On my previous post I briefly mentioned the relation between media and climate change deniers. On this post I would like to focus on social media giants (Facebook, Twitter and YouTube) and their handling of misinformation, especially regarding climate.
As you might have read on Ellinor’s post, we’re currently in an ‘infodemic’. There is a big number of false information going around in the context of the pandemic. The situation on the climate field is not brighter. Advertisement campaigns aiming to spread that climate change is not real and debunking scientific information are being targeted at users of social media. Verifying facts and making sure that users do not spread false information on their accounts was never a priority for these companies. For groups and individuals aiming for big reach and low to non-existing accountability, social media platforms are the place to go to. In my opinion, this is worrying because constant contact with accounts that support these fake claims reinforces in individual minds the false idea that climate change is a hoax. On Facebook, a certain climate denying ad was viewed more than eight million times! Imagine the negative impact that kind of reach has on climate related decisions, on individual, governmental and corporate levels.
Very recently, thanks to the pressure of governments and mostly due to advertisement boycotting initiatives, Facebook has been making an effort (or at least claiming) to mitigate the damages caused by disinformation ads or fake information. These efforts focus mainly on political facts or hate speech but there is also a section directed at the climate. Which is more that we can say about Twitter where climate denying bots can make up to a quarter of climate related Tweets, but has no climate content related policy.
Content moderation raises discussions of freedom of speech but it also raises the ethical issue of social media companies allowing their users to be manipulated with false, potentially harmful information, for the sake of profit. I believe that more barriers should be imposed to ensure that users share and have access to content responsibly. Fact checking tools, reminders of content responsibility, alerts of false information and even blocking harmful accounts are mechanisms already in place that should continue to exist and be more effectively enforced to guarantee that disinformation campaigns are rendered ineffective. What’s your opinion on content moderation for climate change?
While we wait for the ‘giants’ to come up with solutions, as users we can also be more responsible and beware of the content we consume, share and produce. I leave here 5 ways to watch out for disinformation on our social media.
*misinformation – accidental false information
*disinformation – intentional false information
*bot – software application that runs automated tasks on the internet
