Twitter has Outlawed 'Misleading' Climate Change Advertisements

The News was made on April 22nd, Earth Day.

Today, Twitter imposed a new restriction on "misleading" ads that "contradict the scientific consensus on climate change." ” "We believe that climate denial should not be monetized on Twitter, and that misleading advertisements should not detract from essential dialogues about the climate problem," the firm wrote in a blog post today. It states "authoritative sources," such as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, will inform its determinations on what is legitimate content in regards to climate change. Over the last several months, the IPCC has released two historic assessments on the situation, detailing what needs to be done to adapt to the changes already underway as well as how to avoid even more severe effects in the future, such as escalating weather disasters and destructive wildfire seasons. Twitter also stated that further information about how it aims to "provide credible, authoritative context" about climate change to its platform will be released soon. According to the firm, those chats have been significantly louder in the last year. Twitter claims that discussion of "sustainable" has increased by more than 150 percent since 2021. Discussions about "decarbonization," or eliminating greenhouse gas emissions caused by burning fossil fuels, have also increased by 50%. Other environmental debates are also heating up. Over the same time span, talk about waste reduction increased by more than 100 percent. Twitter's new announcement is part of a larger social media campaign to expose climate change denial. Similar commitments have been made by other companies, with varied degrees of success. In October 2021, Google announced that it will no longer allow advertising that promote climate denial or finance climate disinformation. Despite this, a research released shortly after the new policy went into effect discovered that Google was still running advertising on climate-denying websites. At the time, Google told The Verge that it had gone over the content and decided to take "necessary enforcement actions." In addition, despite its policy on flagging such content, Facebook has been chastised for neglecting to mark climate misinformation. Another study published in November indicated a significant increase in interactions with postings from Facebook pages and groups dedicated to propagating climate disinformation.