The United Nations COP26 summit is bringing fresh scrutiny to the spread of misleading climate information online, with critics of social media giants like Facebook unleashing a wave of studies they say show companies are amplifying and profiting off climate change denial.
On Tuesday, the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) released a report that found a small group of publishers plays an oversized role in pushing content on Facebook that undermines climate science, including the far-right website Breitbart, as Cat Zakrzewski reported.
And on Thursday, the “Stop Funding Heat” campaign is unveiling a new study they claim “shows Facebook’s climate misinformation problem is not only bigger than the company suggests, but that it stands to get even worse.”
The group said it found at least 113 ads on Facebook between January and mid-October that misrepresented or undermined climate science, and estimated based on how frequently users interacted with the messages that they had been seen millions of times. And they found that a sample of 41 pages and groups that they identified as frequent posters of climate misinformation saw user engagements rise substantially from earlier this year.
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Source: COP26 summit puts spotlight on climate misinformation online | The Washington Post
