Post #1786939
2026-04-29 22:13 UTC
I agree that many people launched careers in journalism or science communication by being on Twitter in the 2010s, and that many people tweet, skeet, or blog because they hope the same thing will happen to them even though Old Media has no more money to sponsor them with.
I put Kelsey Piper in a different place than Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, or Scott Alexander because AFAIK she never built a huge and engaged online audience. Piper is paid by Effective Altruist organizations to write Effective Altruist messages on third-party sites. That is why I call her a hack: she is in the economic position of a PR worker but pretends to be a journalist. She has not showed that anyone else is willing to pay her to write.
Replies (1)
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@istewart@awful.systems 2026-04-30 05:26
Moreover, I think we agree that the EA funders will continue to pursue astroturfing places like Twitter and Substack well past the point that provides any effective entry into the mainstream public dialogue. Your point about the prediction market hype, and the gambling bubble more generally, indicates a likely catalyst of that collapse.