Right now, anyone can say anything about EA, and while most people are very thoughtful in their communication and some give really thoughtful constructive criticism, a few people just seem to spread verifiably false claims like “EA does not care about global poverty anymore” (while most of the funding in EA still goes to global poverty), “EA is only white privileged men” (agree that EA could be more diverse, but it’s definitely not only white men) etc. I guess any community that spends 100s of millions dollars per year and influences thousands of people will get at least some unfair criticism, so it does not seem unusual, but as you said it could be really harmful.
What we should do about it?
Ignore it?
Try to correct all false claims online?
Or can we somehow stop people from spreading lies about EA in the first place? Can we trademark EA and then stop people from using the brand if they repeatedly lie about EA and seem not interested in the truth? That’s what most other “brands” do, but we don’t seem to do that, and I feel like that makes EA an easy target for people who somehow got upset with EA and now want to defame it.
Agree, thanks a lot!
Right now, anyone can say anything about EA, and while most people are very thoughtful in their communication and some give really thoughtful constructive criticism, a few people just seem to spread verifiably false claims like “EA does not care about global poverty anymore” (while most of the funding in EA still goes to global poverty), “EA is only white privileged men” (agree that EA could be more diverse, but it’s definitely not only white men) etc. I guess any community that spends 100s of millions dollars per year and influences thousands of people will get at least some unfair criticism, so it does not seem unusual, but as you said it could be really harmful.
What we should do about it?
Ignore it? Try to correct all false claims online? Or can we somehow stop people from spreading lies about EA in the first place? Can we trademark EA and then stop people from using the brand if they repeatedly lie about EA and seem not interested in the truth? That’s what most other “brands” do, but we don’t seem to do that, and I feel like that makes EA an easy target for people who somehow got upset with EA and now want to defame it.
Does CEA have any thoughts about this?