On April 6, Steak-umm shared a series of tweets in an effort to encourage the public to stop accepting anecdotes as actual data.“Friendly reminder in times of uncertainty and misinformation: anecdotes are not data,” the brand tweeted.“(Good) data is carefully measured and collected information based on a range of subject-dependent factors"."including, but not limited to, controlled variables, meta-analysis, and randomization”.The tweet is particularly timely, as concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increasing number of false claims.Steak-umm proceeded to follow its original tweet with several others, emphasizing the importance of separating real data from narratives.It also cautioned against treating the media’s word as bible.“Outliers attempting to counter global consensus around this pandemic with amateur reporting or unverified sourcing are not collecting data".“Breaking news stories that only relay initial findings of an event are not collecting data.
We have to be careful in our media consumption”."it can be difficult to know what to believe in a time when institutional trust is diminished and the gatekeepers of information have been dismantled" ."but it's more crucial now than ever before to follow a range of credentialed sources for both breaking news and data collection".The company’s tweets became a hit on the social media platform, with the original tweet receiving over 70,000 likes and a flood of supportive responses