We posted an article about Sinergia on February 20th indicating that their 354piglets per dollar claim was wrong.
On March 21st, Sinergia commented acknowledging that their 354piglets per dollar claim was wrong. Their comment also included the follow advertisement from their main donation page.
(image from Sinergia’s March 21st comment)
On April 9th (8 days before publication), we sent Sinergia a follow-up article expressing our concern that they were misleading donors with their advertisements.
On April 21st, Sinergia still had not stopped advertising the 354 piglets per dollar claim on their main donation page.
We then made a post stating Sinergia was committing fraud. Less than 24 hours after we made this post, Sinergia took down the 354 piglets per dollar claim.
I think you behaved inappropriately, as I and others explained in the comments on that post about the dubious “fraud” accusation. I completely understand why Sinergia said they don’t want to engage with your criticism anymore.
Upvotes/downvotes are not a meaningless number in this context, but a sign of EA Forum users’ opinion on whether you behaved appropriately and whether your claim that Sinergia committed fraud was true or misleading. You can see this in the comments on that post as well. It seems like there is, so far, unanimous agreement that you behaved inappropriately and that your claim was misleading or false.
I’m not sure if Vetted Causes is a salvageable project at this point. Its reputation is badly damaged. It might be best to put the project to an end and move on to something else.
Speaking for myself, I will never trust any evaluation that Vetted Causes ever publishes about any charity, and I would feel an obligation to warn people in this community that Vetted Causes is an untrustworthy and unreliable source for charity evaluations.
I’m already on record in this comment thread that I don’t agree with the norms laid out above regarding reaching out to orgs and a right to reply. At the same time, I’m extremely worried you all at VettedCauses will take the focus on those issues and assume that you have some amazing criticism that the community is ignoring because they can’t look past the fact you didn’t color within the lines on those issues. Although I haven’t followed whatever is going on with you all, I very seriously doubt that is the case. It seems extremely likely to me that people have given valid push-back to your criticism, and you yourselves are now ignoring that push-back. You can’t just criticize others but ignore criticism directed at yourselves!
Yarrow points out that this could be an existential issue for your organization, I think you all need to really seriously take that type of criticism onboard and think long and hard about it. I hope the fact that I disagree about the things like right to reply but still share these concerns helps get it through to you all that the criticism you are receiving is not solely because you failed on those counts. I don’t give a single fuck about whether you gave someone a right to reply or whatever, but I still think what you all have been doing has a very high chance of being inappropriate and your criticisms probably have many serious issues on their merits.
Editing to add: Although I agree with what I said above, I also thought about this whole situation a bit, and I’m sure this situation feels terrible for you all, and I’m sorry for that. I think you all probably made some mistakes, but so have all of us. You all aren’t bad people or bad EAs or anything like that. Giving criticism is hard, and its unfortunately an area where mistakes that wouldn’t even get noticed in other places can earn you a lot of negative attention. Although I think there is important stuff for you all to learn from here, I hope you don’t take this experience as an indictment of you all as people.
Hi Yarrow, thank you for your comment.
We posted an article about Sinergia on February 20th indicating that their 354 piglets per dollar claim was wrong.
On March 21st, Sinergia commented acknowledging that their 354 piglets per dollar claim was wrong. Their comment also included the follow advertisement from their main donation page.
(image from Sinergia’s March 21st comment)
On April 9th (8 days before publication), we sent Sinergia a follow-up article expressing our concern that they were misleading donors with their advertisements.
On April 21st, Sinergia still had not stopped advertising the 354 piglets per dollar claim on their main donation page.
We then made a post stating Sinergia was committing fraud. Less than 24 hours after we made this post, Sinergia took down the 354 piglets per dollar claim.
Our priority is protecting donors, not upvotes.
I think you behaved inappropriately, as I and others explained in the comments on that post about the dubious “fraud” accusation. I completely understand why Sinergia said they don’t want to engage with your criticism anymore.
Upvotes/downvotes are not a meaningless number in this context, but a sign of EA Forum users’ opinion on whether you behaved appropriately and whether your claim that Sinergia committed fraud was true or misleading. You can see this in the comments on that post as well. It seems like there is, so far, unanimous agreement that you behaved inappropriately and that your claim was misleading or false.
I’m not sure if Vetted Causes is a salvageable project at this point. Its reputation is badly damaged. It might be best to put the project to an end and move on to something else.
Speaking for myself, I will never trust any evaluation that Vetted Causes ever publishes about any charity, and I would feel an obligation to warn people in this community that Vetted Causes is an untrustworthy and unreliable source for charity evaluations.
Thanks for your opinion.
I’m already on record in this comment thread that I don’t agree with the norms laid out above regarding reaching out to orgs and a right to reply. At the same time, I’m extremely worried you all at VettedCauses will take the focus on those issues and assume that you have some amazing criticism that the community is ignoring because they can’t look past the fact you didn’t color within the lines on those issues. Although I haven’t followed whatever is going on with you all, I very seriously doubt that is the case. It seems extremely likely to me that people have given valid push-back to your criticism, and you yourselves are now ignoring that push-back. You can’t just criticize others but ignore criticism directed at yourselves!
Yarrow points out that this could be an existential issue for your organization, I think you all need to really seriously take that type of criticism onboard and think long and hard about it. I hope the fact that I disagree about the things like right to reply but still share these concerns helps get it through to you all that the criticism you are receiving is not solely because you failed on those counts. I don’t give a single fuck about whether you gave someone a right to reply or whatever, but I still think what you all have been doing has a very high chance of being inappropriate and your criticisms probably have many serious issues on their merits.
Editing to add: Although I agree with what I said above, I also thought about this whole situation a bit, and I’m sure this situation feels terrible for you all, and I’m sorry for that. I think you all probably made some mistakes, but so have all of us. You all aren’t bad people or bad EAs or anything like that. Giving criticism is hard, and its unfortunately an area where mistakes that wouldn’t even get noticed in other places can earn you a lot of negative attention. Although I think there is important stuff for you all to learn from here, I hope you don’t take this experience as an indictment of you all as people.
It seems to be just the one overconfident young guy