Bubbles and clickbait / outrage media are a big problem, but I think there’s also a problem where people just depend on information being fed to them rather than seeking out more information, then self-selecting sources without considering their biases.

I’ve noticed something recently in my local area. Lockdown / business openings, etc. in my area are fluid. The local government make regular announcements based on a particular metric of COVID infections on a rolling 14 day figure that’s adjusted by population. Depending on that figure reaching certain thresholds, they may order restrictions on travel and gatherings, order non-essential businesses to close or restrict their opening hours, and so on, or make a decision to reverse restrictions already in place. The official figures are quite easy to find, are fairly transparent, and fairly easy to read depending on your understanding of what the figures are.

But, most people don’t go to the primary source. They tend to get informed by and share newspapers and websites that sensationalise and make predictions with a particular slant. That’s not a problem in and of itself – for example, one source has taken the time to present a more easily readable graph of the trends with easily read spots to tell you how close you are to existing restrictions being lifted. But, others surround the figures with commentary that’s not always accurate, which leads to all sorts of arguments when predictions don’t turn out to be correct. This last weekend, a lot of people were expecting some restrictions to be lifted, because a few days before one of the more tabloid sources said they would be, based on an optimistic prediction on how quickly figures were dropping. On the day that decision was to be made, the figures weren’t quite there yet so no changes were made.

That’s not a problem on its own, but now we have the usual half-informed crowd crying about how there’s some conspiracy to keep everyone locked down and unemployed, because they believe the tabloid’s now-out of date wild predictions rather than the actual figures and the fact that they clearly indicate that the decision to drop restrictions could not yet be made.

The fix for this kind of thing is for people to look at the actual data, understand where the thresholds for decision making are set, and to continue doing what’s necessary to have the cases on a downward trend so we can all be less restricted next weekend. Instead, people are taking second- or third-hand predictions by people not involved in the decision process and believing those instead of the real data and rulebook.

Facebook aren’t the problem here, they’re just a symptom of what happens when you get fed a skewed re-interpretation of the facts rather than looking at the facts themselves. Until you can get people to either look at the primary sources, or at least understand that they’re being fed skewed commentary instead of naked facts, you’re not going to fix the problems just by forcing people to get the commentary elsewhere.