(I’m not arguing any particular position here. Just mentioning some considerations.)
I think tweeting to Jeff Bezos seems fine, though I’d hope that someone’s first response would be “I should make sure Effective Giving saw this” rather than “I should tweet my favorite EA charity at him”.
Maybe? Although I think there were some advantages to tweeting him directly:
He was asking for tweets, not for organizations to reach out to him via some other way.
I imagine it’s going to be very, very difficult for organizations to get a hold of Bezos, and I don’t think his tweet changed that.
A grassroots EA tweeting effort could generate maybe 100 tweets from different individuals which was 0.2% of the overall 47k tweets. That seems to have provided a nontrivial chance of getting his attention, which seems net positive if the tweeters are careful about content.
Still, it might be the case that the best course of action would have been to run it by Effective Giving, either beforehand or in addition.
I don’t read Ricky Gervais as being entirely unserious, so responding to him might be reasonable.
I think he was partially serious too, but he didn’t explicitly ask for suggestions like Bezos did.
Some considerations I’d make before tweeting at him:
* What’s his history in this area? Does he have a record of supporting animal charities? Does he Tweet about bacon all the time, making this an obvious joke?
* Do the PR people at the animal charities I support know about this Tweet? Should they be the ones to send something, if anyone does?
I think they found out about it from my post, or possibly via some other method. There are a number of tweets there by Animal Charity Evaluators, The Humane League, Vegan Outreach, the Nonhuman Rights Project, etc, or from their employees.
* Are people already deluging him with charity suggestions? If so, how can I make my Tweet stand out, if I plan to send one at all?
As noted above, merely increasing the ratio of EA to non-EA tweet replies would likely increase the probability that it gets his attention. There is of course the possibility that the attention is counterproductive if looks like charity spam.
Maybe? Although I think there were some advantages to tweeting him directly:
I agree with all of these! I don’t think that you shouldn’t tweet directly in the Bezos situation—it’s just a good idea to tell organizations that might be well-positioned to send their own messages, too. My argument was more “watch out for each other’s interests” than “leave it to the professionals”.
(I’m not arguing any particular position here. Just mentioning some considerations.)
Maybe? Although I think there were some advantages to tweeting him directly:
He was asking for tweets, not for organizations to reach out to him via some other way.
I imagine it’s going to be very, very difficult for organizations to get a hold of Bezos, and I don’t think his tweet changed that.
A grassroots EA tweeting effort could generate maybe 100 tweets from different individuals which was 0.2% of the overall 47k tweets. That seems to have provided a nontrivial chance of getting his attention, which seems net positive if the tweeters are careful about content.
Still, it might be the case that the best course of action would have been to run it by Effective Giving, either beforehand or in addition.
I think he was partially serious too, but he didn’t explicitly ask for suggestions like Bezos did.
He’s very pro-animals.
I think they found out about it from my post, or possibly via some other method. There are a number of tweets there by Animal Charity Evaluators, The Humane League, Vegan Outreach, the Nonhuman Rights Project, etc, or from their employees.
As noted above, merely increasing the ratio of EA to non-EA tweet replies would likely increase the probability that it gets his attention. There is of course the possibility that the attention is counterproductive if looks like charity spam.
I agree with all of these! I don’t think that you shouldn’t tweet directly in the Bezos situation—it’s just a good idea to tell organizations that might be well-positioned to send their own messages, too. My argument was more “watch out for each other’s interests” than “leave it to the professionals”.