The report faulted social media platforms for, among other things, failing to enforce their own policies prohibiting climate change misinformation. It is only the latest to highlight the growing problem of climate misinformation on Twitter.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, allowed nearly 4000 advertisements on its site — most bought by fossil fuel companies — that dismissed the scientific consensus behind climate change and criticised efforts to respond to it, the researchers found.
In some cases, the ads and the posts cited inflation and economic fears as reasons to oppose climate policies, while ignoring the costs of inaction. Researchers also found that a significant number of the accounts posting false claims about climate change also spread misinformation about US elections, Covid-19 and vaccines.
Twitter did not respond to questions from The Associated Press. A spokesperson for Meta cited the company’s policy prohibiting ads that have been proven false by its fact-checking partners, a group that includes the AP. The ads identified in the report had not been fact-checked.
Under Musk, Twitter laid off thousands of employees and made changes to its content moderation that its critics said undercut the effort. In November, the company announced it would no longer enforce its policy against Covid-19 misinformation. Musk also reinstated many formerly banned users, including several who had spread misleading claims about climate change. Instances of hate speech and attacks on LGBTQ people soared.
Tweets containing “climate scam” or other terms linked to climate change denial rose 300 per cent in 2022, according to a report released last week by the nonprofit Advance Democracy. While Twitter had labelled some of the content as misinformation, many of the popular posts were not labelled.
Musk’s new verification system could be part of the problem, according to a report from the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, another organisation that tracks online misinformation. Previously, the blue checkmarks were held by people in the public eye such as journalists, government officials or celebrities.
Now, anyone willing to pay $8 ($12) a month can seek a checkmark. Posts and replies from verified accounts are given an automatic boost on the platform, making them more visible than content from users who don’t pay.
When researchers at the Centre for Countering Digital Hate analysed accounts verified after Musk took over, they found they spread four times the amount of climate change misinformation compared with users verified before Musk’s purchase.
Verification systems are typically created to assure users that the accounts they follow are legitimate. Twitter’s new system, however, makes no distinction between authoritative sources on climate change and anyone with $8 and an opinion, according to Imran Ahmed, the centre’s chief executive.
“We found,” Ahmed said, “it has in fact put rocket boosters on the spread of lies and disinformation.” - AP