I think I understand the worries and discomfort people feel about this approach. But I’m not sure how fruitful it is for all of us to have a vibes-based conversation about the possible merits of this campaign. It already exists. It might end up being good, it might end up being bad. We can make it better. If you think some of the risks taken and assumptions made by FarmKind are unaddressed, let’s talk about how we can mitigate those. Let’s also figure out how we can support FarmKind do what they intend to do for animals. And most importantly, let’s make sure we learn from this campaign.
How can we learn from this experiment?
Trying new approaches in this complex and relatively new space is great if you thoughtfully measure if it works or not. Measurement and evaluation are especially important because there are backfire risks and because this is a deeply underfunded cause area, so we cannot afford to be careless.
It can be easy to falsely attribute successes and failures. So, what are some indicators that this might demand pivoting / repeating? I’d love to hear from FarmKind, The Mission Motor, behavioral scientists, and ACE researchers who worked on the Better for Animals resource what they think would give us valuable insights.
What is the bar for money raised that would make this worth it? What is the cost of FarmKind’s Veganuary campaign, what else could have been done with those funds, how much money is raised through their platform specifically in response to this campaign?
Can we assess spillover effects?
Are there some PhD students out here who are willing to work with FarmKind to figure out some RCTs to learn some stuff? E.g. how long do people donate, do they change their diet, what do they think of factory farming, what were their priors, etc.
How can we mitigate possible harms?
Risk: discussion remains focused on individual diet change, not ending factory farming
Can FarmKind, now that they have the attention, redirect their messaging and no longer talk about diets but instead about the horrors of factory farming?
Can both vegans/Veganuary and FarmKind state that what they care about is a more hospitable world for all and that industrial agriculture is the enemy.
Risk: moral circle expansion is slowed
Can Toni and FK and participants come out saying something like this, “Don’t get us wrong, we are all actually bleeding hearts, we do care about animals, we don’t think eating animals the way society does now is necessary, natural, or normal, but we are just being pragmatic. We think being vegan is good, but preaching veganism is not.”?
Can they direct some of the funds they raise to high-impact interventions that do things like education programs aimed at fostering compassion and empathy for animals, anti-speciesist policy work, actions promoting moral consideration of animals in public discourse, etc.?
Risk: time is wasted on infighting
Can both Veganuary and FarmKind state that what they agree on and care about is a more hospitable world for all and that industrial agriculture is the enemy?
Can Toni flip-flop some more, and in February say, “You know what, I was wrong. It’s not either/or; it should be both or can be a little bit of each.”?
Can FarmKind share the metrics and results of their campaign and show up in vegan spaces like R/vegan to explain their approach and solicit feedback?
I think AVA is planning to host a discussion about this at their Summit in Canada in May.
Risk: fewer people reduce their animal consumption or do it later
Meat producers can use this in their propaganda; can we use AI to find the conversations about this that misrepresent the arguments and counteract them?
Can Toni and other former vegans come out and say something like, “Actually, after having hung out with all of these meat eaters and learning more about where their food comes from and having seen what it does to their bodies, I think it’s actually kinda gross/disgusting/unsympathetic. I’m happy they donate, but for their sake, I hope they eventually put their mouths where their money is.”
What would happen if Veganuary went on offense with aggressive angles like:
“We applaud that FarmKind offers all the weak-willed meat-addicts out there a compassion cheat code against animal cruelty. We do hope that the people who listen to Toni and FarmKind’s advice 1) also talk with their doctors and nutritionists and 2) learn about the hidden truths about factory farming.”
“We agree that there are multiple roads that lead to Rome, and the super-highway is one where we both do no harm and reduce harm as much as possible. So, we actually already recommend to people who participate in Veganuary also donate to high-impact pro-animal charities. Yes, we are even more holier-than-thou than you thought. We hope vegans put their money where their mouths are. And we hope that offsetters eventually put their mouths where their money is, for animals’ sake and their own.”
“How do you know someone is a meat eater? They will tell you. (And they’re more likely to need GLP-1.)”
“If you’re not one of these privileged people who can buy humanely raised meat and donate money, remember that beans are healthy, cheap, and cruelty free.”
(I don’t particularly endorse any of these messages, but I could see people pulling up a chair and a popcorn bucket to watch this while being exposed to different arguments based on the same premise, that farming cruelty is bad.)
How can we increase the likelihood of success?
