About The Altruists: the Netflix series on FTX

Tess Newton-Palmer

11

This is potentially a landmark event for EA, and TBH i'm relieved to know competent and smart people are being proactive about it.

Here are some ideas I’d consider:

1. Create content addressing potential objections/concerns about EA that the show might raise among a general audience. That way, if/when people search for these topics, they’re more likely to come across content that presents EA’s perspective. Of course, there’s no guarantee, but since (I think) most of this content already exists, reviewing/updating/restructuring seems a low-hanging fruit.

2. Maybe it’s too late for this, but I’d also consider creating SEO-focused pages targeting long-tail questions people might have after watching the show, especially “who is X?” or “what happened in Y?”-type questions.

3. Create a community of EA-friendly influencers and ask/pay them to watch the show and share their opinions right after the show is launched (particularly on how accurately it represents the core ideas of EA).

4. In the week of the launch, send a sort of “media kit” to influencers, journalists and movie commentators who are likely to discuss the show, explaining EA’s core ideas and providing useful context. A sort of "preventive PR".

5. Pay mainstream Netflix/movie/shows influencers to cover the show. That would give EA the opportunity to provide enough context to make their perspective about EA at least accurate (and hopefully positive).

Overall, I think the main challenge is figuring out how to get EA's perspective to travel through the channels that are most likely to amplify the show.

Tess Newton-Palmer

18h

1

Great ideas as always, Igor. Thank you! I'll reach out to you separately.

Denis

6d*

14

Fantastic!

IMHO, as a relative newbie to EA, you guys do a terrible job on PR!

I say that as a compliment. :)

EA is full of amazing, committed people who want to help animals suffer less, help poor people have better lives, help make the world better, because you CARE. And anytime I've seen EA portrayed to the general public, this caring aspect is totally omitted.

EA's are often portrayed as nerds who see the whole enterprise as an intellectual, logical game. The focus is 100% on the "effective" and 0% on the "altruism".
They show the long intellectual debates, often described as esoteric or abstract. They rarely show the long hours people spend designing, implementing and supporting projects that really help people and animals.
They often highlight the controversial arguments (longtermism, earning-to-give, for example) and ignore all the work on poverty alleviation in the world's poorest countries.
They often portray EA as guilt-washing for over-paid IT workers who ease their consciences at the luxury of their lives while others struggle by making a show of donating a small % of their wealth.
Etc.

It is absurd but true that many people, if they hear the term Effective Altruist, first think of SBF - an ultra-rich, conceited guy living a life of pure luxury - rather than the vast majority of EA people who volunteer or work for low salaries so that they can help more people.

It would be wonderful and highly impactful if we could change this perception and so encourage the millions of people who agree with our true priorities to join and support us.

I have quite a bit of second-hand experience working on brand-image and public perceptions for a big multi-national - how to research it, how to improve it, etc. Happy to help if that sounds useful.

Tess Newton-Palmer

5d

6

Hi Denis, thanks for your reply and the thoughtful takes. A few reflections from me below.

You're right that coverage skews to the arguments and away from the work. Part of that is the nature of news. Part of it is on us. We have historically been better at writing for people who already think this way than for people meeting these ideas for the first time.

I also agree that the nuance gets lost, and that the caring rarely survives the path to coverage. Zach gave a talk on this if you're interested – we don't make spreadsheets because we don't care, we make spreadsheets because we care so much. We've gone some way to humanising EA to that end through stories, which try to show the depth and range of the people in this movement. But you're right that the overall picture hasn't shifted much. I want to offer some thoughts on why, because I don't think it's simply an effort or messaging problem.

From what we can see of how EA gets discussed, three patterns repeat:

Reach asymmetry. Critical content doesn't just outnumber favourable content, it also travels further per post. On a bad day, a single critical thread has outperformed everything positive published that day.
The negative spikes are often event-driven, but the criticism isn't always about the events. Attention arrives with whatever story is running that week, and the same handful of frames attach themselves to it regardless. That's why correcting a factual error, which we regularly do, rarely touches these narratives.
Favourable coverage is real but quiet. It tends to cluster in careers, philanthropy and research contexts, which are the places with lower organic reach. The supportive mentions are there; the amplification isn't.

