and all it took was a little bit of maths and web-research to find out the figures needed to come to these conclusions.

I'm sure Breen isn't skimming off the top. From his past web experience, he looks like a decent chap, thoroughly concerned about world poverty and hunger. The point I was alluding to - although I might not have said it out aloud - is that if people trust him on face value, they're likely to trust other schemes like this; and if I know the internet even half as well as I think I do, there will be scammers running sites like FreeRice.com and pocketing the cash.

This is just one good reason why charities are a separate legal entity. There needs to be a legally-binding trust framework in place and people also need to expect charitable organisations to be registered.

Nano: My figure of $30 a week was just a suggestion, that they take some of their unproductive time and use a tiny portion for charity. Assuming you play FreeRice a couple of hours a day, 14 hours a week, the equivalent donation would actually be just $1 a week.

As I said before, play FreeRice as a game - just don't get all warm and fuzzy inside because you think you've just given somebody a "bowl" of rice. 100 grains is closer to a spoonful of rice.

ReCAPTCHA is slightly different because it's not recreational and people don't think they're doing good when they come across one. it's just a nice gimmick for web site owners to have a CAPTCHA system that, in turn, does some good. To the user, it's just another CAPTCHA where they have no choice in the matter.

And these RiceMaker (et al) scripts out there are a real danger to this system because their programmers haven't understood what's going on with FreeRice's "sponsorship". The adverts on FR are Pay-Per-Action adverts - meaning they don't pay anything unless people click through and buy something. The way Breen explains how FR is funded is presumably to blame for this because he says:

10 grains of rice are donated for every correct answer. In exchange for advertisements on the website, various corporations such as Apple Inc., Toshiba, Fujitsu, Reader's Digest, Liz Claiborne, Radisson, Macy's, iTunes, American Express, Time Life, and Office Depot donate the money necessary to pay for the rice and other costs to run FreeRice.

... and it sounds like they're personally involved, so they'll cover any cost of the bots attacking his site, when this isn't the case at all.

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Oli Numero Uno

#4 /* 14 months, 24 days ago */

Nano: My figure of $30 a week was just a suggestion, that they take some of their unproductive time and use a tiny portion for charity. Assuming you play FreeRice a couple of hours a day, 14 hours a week, the equivalent donation would actually be just $1 a week.

you seem to have missed the point of the argument - the dollar figure doesn't matter, what matters is your assumption that people would, if they weren't playing freerice, engage in a more productive activity, rather than in a less productive activity, which is just not necessarily the case.

As I said before, play FreeRice as a game - just don't get all warm and fuzzy inside because you think you've just given somebody a "bowl" of rice. 100 grains is closer to a spoonful of rice.

i have already agreed with that point in my previous post. :)

ReCAPTCHA is slightly different because it's not recreational and people don't think they're doing good when they come across one. it's just a nice gimmick for web site owners to have a CAPTCHA system that, in turn, does some good. To the user, it's just another CAPTCHA where they have no choice in the matter.

it is indeed slightly different, but for the purposes of this analogy, it has all the necessary attributes to make it relevant. think about it. :)

And these RiceMaker (et al) scripts out there are a real danger to this system because their programmers haven't understood what's going on with FreeRice's "sponsorship". The adverts on FR are Pay-Per-Action adverts - meaning they don't pay anything unless people click through and buy something. The way Breen explains how FR is funded is presumably to blame for this because he says:
10 grains of rice are donated for every correct answer. In exchange for advertisements on the website, various corporations such as Apple Inc., Toshiba, Fujitsu, Reader's Digest, Liz Claiborne, Radisson, Macy's, iTunes, American Express, Time Life, and Office Depot donate the money necessary to pay for the rice and other costs to run FreeRice.
... and it sounds like they're personally involved, so they'll cover any cost of the bots attacking his site, when this isn't the case at all.

where do you get the info that these are PPA ads? i did not find any info that linksynergy is only PPA when i looked around. it seems that they do many kinds of PP[X] ads. also, what makes you think they are /not/ personally involved?

if they are not, and these are indeed PPA ads - then wouldn't the site creator have done much better to just use some regular PPM adsense ads, in order to match his outputs (small bit for every page view) with his inputs (small bit for every page view)? the guy was clever enough to come up with the site, i'm sure he'd be clever enough to figure out that you don't want to rely on PPA for a site like this. :)

p.s. i'm the same guy as nano, but now your site claims that someone took the name and requires some silly login, so i went with nano1. :)

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nano1 Anonymous User

#5 — Author comment /* 14 months, 24 days ago */

p.s. i'm the same guy as nano, but now your site claims that someone took the name and requires some silly login, so i went with nano1. :)

You did! When you click the "send me an email when somebody replies" box, it creates an account for you and it should have sent you the login details. I'll work on improving the way it all works tonight.

LinkShare is an affiliate network an in other words, they provide PPA advertising. I don't think there's any dispute over that.

wouldn't the site creator have done much better to just use some regular PPM adsense ads[?]

