Following up on their earlier chart that presented dates out of chronological order to make it look like C-19 numbers were dropping, GA is now fiddling the number spans in the legend on their infection maps to the same end. On July 2, red meant 2961–4661 cases; yesterday it meant 3769–5165. (The weirdly specific number ranges are a tip-off that this map was bespoke rather than automated.) The bottom line: generating actively misleading dataviz has become GA policy. This isn’t just Tuftean pedantry: people look to these maps to understand the risks so they can make concrete decisions, potentially with life-of-death consequences. Producing deliberately misleading charts and maps is witting malfeasance. But this kind of process generates records like emails, which are subject to FOI laws. It’s impossible to make this kind of thing illegal, but designers — who more than anyone else should have some professional skin in this game — are in a better position than most to find out who exactly is doing this. And to blacklist them. That’d be some real design ethics.Updated Jul 19, 2020 3:10:41 amJul 19, 2020 3:10:41 am