Opportunities to increase donation conversion
Is there a possibility for a follow-up press release by FarmKind or a pitch with testimonials of carnists who have made donations?
What would happen if FarmKind dares vegans and Veganuary supporters to donate? Can they do a donation contest with Veganuary? ACE can probably set up a fundraising page for vegans if Veganuary doesn’t want to do it on the FarmKind site. (Happy to credit FarmKind for those donations, but I’d like them to go where they are likely to do the most good.)
Can Toni share where she donates to?
Can we leverage the comment sections to encourage people to share where they donate and include donate links?
Opportunities for awareness increase
Can Toni talk about how Veganuary doesn’t talk about animals enough and too much about health and climate, and how the big problem is factory farming?
Can FarmKind include and promote people in their pitches who also started reducing their meat intake after learning more about factory farming?
Can FarmKind or Toni talk about small-bodied animals and their Shrimpact work? What if Toni says, “Sure, maybe it’s okay if some of these people want to eat some red meat and offset their donations, as long as they don’t start eating chicken or salmon, or eggs.”
There are probably more and more productive ways to help FarmKind and Veganuary and the whole EAA movement in this endeavor. Please share your ideas. Also, what will you do this January, donate, go vegan, or both?
Three final thoughts that I didn’t really know where to put:
If we think AI can soonish solve some of the big alt-protein questions (taste, scaling, price, etc.), then we will still need people to stop thinking they need animal products. If we think public discussions will affect alignment, then we need pro-animal messaging to be out there. I’m wondering if this means that hard-to-measure interventions toward increased prevalence of anti-speciesist values might have become more important than I thought they were. On the other hand, if we think AI will solve factory farming, maybe in the meantime we need to focus as much of our time as possible on increasing the welfare of animals who are farmed until then, and that’s more likely done through welfare campaigns than promoting veganism. Either way, we should probably be careful in how we talk about vegans and bring animals up more often, even in meat reduction work. However, I’m very uncertain about all of this and curious what you think.
What could this offsetting approach to donating mean for effective giving? Is there a way to leverage this work to get people to make GWWC pledges or to get offsetters to think about how they use their donations in general. FarmKind wasn’t successful in becoming the Giving Multiplier for animals and pivoted to offsetting, but maybe they can still direct offsetters to the Giving Multiplier?
I work fulltime in animal advocacy. I don’t think that gives me an excuse to eat animals. I am vegan. I don’t think that absolves me from donating to effective charities to reduce as much harm as possible. It’s a privilege that I can do all three of these things. In this world, few people can. It seems good to encourage people to do everything they can, while also understanding that might be limited. So, let’s help people help more animals as best as they can. We need to understand better what works and work together to make that happen.
Edit: This is my personal take and not Animal Charity Evaluators’ opinion.
But I’m not sure how fruitful it is for all of us to have a vibes-based conversation about the possible merits of this campaign.
I think promoting good norms and making them more “common knowledge” is one of the few ways that EA Forum conversations can maybe be useful.
As in, I think it’s good that “everyone knows that everyone knows” that we should have a strong bias to be collaborative towards other projects with similar goals, and these threads can help a bit with that.
(To be clear, my sense is that FarmKind is already well aware of this and this is collaborative campaign, especially after reading their comment. I mean for the EA Forum readers community as a whole)
Really well written, and an incredibly good breakdown of some of some of the strategic factors here that I wouldn’t have come up with myself reading the above.
But I also think you may have partially missed the mark here. Statements like:
Trying new approaches in this complex and relatively new space is great if you thoughtfully measure if it works or not.
are utilitarian in flavor and really the whole of the comment is. What if you think this sort of thing is just promoting bad norms that just sort of feel deontologically wrong?
One way I can see that is violating a norm of kindness to others. Vegans sacrifice a lot, and to have someone highlighting the negatives from within the movement isn’t great vibes. “But they’re not talking about current vegans, just those potentially thinking about change” Okay great, try telling the Christian that they should stop recruiting because Christians “annoy friends and family” leading a lifestyle that’s a significant burden to everyone, themselves included. I doubt they’ll be enthused. To state what I mean here more clearly rather than leaving it to be inferred: casting sometimes that’s a big part of someone’s life in a negative life generally doesn’t make their day better.
