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Sophie Alpert
@sophiebits
Never have I been less proud to have worked at Khan Academy. After alumni posted criticism about an NFT partnership, Sal Khan called the (legitimate) concerns ridiculous, disrespectful and a poor use of his time, refused to engage – and booted the folks who had posted.
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web3 is going just great
@web3isgreat
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Khan Academy charity auction ends in blatant wash trade, and Khan Academy removing several former employees from alumni Slack channel for raising concerns January 28, 2022 web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=2022-01-28
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Khan Academy charity auction ends in blatant wash trade, and Khan Academy removing several former employees from alumni Slack channel for raising concerns Khan Academy, an otherwise excellent non-profit offering online educational tools, announced they would be participating in an NFT charity auction on January 19. The auction featured an NFT playing card by Parallel, a sci-fi card game that requires players to buy packs of cards (NFTs) to play. Like so many blockchain gaming projects, it appears that the actual gameplay doesn't exist yet—somehow that required a $500 million funding round first. The auction ended on January 21, with a winning bid of 77 ETH (nearly $200,000) from ParagonsDAO, plus the promise of another 34 ETH ($87,000) donation from the DAO to Khan Academy. However, ParagonsDAO is a DAO created specifically to "play a key role in Parallel's governance" and "support the creation of an ecosystem for Parallel to thrive". Former Khan
ecosystem for Parallel to thrive". Former Khan Academy employee S. M. Lundberg raised their concerns about the wash trading, and "KA elevat[ing] Parallel on its own channels to a largely underage and under-resourced user base" in the Khan Academy Slack, and was removed from the channel by Khan Academy founder Sal Khan. At least three other former employees were removed from the channel for criticizing the decision to engage with the NFT project, as was an additional person who protested the removal of those raising concerns. Although the auction ended with more than $250,000 going to Khan Academy, it is likely that Parallel got the better deal here—Khan Academy is an enormous name to have promoting one's project. Sal Khan actively hyped the project in various spaces, including in an appearance on CNBC's Squawk Box. Tweet thread by smlundberg "NFT sci-fi card game Parallel raises at $500M valuation from Paradigm", TechCrunch
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Sophie Alpert
@sophiebits
Other employees in the channel said the critique was helpful and some said they shared the concerns after doing more research. One example comment that was apparently deemed "inflammatory" / "bullying" / "pure misinformation" enough to merit expulsion:
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S.M. Lundberg
@smlundberg
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How it started how it's going
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Sophie Alpert
@sophiebits
The only personal criticisms I saw were directed at Sal himself, for making decisions unilaterally, not being open to feedback, and not letting the organization outgrow him. Which I guess is his right. I'm sure it's not a mistake that he put his name in the company name.
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Sophie Alpert
@sophiebits
But I guess it's all too much for him/them, so he killed the channel today, even saying (among other things) it's "a real security risk" (yeah right). The email about this ends with a list of links. The first link is "Please consider donating to Khan Academy." I don't plan to.
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