The Solution to Information Overload Can’t Be More Information
Why shutting down Twitter accounts or limiting Facebook groups won’t solve our problem
In February, after the United States Senate voted to acquit President Donald Trump of impeachment charges, Sean Illing at Vox described why nobody seemed to care. “Despite all the incontrovertible facts at the center of this story,” Illing wrote, “it was always inevitable that this process would change very few minds.”
At the heart of this obvious problem, Illing argued, was “a media ecosystem that overwhelms people with information” and is frequently and deliberately manipulated to the point where it’s impossible to tell what’s accurate and what’s fabricated. Illing pointed to Steve Bannon, a purveyor of information chaos, to describe what happens: To counteract the narrative of reality, Bannon reportedly said in 2018, is to “flood the zone with shit.” Overwhelming information exhausts people, Illing noted. This weariness leads people to retreat to comfortable ideological sides, he continued, or simply “abandon the idea that the truth is knowable.”
That flood wouldn’t be possible without social platforms. This has meant that reaction to the shit-flood tactic has been largely to demand that social platforms stop it. Mark Zuckerberg, the head of…