But they protest “No no, you got us wrong. We really are pro vegans, we just think this is a more effective way to get eyes on the issue and increase exposure to AW topics” Now I think this is potentially violating some norm of trust or honesty. Maybe if the person comes to care about AW they wouldn’t really care in the end, but I know if I decided to start donating rather than trying for diet change again, just to discover that this was all some ploy to drum up further controversy and reach, I’d feel played and more than a bit disillusioned.
If I put on my utilitarian cap, everything you say above seems right. If I put on my deontologist cap, this campaign just doesn’t seem quite right. The utilitarian in me feels compelled to say “but I also don’t know what it’s like to work in comms around AW, and maybe attention really is just some significant bottleneck standing between further animal lives saved”. The deontologist then responds “yeah, maybe. But is this the type of thing you’d see in a healthy community of animal advocates?” [1]
I realize that you’re not endorsing the strategy and are just analyzing it, part of this speaks to the analysis but part of it is also aimed at those executing as well.
Just a quick word from me, Nicoll from The Mission Motor (TMM supports Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning in the animal movement). Thanks Stien, for your balanced and clear thoughts and for asking for our take.
Based on what I read, I would consider this to be a novel and higher-risk intervention. Many of the more common interventions in the animal space could do with more robust data gathering, but a higher-risk/novel intervention would warrant an even stronger focus on MEL.
Common data gathering instruments, such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, etc. (when asking the right questions), can work well here to gather relevant data. And, saying this with a bit of caution, I don’t think more elaborate MEL tools are needed.
Some of the challenges we foresee are reaching particular groups you might want data on (eg. people who read the campaign materials and don’t actively engage, but could change their attitude or behaviour) and saying something sensible about the overall effect of the campaign. Particularly as it likely impacts another campaign (Veganuary), and because of comparing increased animal welfare through donations vs less animals in factory farming leading net negative lives as a result of less animal consumption.
I think it is possible to overcome these and other challenges, but this might come at too high a cost to still be a responsible use of resources.
To be able to properly comment on credible indicators, I’d love to know the specific Theory of Change, so I won’t go into that now.
I totally assume FarmKind has done some MEL work already, but if we can be of assistance, we’d be happy to help!
Love this comment so so much! Only minor disagreement is that I think the forum here isn’t a bad place to have a bit of a “vibes based” conversation about a campaign like this. Then we can move into great analysis like yours right here.
I think I understand the worries and discomfort people feel about this approach. But I’m not sure how fruitful it is for all of us to have a vibes-based conversation about the possible merits of this campaign. It already exists. It might end up being good, it might end up being bad. We can make it better. If you think some of the risks taken and assumptions made by FarmKind are unaddressed, let’s talk about how we can mitigate those. Let’s also figure out how we can support FarmKind do what they intend to do for animals. And most importantly, let’s make sure we learn from this campaign.
How can we learn from this experiment?
Trying new approaches in this complex and relatively new space is great if you thoughtfully measure if it works or not. Measurement and evaluation are especially important because there are backfire risks and because this is a deeply underfunded cause area, so we cannot afford to be careless.
It can be easy to falsely attribute successes and failures. So, what are some indicators that this might demand pivoting / repeating? I’d love to hear from FarmKind, The Mission Motor, behavioral scientists, and ACE researchers who worked on the Better for Animals resource what they think would give us valuable insights.
What is the bar for money raised that would make this worth it? What is the cost of FarmKind’s Veganuary campaign, what else could have been done with those funds, how much money is raised through their platform specifically in response to this campaign?
Can we assess spillover effects?
Are there some PhD students out here who are willing to work with FarmKind to figure out some RCTs to learn some stuff? E.g. how long do people donate, do they change their diet, what do they think of factory farming, what were their priors, etc.
How can we mitigate possible harms?
Risk: discussion remains focused on individual diet change, not ending factory farming
Can FarmKind, now that they have the attention, redirect their messaging and no longer talk about diets but instead about the horrors of factory farming?
Can both vegans/Veganuary and FarmKind state that what they care about is a more hospitable world for all and that industrial agriculture is the enemy.
Risk: moral circle expansion is slowed
Can Toni and FK and participants come out saying something like this, “Don’t get us wrong, we are all actually bleeding hearts, we do care about animals, we don’t think eating animals the way society does now is necessary, natural, or normal, but we are just being pragmatic. We think being vegan is good, but preaching veganism is not.”?
