DeSmog claims that not enough is being done by the big tech companies to counteract misleading propaganda on social media.
It would be tempting to dismiss the tweets and posts of climate deniers and delayers as pitiable nonsense.
Because who in 2022 is using their energies to downplay scientifically indisputable facts about our heating planet? Surely these are fringe actors we don’t really need to worry about?
Fringe they may be, but that doesn’t mean they don’t get through to people. A major new report out this week reveals how a tiny group of “super-spreading” accounts were able to disseminate climate disinformation throughout the COP26 climate summit.
Research from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a think-tank monitoring extremism, and the Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) coalition, found that just 16 social media accounts amassed over half a million likes and retweets – including those run by some all-too-familiar faces from DeSmog’s disinformation database.
Twitter carried the most false content by volume and Facebook’s fact-checking policies were found to be “woefully under-enforced”, it found.
Improved policies by major tech companies wouldn’t only tackle disinformation about climate change. The report found repeat-offender climate sceptics often spread misinformation on multiple topics, sharing misleading information on COVID-19 as well as conspiracy theories such as QAnon.
This chimes with analysis by DeSmog last year around the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, which found that many climate deniers posted messages supporting the insurrectionists, spread debunked claims about election fraud, and hinted at civil war.
Sasha Havlicek, CEO of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, said the analysis showed “in stark terms how a well-worn information and influence operations playbook is being applied to the climate context”.
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