Facebook is failing to label many posts from websites most likely to publish climate change misinformation, according to a new report from a British watchdog group.
That’s despite the company rolling out a feature in May 2021 that would add information labels to climate change-related posts, a feature that is available in several countries around the world.
The group, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, looked at a small sample of English-language articles related to climate change from publishers the group had previously named to its “Toxic Ten” group. In November 2021, CCDH found that this group of 10 websites — including Breitbart, Newsmax, and the Daily Wire — was responsible for nearly 70% of engagement on Facebook with climate denial content.
The report’s authors used the analytics tool NewsWhip to search for nearly two dozen terms such as “climate hoax,” “climate alarmism,” “climategate,” and “global warming scam,” to arrive at a shortlist. Together, these posts had more than 1 million interactions, including likes, shares, and comments.
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