Can they direct some of the funds they raise to high-impact interventions that do things like education programs aimed at fostering compassion and empathy for animals, anti-speciesist policy work, actions promoting moral consideration of animals in public discourse, etc.?
Risk: time is wasted on infighting
Can both Veganuary and FarmKind state that what they agree on and care about is a more hospitable world for all and that industrial agriculture is the enemy?
Can Toni flip-flop some more, and in February say, “You know what, I was wrong. It’s not either/or; it should be both or can be a little bit of each.”?
Can FarmKind share the metrics and results of their campaign and show up in vegan spaces like R/vegan to explain their approach and solicit feedback?
I think AVA is planning to host a discussion about this at their Summit in Canada in May.
Risk: fewer people reduce their animal consumption or do it later
Meat producers can use this in their propaganda; can we use AI to find the conversations about this that misrepresent the arguments and counteract them?
Can Toni and other former vegans come out and say something like, “Actually, after having hung out with all of these meat eaters and learning more about where their food comes from and having seen what it does to their bodies, I think it’s actually kinda gross/disgusting/unsympathetic. I’m happy they donate, but for their sake, I hope they eventually put their mouths where their money is.”
What would happen if Veganuary went on offense with aggressive angles like:
“We applaud that FarmKind offers all the weak-willed meat-addicts out there a compassion cheat code against animal cruelty. We do hope that the people who listen to Toni and FarmKind’s advice 1) also talk with their doctors and nutritionists and 2) learn about the hidden truths about factory farming.”
“We agree that there are multiple roads that lead to Rome, and the super-highway is one where we both do no harm and reduce harm as much as possible. So, we actually already recommend to people who participate in Veganuary also donate to high-impact pro-animal charities. Yes, we are even more holier-than-thou than you thought. We hope vegans put their money where their mouths are. And we hope that offsetters eventually put their mouths where their money is, for animals’ sake and their own.”
“How do you know someone is a meat eater? They will tell you. (And they’re more likely to need GLP-1.)”
“If you’re not one of these privileged people who can buy humanely raised meat and donate money, remember that beans are healthy, cheap, and cruelty free.”
(I don’t particularly endorse any of these messages, but I could see people pulling up a chair and a popcorn bucket to watch this while being exposed to different arguments based on the same premise, that farming cruelty is bad.)
How can we increase the likelihood of success?
Opportunities to increase donation conversion
Is there a possibility for a follow-up press release by FarmKind or a pitch with testimonials of carnists who have made donations?
What would happen if FarmKind dares vegans and Veganuary supporters to donate? Can they do a donation contest with Veganuary? ACE can probably set up a fundraising page for vegans if Veganuary doesn’t want to do it on the FarmKind site. (Happy to credit FarmKind for those donations, but I’d like them to go where they are likely to do the most good.)
Can Toni share where she donates to?
Can we leverage the comment sections to encourage people to share where they donate and include donate links?
Opportunities for awareness increase
Can Toni talk about how Veganuary doesn’t talk about animals enough and too much about health and climate, and how the big problem is factory farming?
Can FarmKind include and promote people in their pitches who also started reducing their meat intake after learning more about factory farming?
Can FarmKind or Toni talk about small-bodied animals and their Shrimpact work? What if Toni says, “Sure, maybe it’s okay if some of these people want to eat some red meat and offset their donations, as long as they don’t start eating chicken or salmon, or eggs.”
There are probably more and more productive ways to help FarmKind and Veganuary and the whole EAA movement in this endeavor. Please share your ideas. Also, what will you do this January, donate, go vegan, or both?
Three final thoughts that I didn’t really know where to put:
If we think AI can soonish solve some of the big alt-protein questions (taste, scaling, price, etc.), then we will still need people to stop thinking they need animal products. If we think public discussions will affect alignment, then we need pro-animal messaging to be out there. I’m wondering if this means that hard-to-measure interventions toward increased prevalence of anti-speciesist values might have become more important than I thought they were. On the other hand, if we think AI will solve factory farming, maybe in the meantime we need to focus as much of our time as possible on increasing the welfare of animals who are farmed until then, and that’s more likely done through welfare campaigns than promoting veganism. Either way, we should probably be careful in how we talk about vegans and bring animals up more often, even in meat reduction work. However, I’m very uncertain about all of this and curious what you think.