Yes, I think so - though you could argue that people may [correctly] feel that by clicking through and even buying something, they're doing good. PPA does tend to pay out significantly higher than PPC but the action-rate is much lower than a click-rate. PPM would probably be a much more suitable model because it matches his model accurately but he *would* have to have personal interaction for them to advertise there.

the dollar figure doesn't matter, what matters is your assumption that people would, if they weren't playing freerice, engage in a more productive activity, rather than in a less productive activity, which is just not necessarily the case.

It does matter slightly. Every working person in the western world could afford $1 a week without having to work extra time. My point was that people playing FR for the warm-n-fuzzy-factor could easily make a significant rice donation - they just don't know they need to because they're likely ignorant to how little rice 10 grains really is.

Breen could significantly improve this aspect by allowing people to donate cash through a third party (proper charity site) with no overhead fees for him. With the numbers of people visiting there, I'm surprised he hasn't linked in any other relevant charities.

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Oli Numero Uno

#6 /* 14 months, 24 days ago */

Totally agreed. One of the problems with (for example) selling someone a medecine that has little or no effect is that people take it in lieu of more effective medications. People should have to do more than vocabulary tests for their "warm fuzzies" IMO!

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Maryanne Leblanc Anonymous User

#7 /* 14 months, 16 days ago */

As a teacher, I was thrilled with so much about freerice.com. As a mother of a web designer who explained to me how these sites worked, I was crushed. As a careful researcher (admittedly after the fact - I should have researched before I involved my students), I am now perplexed. I am especially concerned with the number of charity websites with which Mr. Breen seems to be affiliated. Secondly, I am concerned that none of these are registered charities and that the transparency which allows people to make good decisions when selecting charitable foundations is missing. I would love some confirmation from him that I and my students have not been duped.

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gibby Anonymous User

#8 /* 12 months, 2 days ago */

6 hours for one dollar? If that is correct (I am not going to do the math, I will assume you are close) then I can see what you mean for an individual person this might not be the best way to donate their money, since nowadays time is so much more valuable. In fact it seems downright ridiculous. And very enlightening.

However, I am thinking about this how you said "there have been about 1.7 billion grains of rice donated. That equates out to about $10,000. It's a mighty donation for just over a month of running but when you consider that it took people a shared 54 years to get there, you have to wonder if it's a good cause at all." Shared 54 years? what does that number really have to do with anything? however many million people have visited the site, whats the figure on time per person spent? lets see that math, if it is more then a few seconds per person! If in one month this site got 10,000 dollars in donations, that is absolutely significant.

Do you honestly think people who spend a few minutes a day, or playing on the side while they work, or wasting time during class on freerice feel is detracting form time they would have spent on other charities? that they are doing their part for charity and therefore will keep them from charitable work they will have done otherwise? Come on, I don't think so, and to believe that is silly. Maybe there are a very few people who believe they are changing the world by playing vocab games and need to be reminded that sitting and playing this game for 6 hours a day isn't an effective way to individually be charitable... for them your post is very reasonable and important... but for most people, they understand and are delighted by the fact that this is just a fun and somewhat helpful way to waste a few minutes here and there. And Breen, and most of the modern internet world, understands the power in a few minutes here and there from a million people. It certainly CAN make a difference ($10,000 in one month!!), especially when those few minutes would be spent fucking around on facebook or solitare, not time otherwise spent on more substantial charities. It just seems like you are missing this point entirely, that the time spent on freerice is stolen from worthless time-wasting internet indulgences, not from time people would be spending doing rounds in the charity van. I love the enthusiasm and the research you are putting into this however! keep it up

Cheers,
Nick {at} TheIssue.com

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Niko Normal User

#9 /* 8 months, 12 days ago */

As in the Freerice discussion page, there are a couple of key issues that the "all charity is good" side has failed to acknowledge, and as a seasoned debater, I'm here to point them out:

"Well at least people are doing something"
This is a big fallacy, guys, because we have to remember that there is such a thing as opportunity cost. If it takes you 6-14 hours to create a single dollar for the needy, and you feel good doing it, then let's assume you feel that you've done your part. Say the millions of people who go on the site weekly feel the same.

What remains is that while they ARE contributing at a minute rate to giving to a illegitimate aid program (since Freerice isn't registered as a charity), these people could have contributed that dollar in a matter of seconds, and done a lot more. There is a real, tangible opportunity cost here- when you consider that not only is the entire idea of how effective Food aid programs are in their entirety, but even then- people are going hungry because the inefficacy of the charity websites congratulates people for doing far less than they are capable of.

I, and I'm sure a lot of other people here, would rather Freerice be converted to a website that lets people know that it takes a fraction of a dollar to buy a kilogram of rice- or that it takes precious few more dollars to buy fertilizer for a farmer.

We cannot justify a climate of ignorace with the phrase "at least people are doing something", if that small something is a replacement of a big something.

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Moomoo Anonymous User

#10 /* 7 months, 26 days ago */

what about www.freecorn.org like freerice but they donate just for you to visit

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johnds2007 Normal User

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