Twitter Announces Ban on Misleading Ads Concerning Climate Change

Social media giant Twitter celebrated Earth Day by announcing new regulations when it comes to climate change on their website. On the platform’s official blog, the company’s sustainability chiefs, Sean Boyle and Casey Junod, said that ads with misleading information on climate change would henceforth be banned from Twitter. In making the decision, Boyle and Junod said that the company feels that it is important to have thoughtful discussions about climate change. As such, the company believes that it is important to discourage the monetization of information that might be counterproductive to reasonable dialogue.

Going forward, Boyle and Junod say that the social media platform’s definition of what is acceptable content will be guided by authoritative texts on the issue of climate change. Specifically, the two reference reports by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as being particularly useful in examining discussions on the issue. In the future, Twitter also plans on looking into ways to include basic information about climate change and sustainability on their website. Data provided by algorithms on the website show an increasing level of environmental discourse on Twitter over the last year. Among the topics most talked about by users include how to reduce waste, ways to reduce the burning of fossil fuels, and how to achieve greater sustainability goals.

Twitter is just one social media company that has begun a renewed campaign focusing on combating the monetization of misleading information on climate change. Last October, Google enacted a similar policy but drew criticism when users found ads on climate denialism still on the platform. In the wake of such criticism, Google said that it was still in the process of fine tuning the program and would take appropriate action in the future.

Facebook also enacted a similar policy last year and, as with Google, drew fire when users learned that the company was not enforcing it. A report on the spread of climate change misinformation on Facebook determined that the platform failed to effectively flag posts with this type of content. The report also made note of a rise in Facebook groups spreading climate change misinformation in the last year.