Facebook, the world’s largest social media platform, continues to host content from prominent anti-science climate change deniers despite claims that it would stop doing so, according to an investigation by non-profit activist group Avaaz. At the same time, search giant Google ran ads on 50 climate denial articles since the date it declared it would prohibit ads on such content, according to the non-profit Center for Countering Digital Hate.
From April to November this year, Avaaz found that Facebook ran 136 posts from organizations with ties to the fossil fuel industry, including rightwing blogs PragerU and Turning Point USA, accumulating more than 61 million estimated views. In spite of policies designed to flag misleading or false claims, 88% of the posts went unlabelled by Facebook’s fact checkers.
In a separate investigation, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) discovered that Google ads were present on articles containing climate denial or misinformation from November 8 this year, despite a promise from the firm that it would stop ads on climate denial content from November 9, while the COP26 climate summit was ongoing. One Breitbart article bearing Google advertising described COP26 as “a gigantic eco-fascist gaslighting operation.”
Claims made in the articles ranged from stating outright that climate change is a “hoax,” to insisting that the effects of climate change will not be harmful, to assertions that climate change could even save lives.
“Climate...
The Management of Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals has noted with concern the circulation of unfounded and misleading claims suggesting that its petroleum products are exported to Lom...