During COP26, Facebook served ads with climate
falsehoods, skepticism
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[November 18, 2021] By
Elizabeth Culliford
(Reuters) - Facebook advertisers promoted
false and misleading claims about climate change on the platform in
recent weeks, just as the COP26 conference was getting under way.
Days after Facebook's vice president of global affairs, Nick Clegg,
touted the company's efforts to combat climate misinformation in a blog
as the Glasgow summit began, conservative media network Newsmax ran an
ad on Facebook that called man-made global warming a "hoax."
The ad, which had multiple versions, garnered more than 200,000 views.
In another, conservative commentator Candace Owens said, "apparently
we're just supposed to trust our new authoritarian government" on
climate science, while a U.S. libertarian think-tank ran an ad on how
"modern doomsayers" had been wrongly predicting climate crises for
decades.
Newsmax, Owens and the Daily Wire, which paid for the ad from Owens's
page, did not respond to requests for comment.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2021/Nov/18/images/ads/current/hartsburggrain_sda_2019.png)
Facebook, which recently changed its name to Meta, does not have a
specific policy on climate misinformation in ads or unpaid posts.
Alphabet's Google said last month it would no longer allow ads that
contradict scientific consensus on climate change on YouTube and its
other services, though it would allow content that discusses false
claims.
Facebook generally does not remove misinformation in posts unless it
determines they pose imminent real-world harm, as it did for falsehoods
around COVID-19. The company says it demotes posts ranked as false by
its third-party fact-checkers (of which Reuters is one) and prohibits
ads with these debunked claims. It says advertisers that repeatedly post
false information may face restrictions on their ability to advertise on
Facebook. It exempts politicians' ads from fact-checks.
Asked about ads pushing climate misinformation, a company spokesperson
said in a statement: "While ads like these run across many platforms,
Facebook offers an extra layer of transparency by requiring them to be
available to the public in our Ad Library for up to seven years after
publication."
UK-based think-tank InfluenceMap, which identified misleading Facebook
ads run from several media outlets and think-tanks around COP26, also
found fossil fuel companies and lobbying groups spent $574,000 on
political and social issue Facebook ads during the summit, resulting in
more than 22 million impressions and including content that promoted
their environmental efforts in what InfluenceMap described as "greenwashing."
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2021/Nov/18/images/ads/current/hartsburggrain_sda_2019.png)
One ad paid for by the American Petroleum Institute panned over a
natural landscape as it touted its efforts to tackle climate change,
while BP America ran an ad detailing its support for climate-friendly
policies in neon green writing.
"Our social media posts represent a small fraction compared to the
robust investments our companies make every day," the API said in a
statement, saying the natural gas and oil industry was committed to
lowering emissions. BP said in a statement that it was "actively
advocating for policies that support net zero, including carbon pricing,
through a range of transparent channels, including social media
advertising."
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![](../images/111821PIX/busine28.jpg)
A smartphone with Meta logo and a 3D printed Facebook logo is placed
on a laptop keyboard in this illustration taken October 28, 2021.
REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2021/Nov/18/images/ads/current/topflight_sda_SFARM_2020.png)
Facebook has started adding informational labels to posts about climate change
to direct users to its Climate Science Center, a new hub with facts and quizzes
which it says is visited by more than 100,000 people a day.
Asked in an interview aired this week at the Reuters Responsible Business USA
2021 event where he thought Facebook still fell short on climate issues, Chief
Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer said, "Obviously, there's been concern about
people sharing misinformation about climate on Facebook."
"I'm not going to say we have it right at any moment in time," he said. "We
continually reevaluate what the state of the world is and what is our role,
which starts with trying to allow people free expression, and then intervening
when there are harms happening that we can prevent."
He did not directly answer why Facebook had not banned all climate
misinformation ads but said it "didn't want people to profit over
misinformation."
EMPLOYEES QUESTION POLICY
The company's approaches to climate misinformation and skepticism have caused
employee debate. Discussions on its internal message board show staff sparring
over how it should handle climate misinformation and flagging instances of it on
the platform, such as in a January post where an employee said they found
"prominent results of apparent misinformation" when they searched for climate
change in its video 'Watch' section.
The documents were among a cache of disclosures made to the U.S. Securities and
Exchange Commission and Congress by whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former
Facebook product manager who left in May. Reuters was among a group of news
organizations able to view the documents.
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In the comments on an April post highlighting Facebook's commitment to reducing
its own environmental impact, including by reaching net zero emissions for its
global operations last year, one staff member asked if the company could start
classifying and removing climate misinformation and hoaxes from its platforms.
Two external researchers working with Facebook on its climate change efforts
told Reuters they would like to see the company approach climate misinformation
with the same proactiveness it has for COVID-19, which Facebook cracked down on
during the pandemic.
"It does need to be addressed with the same level of urgency," said John Cook, a
postdoctoral research fellow at the Climate Change Communication Research Hub at
Monash University who is advising Facebook on its climate misinformation work.
"It is arguably more dangerous."
(Reporting by Elizabeth Culliford; Editing by Kenneth Li and Nick Zieminski)
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