What could this offsetting approach to donating mean for effective giving? Is there a way to leverage this work to get people to make GWWC pledges or to get offsetters to think about how they use their donations in general. FarmKind wasn’t successful in becoming the Giving Multiplier for animals and pivoted to offsetting, but maybe they can still direct offsetters to the Giving Multiplier?
I work fulltime in animal advocacy. I don’t think that gives me an excuse to eat animals. I am vegan. I don’t think that absolves me from donating to effective charities to reduce as much harm as possible. It’s a privilege that I can do all three of these things. In this world, few people can. It seems good to encourage people to do everything they can, while also understanding that might be limited. So, let’s help people help more animals as best as they can. We need to understand better what works and work together to make that happen.
Edit: This is my personal take and not Animal Charity Evaluators’ opinion.
I think promoting good norms and making them more “common knowledge” is one of the few ways that EA Forum conversations can maybe be useful.
As in, I think it’s good that “everyone knows that everyone knows” that we should have a strong bias to be collaborative towards other projects with similar goals, and these threads can help a bit with that.
(To be clear, my sense is that FarmKind is already well aware of this and this is collaborative campaign, especially after reading their comment. I mean for the EA Forum readers community as a whole)
Edit: new comment from FarmKind
Really well written, and an incredibly good breakdown of some of some of the strategic factors here that I wouldn’t have come up with myself reading the above.
But I also think you may have partially missed the mark here. Statements like:
are utilitarian in flavor and really the whole of the comment is. What if you think this sort of thing is just promoting bad norms that just sort of feel deontologically wrong?
One way I can see that is violating a norm of kindness to others. Vegans sacrifice a lot, and to have someone highlighting the negatives from within the movement isn’t great vibes. “But they’re not talking about current vegans, just those potentially thinking about change” Okay great, try telling the Christian that they should stop recruiting because Christians “annoy friends and family” leading a lifestyle that’s a significant burden to everyone, themselves included. I doubt they’ll be enthused. To state what I mean here more clearly rather than leaving it to be inferred: casting sometimes that’s a big part of someone’s life in a negative life generally doesn’t make their day better.
But they protest “No no, you got us wrong. We really are pro vegans, we just think this is a more effective way to get eyes on the issue and increase exposure to AW topics” Now I think this is potentially violating some norm of trust or honesty. Maybe if the person comes to care about AW they wouldn’t really care in the end, but I know if I decided to start donating rather than trying for diet change again, just to discover that this was all some ploy to drum up further controversy and reach, I’d feel played and more than a bit disillusioned.
If I put on my utilitarian cap, everything you say above seems right. If I put on my deontologist cap, this campaign just doesn’t seem quite right. The utilitarian in me feels compelled to say “but I also don’t know what it’s like to work in comms around AW, and maybe attention really is just some significant bottleneck standing between further animal lives saved”. The deontologist then responds “yeah, maybe. But is this the type of thing you’d see in a healthy community of animal advocates?” [1]
I realize that you’re not endorsing the strategy and are just analyzing it, part of this speaks to the analysis but part of it is also aimed at those executing as well.
Just a quick word from me, Nicoll from The Mission Motor (TMM supports Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning in the animal movement). Thanks Stien, for your balanced and clear thoughts and for asking for our take.
Based on what I read, I would consider this to be a novel and higher-risk intervention. Many of the more common interventions in the animal space could do with more robust data gathering, but a higher-risk/novel intervention would warrant an even stronger focus on MEL.
Common data gathering instruments, such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, etc. (when asking the right questions), can work well here to gather relevant data. And, saying this with a bit of caution, I don’t think more elaborate MEL tools are needed.
Some of the challenges we foresee are reaching particular groups you might want data on (eg. people who read the campaign materials and don’t actively engage, but could change their attitude or behaviour) and saying something sensible about the overall effect of the campaign. Particularly as it likely impacts another campaign (Veganuary), and because of comparing increased animal welfare through donations vs less animals in factory farming leading net negative lives as a result of less animal consumption.
I think it is possible to overcome these and other challenges, but this might come at too high a cost to still be a responsible use of resources.
To be able to properly comment on credible indicators, I’d love to know the specific Theory of Change, so I won’t go into that now.
I totally assume FarmKind has done some MEL work already, but if we can be of assistance, we’d be happy to help!
Love this comment so so much! Only minor disagreement is that I think the forum here isn’t a bad place to have a bit of a “vibes based” conversation about a campaign like this. Then we can move into great analysis like yours right here.