All that being said, there have been some encouraging signs in recent coverage, including balanced and positive pieces in major outlets.

We can definitely improve our own output, and we are, but I don't think it reduces to one problem. Favourable material exists and doesn't travel. Critical material travels easily and isn't especially responsive to anything we publish. Those need different answers. That's something I'd love to compare notes on if it matches what you've worked on! You can find me here or on LinkedIn.

Denis

2d

1

Hi Tess,

I agree you are doing great work in a tough environment! I've sent you a message on linkedin.

Where I might have ideas is in how to make the communication strategy more data-based. I cannot judge where you are now. But let me give an example of what I mean:

Let's say you market Beer Z, a typical lager. You know that your beer looks and tastes much the same as 50 other beers to most beer-drinkers. But somehow many of them consider Beer Z to be, say, weak. What do you do?

Multinationals have developed whole ecosystems to work on trivial problems like this, including omline surveys, focus groups, etc.

You have some ideas: you could talk about your alcohol content, you could get an NFL lineman or rugby player spokesman, you could run promotions among groups who might think weak is good, etc.

Basically, they would test these ideas, optimise down to the level of the exact words to use ("tough" or "strong" or "not like the others" ...), generate new ideas, test those, and finally design an intervention based on what would sell the most beer, based on statistically significant data.

The challenges you describe may be amenable to some of this. Who might be a great advocate foe EA? How to create a story line that has potential to go viral but focused on care? Etc.

Tess Newton-Palmer

3d

7

HI all. A short update to the above: Netflix announced yesterday that The Altruists premieres on 19 November 2026, and we expect all eight episodes to be released at once

Damin Curtis🔹

2d

5

Thanks for the update! For better or for worse, as a front-line advocate for EA, I'm cautiously excited for more people to at least be asking questions and wanting to have a conversation about what it is. Hopefully with thoughtful advocacy we can turn this into many positive impressions & conversations no matter how it's spun in the show. Could be an important time to capitalize on an influx of interest & buzz.

Catherine Low🔸

5d

8

If you're an EA community organiser, you are also most welcome to contact me (Catherine from CEA's Community Health team) if you've got any questions or concerns about the potential impact of this series on your local community. Our team might be able to brainstorm ideas with you and provide some advice.

Bella

1w

12

Thanks for the heads up and for your work on this!

1.2 billion viewing minutes sounds like a lot — I'm curious if you have any estimates on the expected number of unique viewers? Or, any relevant comparisons / thoughts about similar shows and how they were received (e.g. shows which make reference to niche movements or communities and whether salience increased as a result).

No worries if you haven't already considered these questions, but I'm curious if you have! :D

DavidNash

1w

16

With a runtime of ~600 minutes it's around ~2 million people if everyone watched all episodes.

NickLaing

1w

4

#Quickmaths

Tess Newton-Palmer

1w

3

Hi @Bella, thanks for your question! On unique viewers – Netflix publishes weekly viewing-hours data via Tudum, which gives a rough sense of scale, though it doesn't convert cleanly into a viewer count. @DavidNash's BOTEC in the comments seems like a reasonable way to get to a ballpark. Samba TV also tracks US household viewership if that's useful.

On comparisons to other shows referencing niche movements – we've mostly anchored on the one data point (Inventing Anna) since it's directly comparable in scale and studio; going further starts to get speculative pretty fast. Happy to chat more if useful; feel free to reach out to me directly!

Austin

1w

3

I, for one, am excited to see the show when it comes out!

Emily Marais

1w

2

Would love to hear more on the new resources that are being worked on and if AEO/GEO is being considered (i.e. influencing what LLMs will spit out in response to questions about EA)

Tess Newton-Palmer

1w

3

Thanks @Emily Marais! Discoverability is definitely something we're thinking about as part of our broader content work; making sure information is well-structured and easy to find for people encountering EA for the first time. Happy to chat more on specifics async if useful; you know where to find me! :-)