Maybe this is good publicity for EA, but I doubt that it will increase donations for shrimp much. It portrayed the issue as “not totally crazy” but definitely not “really important”, which is what most (more rational) people care about in their donations. I’d expect that only those who are already very EA-minded and care a lot about neglectedness would jump directly from this to donating.
The video has 418K youtube views – and I’d guess it will stagnate somewhere between 500k and 1 million views. In a 5-minute search I couldn’t find any other video seriously considering shrimp welfare with over 5k views, and I’d guess there are only 15–40 such videos with more than 1k views. So this video might have increased exposure to shrimp welfare concerns through youtube something like 3–15x. Seems plausible that it will lead to substantially more donations.
I can see it’s getting a lot of views—my point was that it’s not framing the issue in a way which is likely to get many people to donate. For someone to donate, they’d have to be both non-speciesist and enthusiastic about neglected issues, since the video didn’t argue for either of those. Maybe that’s a few people, but I imagine it’s a very small sliver of the population.
I don’t think that people need to be non-speciecist and enthusiastic about neglected issues to want to donate to shrimp welfare. People might donate because they are opportunistic donors and this seems like a worthy cause, because they found Andrés trustworthy and want to donate to trustworthy projects, or because of memes (the internet is into shrimp), etc.
The best-case scenario for increasing donation volume is probably thoughtful, high-net-worth individuals getting interested in whether this is a thing, deciding that it is, and partially adjusting their donation decisions. I don’t think they need to fully buy into effective altruism to do this.
I’d certainly be interested in whether this video leads to a notable uptick in donations (both the number and volume) :)
It could easily happen that based on this video several millions are raised, just based on increasing salience and the framing being largely positive and this resonating with a couple of donors with significant capital.
I think that a huge chunk of charity is pretty thoughtless, and that many viewers in absolute terms would have felt some sympathy for shrimps, even though they’re speciesist. Most donors also like splitting across different problems out of some sense of fairness. Putting these together, I can easily see many non-EA viewers donating to SWP soon out of guilt, at least as a once-off. The segment ended on the website link in huge font, and I think that was a significant prompt.
Maybe this is good publicity for EA, but I doubt that it will increase donations for shrimp much. It portrayed the issue as “not totally crazy” but definitely not “really important”, which is what most (more rational) people care about in their donations. I’d expect that only those who are already very EA-minded and care a lot about neglectedness would jump directly from this to donating.
The video has 418K youtube views – and I’d guess it will stagnate somewhere between 500k and 1 million views. In a 5-minute search I couldn’t find any other video seriously considering shrimp welfare with over 5k views, and I’d guess there are only 15–40 such videos with more than 1k views. So this video might have increased exposure to shrimp welfare concerns through youtube something like 3–15x. Seems plausible that it will lead to substantially more donations.
I can see it’s getting a lot of views—my point was that it’s not framing the issue in a way which is likely to get many people to donate. For someone to donate, they’d have to be both non-speciesist and enthusiastic about neglected issues, since the video didn’t argue for either of those. Maybe that’s a few people, but I imagine it’s a very small sliver of the population.
I don’t think that people need to be non-speciecist and enthusiastic about neglected issues to want to donate to shrimp welfare. People might donate because they are opportunistic donors and this seems like a worthy cause, because they found Andrés trustworthy and want to donate to trustworthy projects, or because of memes (the internet is into shrimp), etc.
The best-case scenario for increasing donation volume is probably thoughtful, high-net-worth individuals getting interested in whether this is a thing, deciding that it is, and partially adjusting their donation decisions. I don’t think they need to fully buy into effective altruism to do this.
I’d certainly be interested in whether this video leads to a notable uptick in donations (both the number and volume) :)
It could easily happen that based on this video several millions are raised, just based on increasing salience and the framing being largely positive and this resonating with a couple of donors with significant capital.
I think that a huge chunk of charity is pretty thoughtless, and that many viewers in absolute terms would have felt some sympathy for shrimps, even though they’re speciesist. Most donors also like splitting across different problems out of some sense of fairness. Putting these together, I can easily see many non-EA viewers donating to SWP soon out of guilt, at least as a once-off. The segment ended on the website link in huge font, and I think that was a significant prompt.
Looks like there might be more funding coming SWP’s way thanks to Glenn / United States of Exception (here)