Employees of EA organisations should not be pressured by their superiors to not publish critical work
If it’s possible without putting whistleblowers in jeopardy, I would like to know if you have specific examples of this. I’ve heard a number of worrying claims about stuff ‘an EA org’ or ‘some EA orgs’ do, including this, but without knowing the alleged specifics I have no idea how to update on them. Since we’ve got some tacit norm about not naming the people or even organisations responsible, I suspect that means a lot of problematic behaviours go unaddressed.
Not exactly an answer, but as an anecdote I know an EA employee who was asked not to publish something 100% supportive of their employer in response to some criticism. We both found it a bit weird, but I assume that’s how all organisations work
Yes, that’s how all organizations work. Obviously there are cases where employees of an organization should not be publicly commenting to support their organization, because that can be harmful compared to allowing the organization to manage its own reputation. That’s not at all the same as suppressing criticism. For example, not responding to trolls is a good thing. I’m all in favor of, say, telling employees not to “defend” EA against claims that it’s a secret conspiracy to help rich people. Telling someone not to engage in highlighting dumb bad-faith arguments isn’t suppressing their opinions.
I am very concerned that there is implicit pressure not to criticize, but the explicit encouragement by funders and orgs seems to have done a good job pushing back—and the criticism contest was announced well before FTX and the recent attention, and criticisms of EA were common among EA org employees well before any of the Cremer criticism. And I’d note that the highlighted blog is by someone who doesn’t identify as EA, but works for GPI.
If it’s possible without putting whistleblowers in jeopardy, I would like to know if you have specific examples of this. I’ve heard a number of worrying claims about stuff ‘an EA org’ or ‘some EA orgs’ do, including this, but without knowing the alleged specifics I have no idea how to update on them. Since we’ve got some tacit norm about not naming the people or even organisations responsible, I suspect that means a lot of problematic behaviours go unaddressed.
Not exactly an answer, but as an anecdote I know an EA employee who was asked not to publish something 100% supportive of their employer in response to some criticism. We both found it a bit weird, but I assume that’s how all organisations work
Yes, that’s how all organizations work. Obviously there are cases where employees of an organization should not be publicly commenting to support their organization, because that can be harmful compared to allowing the organization to manage its own reputation. That’s not at all the same as suppressing criticism. For example, not responding to trolls is a good thing. I’m all in favor of, say, telling employees not to “defend” EA against claims that it’s a secret conspiracy to help rich people. Telling someone not to engage in highlighting dumb bad-faith arguments isn’t suppressing their opinions.
I am very concerned that there is implicit pressure not to criticize, but the explicit encouragement by funders and orgs seems to have done a good job pushing back—and the criticism contest was announced well before FTX and the recent attention, and criticisms of EA were common among EA org employees well before any of the Cremer criticism. And I’d note that the highlighted blog is by someone who doesn’t identify as EA, but works for GPI.