Facebook has a new plan to crack down on those who don’t go along with the mainstream narrative on climate climate change.
In the past, the social platform has allowed posts challenging the idea of manmade climate change, claiming they are opinion-based and do not cause imminent danger and so don’t need to be censored.
When users report what they think is climate change misinformation, third-party fact-checkers review the content.
However, there have been calls for changes to the system as it has been accused of not being very effective. A group called CO2 Coalition was banned from advertising after multiple misinformation violations, including claiming that the CO2 from humans helps the planet. However, the group successfully appealed the ban, and the fact-check labels on its posts were removed.
Facebook defended its decision by saying that such posts are opinions, and thereby exempt from fact-checking. The social platform also says it does not remove climate change posts since they do not cause immediate harm to humans.
However, Democratic Senators were outraged by Facebook’s reversal and wanted to know why Facebook wasn’t correcting people’s opinions about climate change on the platform.
One of Facebook’s climate fact-checkers, Climate Feedback, said, “We don’t believe that articles in an opinion section should be immune from fact-checking,” and they too called for changes.
Now, Facebook has revisited its policies on climate change. According to Bloomberg, quoting Andy Stone of Facebook, the company is creating a climate information center. Like the coronavirus information center, the climate information center will redirect users to scientific and “reliable” information sources.
