I would say the problem with EA is the "E". Saying you're doing 'effective' altruism is another way of saying that everyone else's altruism is wasteful and ineffective. Which of course isn't the case. The "E" might as well stand for "Elitist" in that's the vibe it gives off. All truly altruistic acts would aim to be effective, otherwise it wouldn't be altruism - it would just be waste. Not to say there is no waste in some altruism acts, but I'm not convinced its actually any worse than EA. Given the fraud associated with some purported EA advocates, I'd say EA might even be worse. The EA movement reeks of the optimize-everything mindset of people convinced they are smarter than everyone else who just say just gives money to a charity A when they could have been 13% more effective if they sent the money directly to this particular school in country B with the condition they only spend it on X. The origins of EA may not be that, but that's what it has evolved into.

A lot of altruism is quite literally wasteful and ineffective, in which case it's pretty hard to call it altruism.

> they could have been 13% more effective

If you think the difference between ineffective and effective altruism is a 13% spread, I fear you have not looked deeply enough into either standard altruistic endeavors nor EA enough to have an informed opinion.

The gaps are actually astonishingly large and trivial to capitalize on (i.e. difference between clicking one Donate Here button versus a different Donate Here button).

The sheer scale of the spread is the impetus behind the entire train of thought.