Community Health: A Call for Transparency

By LauraC @ 2026-09-22T16:42 (+35)

Definitely written by a human. Many thanks to David and Nadia for reviewing my initial draft. 

 

In early 2024, I brought an employment claim against a former employer concerning unpaid work.

Following information provided by my former employer, Community Health became involved and supported decisions excluding me from EA Global and some local EA events. These decisions were made before I was asked for my account.

I subsequently provided Community Health with my account, relevant context and supporting evidence, but was told that this did not change the decision. I was not given a clear explanation of the process followed or the reasons for the exclusion.

The court ultimately ruled in my favour. I was paid for the work I had completed and received compensation, including for my legal costs.

Since then, however, Community Health has not, to my knowledge, confirmed whether it has reviewed its position, whether information previously shared with event organisers has been corrected, or whether any remaining exclusions have been lifted.

 

I am sharing this not to relitigate the employment claim or ask readers to decide who was right about every aspect of it. My present concern is the separate question of transparency about Community Health's processes and how information was assessed and communicated. 

 

In particular, I would like clarification on:


1. Why Community Health intervened following a private employment dispute and what policy or authority it relied upon.


2. What information and verification were considered before the initial exclusion decisions, and why I was not asked for my account at that stage.


3. What risk Community Health considered that I presented and what criteria were used to assess that risk.


4. What information was communicated to event organisers, and whether they were informed that some of the information was disputed.


5. Why I was excluded while the other people involved remained able to attend EAG events.


6. Whether Community Health has reviewed or corrected the information previously communicated following the court's judgment.


7. Whether any exclusions remain in place and, if so, on what basis.
 

 

I would welcome clarification from Community Health, event organisers, job application reviewers, and anyone who received information about this matter regarding what information was shared, what process was followed, and whether that information has since been updated.

Please discuss only your own firsthand experience and verifiable facts, and do so through an appropriate public or private channel. Do not publicly identify anyone or publish private information.

 

I am raising this because I want the EA community to thrive and I believe community organisations with the power to restrict participation should have clear, fair and reviewable processes. Where an exclusion relies on information that is later disputed or contradicted in legal proceedings, there should be a transparent way to review the decision, correct inaccurate records, and explain whether any restriction remains justified.

Laszlo Treszkai @ 2026-09-22T16:46 (+24)

I was the co-organizer of Summer Camp 2024, an independently funded event happening yearly near Berlin, with the purpose of bringing EA community members together to do silly light-hearted activities. As applications rolled in, we sent them to Community Health so that they compare them against their blacklist, with the stipulation that for any matching name we also get a reason why that person is banned. (Again, we were doing this voluntarily – the event was funded 100% from ticket income, and not at all by CEA, therefore applicant filtering was also fully in our control.) Laura's name was flagged, and in a private call with Community Health we were informed that she filed a lawsuit against members of the EA community claiming payment for work that she did not perform, and that her participation at our event is recommended against, lest she gather supporters for her case. Based on this point of view, even though uncertain about the actual events, with our organizer time being limited, we took the (safer) decision to not accept Laura to the event. In the rejection email we did not provide full details on the reasons, as we were told by Community Health that Laura could receive information from them on her case.

In hindsight, I regret this decision, and I wish I had dedicated more time to the case before sending out our rejection letter to Laura without course for appealing.

Ebenezer Dukakis @ 2026-09-24T16:48 (+7)

her participation at our event is recommended against, lest she gather supporters for her case

This seems fairly dubious to me, as grounds to exclude someone. I thought exclusions were supposed to be for someone who was potentially dangerous to others.

If Laura's case is bad, hopefully potential supporters will be able to suss that out. If Laura's case is good, it's good that there's a safeguard by which she can gather supporters.

The idea of trying to "keep the peace" in this kind of hamfisted way seems likely to create more problems than it solves.

Nathan Young @ 2026-09-24T19:44 (+7)

Having run lots of events, a sense that someone is going to be a pain is a perfectly reasonable reason to exclude them. I generally like event organisers to be able to invite who they want and not who they don't. 

David Seiler @ 2026-09-25T13:54 (+7)

I think "someone filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit" should be kept carefully separate from "someone is a pain" in our social norms, even though people who've filed lawsuits are sometimes annoying to be around even if you're not the one they filed it against.  If the penalty for filing a suit is social ostacism, then people are more free to break the terms of the contracts they make, because it's so much more expensive to enforce those contracts than usual.

In EA, where so many of us work for each other, I think this is especially important.  People who work together sometimes get into conflicts that require a court to unravel, even if everyone's acting in good faith.  So long as the parties can be civil to each other, there's no reason they can't attend the same events in the meantime.

