Stop Funding Heat today released a world-first report, summarising all the available evidence on Facebook’s record on climate misinformation. The 40-page report, which references over 100 academic studies, empirical reports and journalistic investigations, found that:
- Climate denial is advertised on the platform without Facebook’s detection.
- Despite publicly aligning against climate change misinformation, Facebook has no policy on it.
- Facebook’s existing misinformation policies are poorly implemented – the Third-Party Fact-Checking Program has failed to combat Covid-19 misinformation, anti-vaccination misinformation, electoral misinformation and more.
- The Third-Party Fact-Checking Program checks only around six climate misinformation pieces a month.
- Facebook’s latest solution, the Climate Science Information Center, is unclear, fundamentally ineffective and not operating at the appropriate scale.
With COP26 in Glasgow later this year, and adverse weather events more and more common, climate misinformation is set to rise in 2021. Facebook is not prepared.
We have today launched a petition so everyone has an opportunity to tell Facebook what they think about their performance on climate misinformation.