1. In the last two weeks, SBF has about about 2M views to his wikipedia page. This absolutely dwarfs the number of pageviews to any major EA previously.
2. Viewing the same graph on a logarithmic scale, we can see that even before the recent crisis, SBF was the best known EA. Second was Moskovitz, and roughly tied at third are Singer and Macaskill.
3. Since the scandal, many people will have heard about effective altruism, in a negative light. It has been accumulating pageviews at about 10x the normal rate. If pageviews are a good guide, then 2% of people who had heard about effective altruism ever would have heard about it in the last two weeks, through the FTX implosion.
4. Interest in “longtermism” has been only weakly affected by the FTX implosion, and “existential risk” not at all.
Given this and the fact that two books and a film are on the way, I think that “effective altruism” doesn’t have any brand value anymore is more likely than not to lose all its brand value. Whereas “existential risk” is far enough removed that it is untainted by these events. “Longtermism” is somewhere in-between.
It may be premature to conclude that EA doesn’t have any brand value anymore, though the recent crisis has definitely been disastrous for the EA brand, and may justify rebranding.
This is excellent. I hadn’t even thought to check. Though I think I disagree with the strength of your conclusion.
If you look back since 2015 (“all time”), it looks like this.[1] Keep in mind that Sam has 1.1M pageviews since before November[2] (before anyone could know anything about anything). Additionally, if you browse his Wikipedia page, EA is mentioned under “Careers”, and is not something you read about unless particularly interested. On the graph, roughly 5% click through to EA. (Plus, most of the news-readers are likely to be in the US, so the damage is localised?)
A point of uncertainty for me is to what extent news outlets will drag out the story. Might be that most of the negative-association-pageviews are yet to come, but I suspect not? Idk.
Not sure how to make the prediction bettable but I think I’m significantly less pessimistic about the brand value than you seem to be.
Feel free to grab these if you want to make a post of it. Seems very usefwly calibrating.
The implications for “brand value” would depend on whether people learn about “EA” as the perpetrator vs. victim. For example, I think there were charitable foundations that got screwed over by Bernie Madoff, and I imagine that their wiki articles would have also had a spike in views when that went down, but not in a bad way.
I agree in principle, but I think EA shares some of the blame here—FTX’s leadership group consisted of four EAs. It was founded for ETG reasons, with EA founders and with EA investment, by Sam, an act utilitarian, who had been a part of EA-aligned groups for >10 years, and with a foundation that included a lot of EA leadership, and whose activities consisted mostly of funding EAs.
I love that you’ve shared this data, but I disagree that this and the books/film suggest that EA is more likely than not to lose all its brand value (although I’m far from confident in that claim).
I don’t have statistics, but my subjective impression is that most of the coverage of the FTX crisis that mentions EA so far has either treated us with sympathy or has been kind of neutral on EA. Then I think another significant fraction is mildly negative—the kind of coverage that puts off people who will probably never like us much anyway, and then of the remainder, puts off about half of them and actually attracts the rest (not because of the negative part, but because they read enough that they end up liking EA on balance, so the coverage just brings forward their introduction to EA). Obviously not all publicity is good publicity, but I think this kind of reasoning might be where the saying comes from.
Again, this is all pretty subjective and wishy-washy. I just wanted to push back a bit on jumping from “lots of media coverage associated with a bad thing” to “probably gonna lose all brand value.”
I also argued here that causes in general look mildly negative to people outside of them. And my sense is that the FTX crisis won’t have made the EA brand much worse than that overall.
Honestly even if that 2% was 50% I think I’d still be leaning in the ‘the EA brand will survive’ direction. And I think several years ago I would have said 100% (less sure now).
But it’s still early days. Very plausible the FTX crisis could end up looking extremely bad for EA.
My impression is that the coverage of EA has been more negative than you suggest, even though I don’t have hard data either. It could be useful to look into.
The NYT article isn’t an opinion piece but a news article, and I guess that it’s a bit less clear how to classify them. Potentially one should distinguish between news articles and opinion pieces. But in any event, I think that if someone who didn’t know about EA before reads the NYT article, they’re more likely to form a negative than a positive opinion.
Hmm, I suspect that anyone who had the potential to be bumped over the threshold for interest in EA, would be likely to view the EA Wikipedia article positively despite clicking through to it via SBF. Though I suspect there are a small number of people with the potential to be bumped over that threshold. I have around 10% probability on that the negative news has been positive for the movement, primarily because it gained exposure. Unlikely, but not beyond the realm of possibility. Oo
The FTX crisis through the lens of wikipedia pageviews.
(Relevant: comparing the amounts donated and defrauded by EAs)
1. In the last two weeks, SBF has about about 2M views to his wikipedia page. This absolutely dwarfs the number of pageviews to any major EA previously.