Ebenezer Dukakis @ 2026-09-25T09:26 (+5)

Maybe I should've clarified that I was more talking about the community health team than event organizers. I don't think the community health team should be excluding people based on vibes. I think they should mediate conflicts, and announce their decisions in some cases, but the blacklist should not generally be used as a tool to "resolve" conflicts unless there are additional circumstances beyond just the disagreement itself.

Thomas Moispointner @ 2026-09-24T20:18 (+1)

I feel ambivalent about "if someone is going to be a pain is a perfectly reasonable reason to exclude them". Yes, some people can be a pain at events, making the experience worse for many others. That sucks and should be avoided. But if someone is excluded for that reason, it should be made clear why, in a way that doesn’t lump them together with people who’ve done much worse things.

In any case, none of this is relevant to Laura’s case, because she’s a pleasure to be around.

Nathan Young @ 2026-09-24T20:49 (+13)

I have been excluded from events and not told why. It sucks. But I feel like explaining to everyone is a big cost. And only explaining to the easy cases makes the hard cases more obvious. In a world where there are too few events (in my view) I would like event organisers to do as they want without me claiming they have broken some big norm. 

But I'm sad exclusions happen, then generally suck, especially for those excluded, but sometimes for the organisers too.

Thomas Moispointner @ 2026-09-24T22:12 (+3)

But this case is not about an exclusion from some specific event. It’s about a full-on exclusion from CEA events. Other orgs and projects in the ecosystem rely on CEA‘s “blacklist” to guide their admissions. Our Berlin coworking space TEAMWORK checks applicants against that list too. So being on there means many doors will be shut for you and I‘ve historically read it as something like „that person is cancelled in EA (and probably for good reasons)“.

David Seiler @ 2026-09-25T11:55 (+7)

Our Berlin coworking space TEAMWORK checks applicants against that list too.

Are you sure this is still true?  Caroline claimed above that CEA no longer shares that information.

Thomas Moispointner @ 2026-09-25T21:10 (+1)

I think we currently run applications past EA Germany informally (at least for folks we don’t yet know), just asking if they know anything they think we should be aware of. I’d assume that includes CEA info. It’s not something we’re required to do; it just seems like a sensible practice, and one where we always reserve the right to make our own decision.

Laszlo Treszkai @ 2026-09-24T21:12 (+1)

The problem here is that – judging by the policy Catherine Low described – anyone can have anyone else excluded, which is respected regardless of which party was right. (Unless these rules don't apply to everyone equally, which would be even worse.) Had Laura contacted Community Health before the lawyers, saying that her former employer makes her uncomfortable because they owe her a significant paycheck, maybe her former employer would have been excluded from EA events – but this first-mover advantage is nonsense and is not the recipe for a healthy community.

Laszlo Treszkai @ 2026-09-24T21:04 (+2)

This seems fairly dubious to me, as grounds to exclude someone.


I generally agree (unless the organizer knows for a fact that the excluded person is spreading lies and is good at it, which was absolutely not the case here). As that in 2024 was the first event I organized that was bigger than a birthday party with nine friends present, I constantly felt in over my head, so I could neither judge everything rationally, nor could I always live up to my values of fairness and truth. (And deferring to authority figures as David explained likely also played a role, especially when their name suggests that they are responsible for a healthy community.)

I'd like to point out that we – as independent organizers – weren't pressured by CH to make this decision, but that doesn't change the fact that a very skewed picture was painted to us by CH, which we took at face value.

Sam Glover @ 2026-09-22T19:22 (+22)

You write that this was 'definitely written by a human', but Pangram flags it as almost entirely AI-generated. I don't know what's going on there, but maybe it would be worth editing if you did in fact write this with AI assistance.

LauraC @ 2026-09-23T08:57 (+6)

I don't know either and flagged it to the mods immediately. The only AI use I know of was a general sweep for language mistakes (English isn't my mother tongue). Some corrections were made by my lawyer. All in all, minor edits, that's it.

Catherine Low🔸 @ 2026-09-24T02:40 (+15)

Hi Laura, 

We know that this has been a difficult experience for you. 

I'll give some information publicly here and also send a message privately to you. As you may be aware there are some constraints about what we can share publicly. 

I can assure you that our team has reviewed all the information you've sent us very carefully, and taken that information into account. As I’ve previously said to you, we’re open to revisiting our decisions if you have new information to send us.

On the Community Health team’s role 

 

We’re no longer sharing private information outside of CEA

In the past some EA organisations (including EA groups) could come to us about people they were thinking of giving opportunities to. If we had any information relevant to the opportunity that we had permission from the source to share, we might pass that information on. We no longer do this and we haven't done so for over a year.  This sharing was so that community leaders could make more informed decisions about who to give what opportunities to, with the aim of improving the wellbeing and impact of the whole EA community - not just CEA spaces. 

We knew it was possible that people may feel pressured to take certain actions because of the information we shared, but we tried to reduce that risk through steps like making it clear that the final decision was theirs. Often we’d offer advice on multiple ways they might handle the situation, like how they might reduce downsides if they did offer the opportunity.  

