In the last year, interactions with climate misinformation posts have increased nearly 77 percent, a new study finds.
THE SCALE OF CLIMATE misinformation on Facebook
is “staggering” and “increasing quite substantially,” a new
analysis of thousands of posts has found.
Victoria Jones / PA Images via Getty Images
A report released last week by the Real Facebook Oversight
Board, an independent watchdog group, and the environmental non-profit Stop
Funding Heat, analyzed a dataset of more than 195 Facebook pages and groups.
Researchers found an estimated 45,000 posts downplaying or denying the climate
crisis, which have received a combined total of between 818,000 and 1.36
million views.
This story was originally published by The Guardian and is reproduced here as
part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
The study’s release coincides with the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow and it
urges governments to seriously consider the role of climate misinformation on
social media in derailing the battle to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“This is where the ambitions of Cop26 and the revelations of the Facebook Papers collide, with our data showing Facebook is among the world’s biggest purveyors of climate disinformation,” researchers said.
The study analyzed 195 pages known to distribute
misinformation about the climate crisis using Facebook’s analytics tool,
CrowdTangle. Of those, 41 were considered “single issue” pages. With names like
“Climate Change is Natural,” “Climate Change is Crap,” and “Climate Realism,”
these groups primarily shared memes denying climate change exists and deriding
politicians attempting to address it through legislation.
Those that were not “single issue” groups included
pages from figures like the rightwing politician Marjorie Taylor Greene, which
posted misleading articles and disinformation about the climate crisis.
This “rampant” spread of climate misinformation is
getting substantially worse, said Sean Buchan, the research and partnerships
manager for Stop Funding Heat. Interactions per post in its dataset have
increased 76.7 percent in the past year, the report found.
“If it continues to increase at this rate, this can
cause significant harm in the real world,” he said.
A spokesman for Facebook took issue with the
methodology of the study, suggesting not all posts flagged in the report
represented disinformation.
“We’re focused on reducing actual climate
misinformation on our platform, which is why we partner with a global network
of fact-checkers and reduce the distribution of anything they rate as false or
misleading and reject any ads that have been debunked,” he said.
Facebook previously stated it continues to
counteract the spread of misinformation by flagging climate information and
referring users to its Climate Change Science Center, which contains data from
credible sources on the climate crisis.
On Nov. 1, Facebook’s vice-president of global
affairs, Nick Clegg, announced that the center would expand
to include more countries and information labels, which it adds to posts about
the climate crisis for additional context.
By Facebook’s own count, the Climate Change Science
Center receives about 100,000 daily visits globally – a fraction of the number
of users who view climate misinformation, according to the study. Facebook has
2.9 billion monthly active users.
As the Cop 26 climate summit continues, activists
are calling on the U.S. Congress, the U.K. parliament and the EU parliament to
pass legislation targeting Facebook’s massive power in light of its inability
to stem climate misinformation.
“Facebook cannot and will not police
themselves,” the Real Facebook Oversight Board said in a statement. “We need
real, independent, transparent outside oversight and regulation and an
investigation into all of Facebook’s activities — including the dangerous
spread of climate disinformation.”
Misinformation on Facebook — about climate change
and other issues — is largely driven by a small number of sources. The study
released last week found 78 percent of the advertising spending identified came
from just seven pages, all of which were flagged one year ago in a previous
report. Facebook has previously declined to remove the pages.
Facebook has long been criticized for the spread of
climate misinformation on its platforms. In May 2021, progressive non-profit
Avaaz reported an estimated 25 million views of misinformation related to climate
science and renewable energy within just 60 days in the U.S.
The latest study comes days after a separate report
this week showed just 10 publishers are responsible for
69 percent of digital climate change denial content on Facebook, including more
than 6,983 articles in the past year denying the climate crisis.
The problem is exacerbated by the unequal way in
which Facebook moderates its content around the world, Buchan said.
Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee turned
whistleblower, recently revealed that 87 percent of Facebook’s spending on
misinformation goes to English-language content, despite the fact that only 9
percent of its users are English speaking.
“That is a very high percentage, and it means there is a whole load of Facebook users being left out,” Buchan said. “There are whole populations who enjoy the Facebook service, and that Facebook is profiting from, while not actually taking care of them.”
Kari Paul is a west coast based
technology reporter for Guardian U.S.