Twitter today issued a new ban on “deceptive” ads “contrary to the scientific consensus on climate change.”
“We believe that climate denial should not generate revenue on Twitter and that misleading advertising should not detract from important conversations about the climate crisis,” the company said in a press release. blog post Today.
Its decisions about what constitutes legitimate content regarding climate change will be guided by “authoritative sources,” it says, including the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC has published a number of milestones: reports on the crisis of recent months, outlining what needs to be done to adapt to the changes that are already unfolding and how to avoid even bigger consequences in the future, such as more severe weather disasters and savage wildfire seasons.
Twitter also said it will soon share more details about how it plans to “add reliable, authoritative context” about climate change on its platform. Those conversations have become much louder in the past year, according to the company. Talk of “sustainability” on the platform has grown more than 150 percent since 2021, Twitter says. Discussions of “decarbonization,” or getting rid of greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels, have also increased by 50 percent. Other environmental conversations are also heated. Chatter about reducing waste grew by more than 100 percent during the same period.
Twitter’s new announcement is also part of a wider social media saga to stop lies about climate change. Other companies have made similar commitments, with varying degrees of success.
Google made a stake in October 2021 to stop allowing ads that contain climate denial or monetize wrong climate information. Still, a report found that shortly after the new policy went into effect, Google was still posting ads on climate-denying content. Google told The edge at the time it reviewed the content and decided to take “appropriate enforcement action”. Facebook is also under fire for don’t label misinformation about the climate despite its policy about flagging such content. Another report The platform published last November also revealed a surge in interactions with posts from Facebook pages and groups focused on spreading climate misinformation.
SOURCE – www.theverge.com