2. Viewing the same graph on a logarithmic scale, we can see that even before the recent crisis, SBF was the best known EA. Second was Moskovitz, and roughly tied at third are Singer and Macaskill.
3. Since the scandal, many people will have heard about effective altruism, in a negative light. It has been accumulating pageviews at about 10x the normal rate. If pageviews are a good guide, then 2% of people who had heard about effective altruism ever would have heard about it in the last two weeks, through the FTX implosion.
4. Interest in “longtermism” has been only weakly affected by the FTX implosion, and “existential risk” not at all.
Given this and the fact that two books and a film are on the way, I think that “effective altruism”
doesn’t have any brand value anymoreis more likely than not to lose all its brand value. Whereas “existential risk” is far enough removed that it is untainted by these events. “Longtermism” is somewhere in-between.Thanks for this analysis.
It may be premature to conclude that EA doesn’t have any brand value anymore, though the recent crisis has definitely been disastrous for the EA brand, and may justify rebranding.
Updated pageview figures:
“effective altruism”: peaked at ~20x baseline. Of all views, 10.5% were in Nov 9-27
“longtermism”: peaked ~5x baseline. Of all views, 18.5% in Nov 9-27.
“existential risk”: ~2x. 0.8%.
There are apparently five films/series/documentaries coming up on SBF—these four, plus Amazon.
This is excellent. I hadn’t even thought to check. Though I think I disagree with the strength of your conclusion.
If you look back since 2015 (“all time”), it looks like this.[1] Keep in mind that Sam has 1.1M pageviews since before November[2] (before anyone could know anything about anything). Additionally, if you browse his Wikipedia page, EA is mentioned under “Careers”, and is not something you read about unless particularly interested. On the graph, roughly 5% click through to EA. (Plus, most of the news-readers are likely to be in the US, so the damage is localised?)
A point of uncertainty for me is to what extent news outlets will drag out the story. Might be that most of the negative-association-pageviews are yet to come, but I suspect not? Idk.
Not sure how to make the prediction bettable but I think I’m significantly less pessimistic about the brand value than you seem to be.
Feel free to grab these if you want to make a post of it. Seems very usefwly calibrating.
The implications for “brand value” would depend on whether people learn about “EA” as the perpetrator vs. victim. For example, I think there were charitable foundations that got screwed over by Bernie Madoff, and I imagine that their wiki articles would have also had a spike in views when that went down, but not in a bad way.
I agree in principle, but I think EA shares some of the blame here—FTX’s leadership group consisted of four EAs. It was founded for ETG reasons, with EA founders and with EA investment, by Sam, an act utilitarian, who had been a part of EA-aligned groups for >10 years, and with a foundation that included a lot of EA leadership, and whose activities consisted mostly of funding EAs.
I love that you’ve shared this data, but I disagree that this and the books/film suggest that EA is more likely than not to lose all its brand value (although I’m far from confident in that claim).
I don’t have statistics, but my subjective impression is that most of the coverage of the FTX crisis that mentions EA so far has either treated us with sympathy or has been kind of neutral on EA. Then I think another significant fraction is mildly negative—the kind of coverage that puts off people who will probably never like us much anyway, and then of the remainder, puts off about half of them and actually attracts the rest (not because of the negative part, but because they read enough that they end up liking EA on balance, so the coverage just brings forward their introduction to EA). Obviously not all publicity is good publicity, but I think this kind of reasoning might be where the saying comes from.
Again, this is all pretty subjective and wishy-washy. I just wanted to push back a bit on jumping from “lots of media coverage associated with a bad thing” to “probably gonna lose all brand value.”
I also argued here that causes in general look mildly negative to people outside of them. And my sense is that the FTX crisis won’t have made the EA brand much worse than that overall.
Honestly even if that 2% was 50% I think I’d still be leaning in the ‘the EA brand will survive’ direction. And I think several years ago I would have said 100% (less sure now).
But it’s still early days. Very plausible the FTX crisis could end up looking extremely bad for EA.
My impression is that the coverage of EA has been more negative than you suggest, even though I don’t have hard data either. It could be useful to look into.
Hmm I’m probably not gonna read them all but from what I can see here I’d guess:
Negative
Seems kinda mixed—neutral?
Negative
Sympathetic but less sure on this one
Neutral/sympathetic
The NYT article isn’t an opinion piece but a news article, and I guess that it’s a bit less clear how to classify them. Potentially one should distinguish between news articles and opinion pieces. But in any event, I think that if someone who didn’t know about EA before reads the NYT article, they’re more likely to form a negative than a positive opinion.
Hmm, I suspect that anyone who had the potential to be bumped over the threshold for interest in EA, would be likely to view the EA Wikipedia article positively despite clicking through to it via SBF. Though I suspect there are a small number of people with the potential to be bumped over that threshold. I have around 10% probability on that the negative news has been positive for the movement, primarily because it gained exposure. Unlikely, but not beyond the realm of possibility. Oo