Unsubscribe from the Crap in Your Newsfeed
We live in an era of a lot of information and news but very little differentiation
between what is high quality, validated or reliable information, and what is just opinion or worse yet, fake or intentionally manipulative news. And now the powers that be, have decided that fact checking is no longer important, which just made
everything worse. Fear not! We can do what we probably always should have been doing, we can become our own fact-checkers.
This doesn't need to take a lot more of our precious time. What I'm suggesting is we just go one layer down on the information we are consuming, especially the
information we get on social media. And by the way, we should be digging one layer down to check for the quality and credibility of our news, whether we agree with it or not! When we see things we agree with or that align with our values, our
confirmation bias kicks in, and we are more likely to take it at face value without
asking further questions. Natural, yes, but it doesn't mean what we are consuming is true or accurate. And when we see things we disagree with or that trespass our values, we often react with emotion. Again, fair enough, but let's do the work of
making sure we understand the facts.
Here are my two quick and easy tips.
If the information or article or post you are reading references some kind of source material- a study, a report, an article, a claim, etc. then go to the source and have a look. Click through to the source or copy it over to google and check it out. Don't just rely on someone else's interpretation or
perspective. Get as close to the actual source facts and information as
possible. Most studies will have an executive summary or abstract so you don't have to spend hours reading it all in detail, but definitely give it a scan.Do a scan of reliable news sources to check if what you're reading is the same as what's being reported elsewhere. Ideally, have some go-to credible news sources to check things against. Independent media is good. But also look at a few different sources to see what's consistent and what's not because we know media can be biased too!
On the one hand, it sucks that we have to do this work. On the other hand, we can be way better informed by just digging down one layer on what is showing up in our feeds. Honestly, there is so much happening, and it can be so overwhelming that this act of pausing and doing a little fact checking is really rather soothing in some ways. It takes the drama down a notch and replaces it with information. Knowledge is power, and honestly, we'll take all the power we can get right now.
Happy fact checking, and I hope that unsubscribing from some of the crap that shows up on your feed will actually make you feel better. I know it has for me.
– Belinda & the WLI Team