As Laszlo commented, the 2024 EA Germany summer camp organisers chose to give us a list of applicants and we did pass on some information about Laura. We explicitly told the organisers that it was their decision, and that if they chose to go ahead with offering the opportunity, there might be ways to reduce risk and we're available to help brainstorm ideas. But it is very possible that we still made the organisers feel pressured to make a particular decision. 

Thomas Moispointner @ 2026-09-24T12:17 (+27)

I find this entire case very irritating, Catherine. I've known Laura for many years and have no reason to believe that she's lying, let alone poses a risk to (C)EA events. The very idea honestly sounds fairly absurd to me, even if "risk" is taken in a wide sense. I'm of course open to the possibility that additional information could change my mind. But that would be surprising and CEA apparently isn't going to share such info. I realise that sharing more could be difficult for confidentiality reasons. Still, the upshot is that it leaves me and probably many other folks in the EA communities Laura is a part of very frustrated and questioning CH's judgement.

Laura's account of what happened appears to be this: a conflict with her employer arises, Laura sues the employer, the employer contacts CH, CH blacklists Laura without asking for her side of the story, Laura wins in court and CH doesn't update. I'd appreciate it if you could at least point to the step where you disagree.

LauraC @ 2026-09-24T06:14 (+14)

Note : the message I have received privately from Catherine doesn't answer any of my questions.

David Seiler @ 2026-09-25T13:37 (+13)

But it is very possible that we still made the organisers feel pressured to make a particular decision. 

No one has said they felt pressured -- at least, not in this thread and not to me privately.  No one worried that you'd blacklist them for failing to blacklist Laura, or have someone revoke their grants, or take any other coercive action.

What happened was, they trusted you.  Specifically, they trusted that the information you gave them would be accurate and not misleading (even though it couldn't be complete), and they trusted that you thought banning Laura would make their event better or safer, based on knowledge and experience they didn't have.  When you say that the final decision was theirs, what you're saying is that they didn't have to trust you that way.  Of course that's true, but presumably there's some reason they should, or else why make a recommendation in the first place?

"Pressure" is entirely the wrong frame for thinking this.  Rather, one wants to ask questions like, "does this person have a clear understanding of what I'm trying to achieve by advising them?", "do I have a clear model of their interests?", and "if they later learned some of the things I'm not telling them, would they feel betrayed?"

Fran @ 2026-09-22T20:01 (+10)

I'm really sorry this happened to you, and I really commend you for standing by yourself and going to court. Taking legal action is stressful, time-consuming, and can be incredibly scary, but I'm glad you did it.

LauraC @ 2026-09-23T08:59 (+4)

Thank you Fran. Can confirm taking legal action is very unpleasant.

Nathan Young @ 2026-09-24T20:00 (+6)

I would like to have some clarity on Community Health's processes:

I think it's reasonable that even if a community doesn't know specific cases, we could know some numbers and a general sense of how things work and what is and isn't acceptable. The fear/inability to have these discussions as a community has, in my view, been a key fracture down the middle of EA for about 5 years. 

River @ 2026-09-24T23:53 (+1)

I find this case very concerning. Trying to cut members of your own community off from the courts is classic cult behavior. It is kindof the opposite of community health. If this is what the CEA community health team does, then I think EA would be better off without the CEA community health team.

David Seiler @ 2026-09-22T18:05 (+1)

I talked to another one of the organizers of the summer camp, after that part of this incident.  She was upset: she knew Laura, she didn't expect that anything bad would happen if she came to the event, and she wanted to invite her.  But, on the other hand, an authority figure had told her not to, so she didn't.  After all, what if they knew better than she did?  It was the cleanest reproduction of the Milgram experiment that I've ever seen in real life, and it really hurt her.

Now, it's true that the organizer wouldn't have suffered that way if she'd had a little more moral courage, and followed her own views instead of deferring to Community Health.  But this situation should not have required moral courage!  Community organizers should be able to trust that when CH blacklists somebody, it's not an attempt to give a third party leverage in a contract dispute.

The proper response is for local communities to stop paying attention to CEA's recommendations.  I've been told that EA Germany and the summer camp no longer do, and that's great (ETA: I've since had conflicting reports about EA Germany specifically; it has its own dispute resolution process but sometimes takes advice from CEA as well, but wouldn't have in Laura's specific case).  If you're an EA community organizer elsewhere, ask yourself: do you want to be used as a weapon against the people you're organizing?  If not, maybe pay less attention to CEA!  If our people in Germany had followed that heuristic back in 2024, a lot of pointless suffering could have been avoided.

ludwigbald @ 2026-09-25T20:42 (+2)

Cases like this one demonstrate why it's good to have parallel structures inside the EA community. I'm glad that EA Deutschland e.V. exists as an independent membership organization and I hope we can get more independent funding.