I’m not wild about this campaign either. I’ve shared this feedback privately with Aidan and Thom, but think there’s value to doing so publicly to make clear that EA / the animal movement’s moderate wing / FarmKind’s funders don’t uniformly endorse this approach. (To be clear: I’m writing in my personal capacity and haven’t discussed the following with anyone else at Coefficient Giving.)
I’m a huge fan of FarmKind’s team. I’ve personally donated to them and directed funding to them via Coefficient Giving. I thought they did an incredible job during the Dwarkesh fundraiser earlier this year and I admire their ingenuity and grit in pursuing the very hard challenge of bringing in counterfactually new funds to effective animal advocacy. I appreciate that they meant well with this campaign, which I think they saw as using a a playful fake-feud with Veganuary to generate media.
But I thing this campaign was a mistake for three reasons:
This feels like an incitement to infighting, which has long plagued the animal movement. In recent years, I’ve seen the abolitionist / more radical wing of the animal movement take major good faith steps to reduce this infighting (see, e.g., my session with Wayne Hsiung at this year’s AVA). Whether Veganuary was in on this or not, I’m seeing vegan activists reasonably interpreting this as an attack on their advocacy. I think we should have a very high bar for deliberately starting a fight in the movement, and I don’t think this meets it.
This feels like an attack on vegans. I think we should also have a very high bar for attacking well-meaning people doing good in the world, whether vegans, EAs, organ donors, aid workers, or longtermists. I appreciate that attacking vegans wasn’t the campaign’s intent, but I think it was the predictable result, and certainly how the folks in the Daily Mail’s comments sections have (gleefully) interpreted it.
This feels dishonest. To be clear: I don’t think FarmKind intended it this way and I think the people behind it are deeply ethical people. But I think our movement is at its best when we hold ourselves to high standards and that includes not deliberately misleading people. And creating a fake “meat-eating campaign” feels like it crosses the line for me.
Again, this isn’t to question the intent or abilities of FarmKind’s team. Instead, I’m sharing how I personally feel about this campaign. I hope we can avoid campaigns like this in future, while continuing to pursue the innovation in tactics that the animal movement and EA needs.
I’m not wild about this campaign either. I’ve shared this feedback privately with Aidan and Thom, but think there’s value to doing so publicly to make clear that EA / the animal movement’s moderate wing / FarmKind’s funders don’t uniformly endorse this approach. (To be clear: I’m writing in my personal capacity and haven’t discussed the following with anyone else at Coefficient Giving.)
I’m a huge fan of FarmKind’s team. I’ve personally donated to them and directed funding to them via Coefficient Giving. I thought they did an incredible job during the Dwarkesh fundraiser earlier this year and I admire their ingenuity and grit in pursuing the very hard challenge of bringing in counterfactually new funds to effective animal advocacy. I appreciate that they meant well with this campaign, which I think they saw as using a a playful fake-feud with Veganuary to generate media.
But I thing this campaign was a mistake for three reasons:
This feels like an incitement to infighting, which has long plagued the animal movement. In recent years, I’ve seen the abolitionist / more radical wing of the animal movement take major good faith steps to reduce this infighting (see, e.g., my session with Wayne Hsiung at this year’s AVA). Whether Veganuary was in on this or not, I’m seeing vegan activists reasonably interpreting this as an attack on their advocacy. I think we should have a very high bar for deliberately starting a fight in the movement, and I don’t think this meets it.
This feels like an attack on vegans. I think we should also have a very high bar for attacking well-meaning people doing good in the world, whether vegans, EAs, organ donors, aid workers, or longtermists. I appreciate that attacking vegans wasn’t the campaign’s intent, but I think it was the predictable result, and certainly how the folks in the Daily Mail’s comments sections have (gleefully) interpreted it.
This feels dishonest. To be clear: I don’t think FarmKind intended it this way and I think the people behind it are deeply ethical people. But I think our movement is at its best when we hold ourselves to high standards and that includes not deliberately misleading people. And creating a fake “meat-eating campaign” feels like it crosses the line for me.
Again, this isn’t to question the intent or abilities of FarmKind’s team. Instead, I’m sharing how I personally feel about this campaign. I hope we can avoid campaigns like this in future, while continuing to pursue the innovation in tactics that the animal movement and EA needs.