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The
research, released on Wednesday, also follows news that lawyers
for Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen have filed a new
complaint with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission this
month claiming the company misled investors about its efforts to
tackle climate change and COVID-19 misinformation.
Facebook, now known as Meta Platforms, has long been under
scrutiny over the spread of misinformation on its platforms. The
company said
https://about.fb.com/news/2021/02
/connecting-people-with-credible-climate-change-information last
year it would add informational labels to some posts about
climate change, to direct users to its new Climate Science
Information Center hub.
The UK-based Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) in a
report last November identified a list of 10 digital publishers
whose articles it said accounted for about 69% of Facebook
interactions with climate denial articles, dubbed the "Toxic
Ten." https://www.counterhate.com/toxicten
This week, CCDH said that in an analysis of 184 posts pushing
articles featuring climate denial content from these publishers,
50.5% of posts did not have information labels.
CCDH said it had analyzed posts published between May 2021 and
January 2022, after Meta announced its labeling feature had been
rolled out to a number of countries including the United States.
"During the time frame of this report, we hadn't completely
rolled out our labeling program, which very likely impacted the
results," said Meta spokesman Kevin McAlister. Meta said the
initial phase of its labeling effort was only directed at posts
seen by a small subset of users.
However, between Dec. 20 and Jan. 20, five out of 12 posts
analyzed by CCDH did not have a label.
Meta said it combats climate change misinformation by
"connecting people to reliable information in many languages
from leading organizations through our Climate Science Center"
and also working with independent fact-checkers (of which
Reuters is one) to rate content for veracity and accordingly
label and reduce its distribution.
One example of an unlabeled post highlighted by CCDH was a
NewsBusters article that talked about "alarmist climate
propaganda." NewsBusters did not immediately respond to requests
for comment.
"Meta keeps claiming it cares about climate change, but they
have failed to stop the spread of misinformation about climate
change on their platform," said CCDH Chief Executive Imran Ahmed
in a statement.
The CCDH also said it wants Meta to release data on the
effectiveness of its labels.
A new SEC complaint filed by Whistleblower Aid, first reported
by the Washington Post, recently alleged that Facebook misled
investors about its work to deal with climate misinformation.
It cited leaked discussions on Facebook's internal message board
that said awareness of its Climate Science Information Center
was "very low" for users in western markets or that questioned
the transparency around decisions over climate change
misinformation. It also referenced leaked discussions which
showed staff sparring over how the company should handle climate
misinformation and flagging "prominent" instances of it on the
platform.
"There are no one-size-fits-all solutions to stopping the spread
of misinformation, but we're committed to building new tools and
policies to combat it," said Meta spokesperson McAlister in a
statement.
(Reporting by Elizabeth Culliford in New York; Editing by Lisa
Shumaker)
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