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
Hi Nathan. Thanks for this! I lead marketing and communications at CEA so I'm happy to share what we've been working on.
A lot of our focus for the last year hasn't been aimed at the core community (i.e. EA Forum users), so that might be why it doesn't feel so visible.
For context: I joined a year ago when the team was down to two. Since then, we've hired a media manager, content lead, social media specialist, podcast producer, and marketer, many of them in the last few months. So we're still very much building the team and function.
Here's some of what we're working on:
Preparing for Netflix's The Altruists – I shared a brief update last week here
Brand and website refresh for effectivealtruism.org, so it's accessible and accurate for the wave of newcomers we expect in November
Social media. We launched Instagram twelve months ago and it's gone from a few hundred followers to 5K+. We've added about 12K followers across 6 channels in the last year
A podcast! I've been slow to post about this, so consider this my commitment to share more soon (we're working on host and guests now)
Standing up marketing, including paid and email marketing. Right now this drives people to CEA's programs, but longer term I'd like to better track and support leads to all EA orgs
Earned media, and growing the bench of EA spokespeople. This is a tricky portfolio; we've pitched a steady stream of stories this year and only a few have landed, but progress is there
Reactive media requests and issuing corrections. This is bigger and more ongoing than it looks from the outside; much of this work will always be behind the scenes
The most visible recent thing is stories, a video campaign to humanise the EA brand, as well as our work to promote EA Connect late last year – our largest virtual event yet.
On X specifically, I share your concern. Our following there grew by 299 people in the last year. Part of that is capacity; we didn't have anyone dedicated to social until four weeks ago. The other part is that institutional brands carry much less weight than personal ones, and X is fairly allergic to a brand account talking about itself. I think X would benefit more from the voices of individual EAs, which we can amplify – if you're keen to be a creator in your own right, please let me know!
None of this is where I want it to be yet. I will say the team is working extremely hard to get it there, so I'd rather be judged on what ships by the end of the year rather than on what's visible today. Happy to discuss any of this – you can reach me here or on LinkedIn. I'd love any ideas you have for improving our work or the EA brand!
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.
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! :-)
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!
Great ideas as always, Igor. Thank you! I'll reach out to you separately.
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
Hi Nathan. Thanks for this! I lead marketing and communications at CEA so I'm happy to share what we've been working on.
A lot of our focus for the last year hasn't been aimed at the core community (i.e. EA Forum users), so that might be why it doesn't feel so visible.
For context: I joined a year ago when the team was down to two. Since then, we've hired a media manager, content lead, social media specialist, podcast producer, and marketer, many of them in the last few months. So we're still very much building the team and function.
Here's some of what we're working on:
The most visible recent thing is stories, a video campaign to humanise the EA brand, as well as our work to promote EA Connect late last year – our largest virtual event yet.
On X specifically, I share your concern. Our following there grew by 299 people in the last year. Part of that is capacity; we didn't have anyone dedicated to social until four weeks ago. The other part is that institutional brands carry much less weight than personal ones, and X is fairly allergic to a brand account talking about itself. I think X would benefit more from the voices of individual EAs, which we can amplify – if you're keen to be a creator in your own right, please let me know!
None of this is where I want it to be yet. I will say the team is working extremely hard to get it there, so I'd rather be judged on what ships by the end of the year rather than on what's visible today. Happy to discuss any of this – you can reach me here or on LinkedIn. I'd love any ideas you have for improving our work or the EA brand!
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:
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.
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! :-)
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!