We hadn't considered this framing! DuelGood wouldn't contribute anything if everyone who uses it would have donated to GiveWell anyway. And if Person A was already planning to donate to GiveWell and uses DuelGood to also block a political donation, Person A hasn't made a real sacrifice while their matched partner has. This asymmetry could undermine trust and discourage participation.
I wonder if the net outcome might still be positive.
The system creates value as long as someone on each matched pair is making a counterfactual change. The question is whether perceived gaming reduces participation enough to outweigh these benefits.
We don't have a perfect solution to the problem of trust, but here's some initial things I can think of that might help:
This may be a limitation we can't fully solve. If enough people are gaming, the concept may not be viable at scale. We'd value your thoughts on mechanisms that could help.
(p.s. thank you for your input!)
Thank you, Jason! Until we can find a mitigation, we'll update our website to inform donors about the problems you found. We appreciate your thoughtful contributions :)