Ajit Karn
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Scientists and environmentalists say that Twitter isn’t the only place where people share information that makes people less likely to support laws that are meant to deal with the changing climate.
Since Elon Musk bought Twitter, a lot of false information about climate change has been spread there.
Meta’s website had almost 4,000 ads, most of which were bought by fossil fuel companies.
• In 2022, the number of tweets that said “climate scam” or “climate change denial” tripled.
From the Associated Press:
If you look up the word “climate” on Twitter, the first thing it suggests is “climate scam,” not “climate crisis,” “climate jobs,” or even “climate change.”
When you click on the suggestion, you’ll find dozens of posts that deny climate change is happening and make false claims about what’s being done to stop it.
Since Elon Musk bought Twitter last year, this kind of false information has spread like wildfire. But Twitter isn’t the only site that shares content that scientists and environmentalists say hurts public support for policies meant to deal with a changing climate.
“What’s going on in the information ecosystem is a direct threat to action,” said Jennie King, who is in charge of climate research and response at the London-based nonprofit Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
“It plants those doubts and makes people think that maybe scientists don’t agree on something.”
The institute is part of a group of groups that work to protect the environment. On Thursday, they released a report that tracks false information about climate change in the months leading up to, during, and after the U.N. climate summit in November.
The new verification system that Elon Musk put in place could be part of the problem.
(Image by Reuters)
In the report, social media sites were criticised for things like not following their own rules against spreading false information about climate change.
It’s not the first time that Twitter has been used to spread false information about climate change.
Researchers found that Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, let almost 4,000 ads on its site — most of which were bought by fossil fuel companies — that questioned the scientific consensus behind climate change and criticised efforts to stop it.
In some ads and posts, inflation and fears about the economy were used as reasons to oppose climate policies, while the costs of doing nothing were left out.
Researchers also found that many of the accounts spreading false information about climate change also spread false information about U.S. elections, COVID-19, and vaccines.
The Associated Press asked Twitter some questions, but they did not answer.
A spokesperson for Meta said that the company’s policy says that ads that have been proven to be false by its fact-checking partners, which include the AP, are not allowed.
The ads named in the report had not been checked to see if they were true.
Under Musk, Twitter fired thousands of workers and made changes to how it moderates content that some people said hurt the effort.
In November, the company said that it would no longer enforce its rule against false information about COVID-19.
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Musk also let back on the site many people who had been banned before, including some who had spread false information about climate change.
Hate speech and attacks on LGBTQ people went up a lot.
Climate #misinformation skyrockets on #ElonMusk’s Twitterhttps://t.co/sNSgyZ3IFx
— IndiaToday (@IndiaToday) January 20, 2023
Tweets containing “climate scam” or other terms linked to climate change denial rose 300% in 2022.https://t.co/sNSgyZ3IFx
— IndiaToday (@IndiaToday) January 20, 2023
