Secondly, effective altruists are disproportionately employed at companies like Google and Facebook. The policies of social media giants can influence discourse norms on the Web and therefore society as a whole. While EAs working at tech giants may not have enough power within the organizational hierarchy to make a meaningful difference, it’s something worth considering. Another way in this vein that EAs could make a difference is by creating or popularizing discussion platforms that promote rational argumentation and mutual understanding instead of divisiveness (related post).
I want to highlight reddit as a social network which could be especially valuable to get a job at. It seems to have a combination of
a very large userbase (bigger than Twitter according to this article)
a relatively small employee headcount (so larger per-capita employee influence)
a subreddit structure which could allow for experimentation with depolarization interventions—allow moderators to customize their subreddits in a programmable way, let many experiments bloom, see which experiments are associated with depolarization/improved discussion quality (I have experiment ideas if people are interested)
I want to highlight reddit as a social network which could be especially valuable to get a job at. It seems to have a combination of
a very large userbase (bigger than Twitter according to this article)
a relatively small employee headcount (so larger per-capita employee influence)
a subreddit structure which could allow for experimentation with depolarization interventions—allow moderators to customize their subreddits in a programmable way, let many experiments bloom, see which experiments are associated with depolarization/improved discussion quality (I have experiment ideas if people are interested)