I thought the first review was fine—it didn’t say much, but there wasn’t much to say, and you were asked to write the review so you did what you could.
I think this updated review goes too far in criticizing SPI. To me it reads like you are mad at SPI for asking you not to mention confidentiality and then later mentioning confidentiality itself in a comment, and you wrote this negative review as retribution for making you look bad, not as an objective assessment.
In reality, SPI has never filed a lawsuit, never litigated a case, and legally—never had a “pending case.”
The “in reality” phrasing seems to imply that SPI is lying. I don’t think SPI is lying. I don’t know much about law but my guess is it takes a while to prepare a lawsuit, and that they’re still working on it.
SPI says they “spent $0 in [their] entire first fiscal year (2024-2025),” but in January 2025 SPI’s website already stated that they reform pesticide use, protect endangered insects, and challenge insect factory farming.
This reads like you are objecting to SPI’s use of present tense for activities that are ongoing. The use of present tense seems totally fine to me? When the website says “protect endangered insects”, I read that as “The purpose of our ongoing activities is to protect endangered insects”, whereas you seem to be interpreting it as “We have already protected endangered insects” and you’re indirectly accusing them of lying on that basis. Which I don’t think is reasonable.
It is impossible to reform pesticide use with $0.
This is obviously false. You can do political advocacy on a volunteer basis.
Also, SPI doesn’t have $0. It spent $0 in its first fiscal year, and now has a small but nonzero budget.
Overall this review falls into the same patterns that you’ve been criticized for in previous reviews, where you interpret ambiguous evidence in the least charitable possible light, accusing charities of bad behavior when the accusation isn’t warranted.
I agree to an extent, in that I think that strictly speaking it would have been better to say “we seek to reform pesticide use” or “we are working on reforming pesticide use”. I wonder if you would have found that acceptable?
Yes, we think both of those wordings would have been acceptable. Ideally, though, the organization would also clarify what it’s actually doing to try to reform pesticide use—whether that’s creating content, conducting research, or something else.
I thought the first review was fine—it didn’t say much, but there wasn’t much to say, and you were asked to write the review so you did what you could.
I think this updated review goes too far in criticizing SPI. To me it reads like you are mad at SPI for asking you not to mention confidentiality and then later mentioning confidentiality itself in a comment, and you wrote this negative review as retribution for making you look bad, not as an objective assessment.
The “in reality” phrasing seems to imply that SPI is lying. I don’t think SPI is lying. I don’t know much about law but my guess is it takes a while to prepare a lawsuit, and that they’re still working on it.
This reads like you are objecting to SPI’s use of present tense for activities that are ongoing. The use of present tense seems totally fine to me? When the website says “protect endangered insects”, I read that as “The purpose of our ongoing activities is to protect endangered insects”, whereas you seem to be interpreting it as “We have already protected endangered insects” and you’re indirectly accusing them of lying on that basis. Which I don’t think is reasonable.
This is obviously false. You can do political advocacy on a volunteer basis.
Also, SPI doesn’t have $0. It spent $0 in its first fiscal year, and now has a small but nonzero budget.
Overall this review falls into the same patterns that you’ve been criticized for in previous reviews, where you interpret ambiguous evidence in the least charitable possible light, accusing charities of bad behavior when the accusation isn’t warranted.
Thank you for your comment Michael. You’ve contested one factual assertion we made, so we will address that.
We’d appreciate if you could answer two questions:
If someone engages in “political advocacy on a volunteer basis,” does that mean they “reform pesticide use”?
If someone posts on Instagram once a month about altering pesticide laws, can they honestly tell people: “I reform pesticide use”?
Our answer to both questions is “no.” How about you?
I agree to an extent, in that I think that strictly speaking it would have been better to say “we seek to reform pesticide use” or “we are working on reforming pesticide use”. I wonder if you would have found that acceptable?
Thanks for the comment, Hugh.
Yes, we think both of those wordings would have been acceptable. Ideally, though, the organization would also clarify what it’s actually doing to try to reform pesticide use—whether that’s creating content, conducting research, or something else.