World-first report on climate misinformation by Stop Funding Heat finds Facebook systematically failing to tackle climate denial on its platform

● Report finds for the first time that Facebook has no public climate misinformation policy,
● Climate denial is advertised on the platform without Facebook’s detection,
● Facebook’s solutions are a drop in the ocean compared to the scale of misinformation on the platform. Third-Party Fact-Checking Program and Climate Science Information Center found to be unclear, fundamentally ineffective and not operating at the appropriate scale
● Third-Party Fact-Checking Program checks only 6 climate misinformation pieces a month,
● Climate misinformation set to rise in 2021, the year of COP26, a critical year to address the global climate crisis. Facebook must act now.

On May 12, campaign group, Stop Funding Heat publishes a new study: On the Back Burner: How Facebook’s Inaction on Misinformation Fuels the Global Climate Crisis. Evaluating over 100 academic studies, empirical reports and journalistic investigations, the world’s first comprehensive review reveals that Facebook is failing on all fronts to prevent the spread of climate misinformation. This comes against the backdrop of the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks report for 2021 warning that “climate action failure” is the most impactful and second most likely long-term risk faced by humanity.

Despite its public-facing communications, Facebook has not defined climate misinformation, nor is reflected it in any of its public policies. There is no mention of climate misinformation in Facebook’s Community Standards, Advertising Standards, and no misinformation-related policies exist. Climate misinformation is not defined as harmful content, unlike anti-vaccination content, while climate change is also totally missing from Facebook’s Oversight Board and its charter.

Organisations publishing climate misinformation are getting cheap reach on Facebook’s advertising platform. The report found two organisations repeatedly publishing climate denial ads in the UK, through undermining climate policies and solutions (calling net zero a “swingeing plan”) or attacking climate scientists and advocacy groups ( calling them “cults”).

The report also finds abundant empirical and journalistic evidence indicating the systematic failure of Facebook’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program (3PFCP) to prevent the spread of misinformation on a variety of topics. Climate change is rarely looked at: from publicly available records, the report finds just six climate fact-checks per month, compared to the 4.75 billion items shared by Facebook users each day.

Finally, the report exposes the inadequacy of Facebook’s Climate Science Information Center (CSIC). Touted as a key solution to combat climate misinformation, CSIC has only been rolled out in 16 countries across the world and fails to use best practice to debunk myths.

Action on these issues is essential to prevent misinformation severely impacting the outcomes of the climate conference, COP26, which takes place in Glasgow this year.

The report asks the platform to:

● Update its misinformation policies to explicitly include climate misinformation.
● Stop profiting from climate misinformation by removing all climate denial on the advertising platform.
● Be transparent: regularly share how misinformation spreads on the platform and report about the effectiveness of measures taken to prevent the spread.
● Take effective action against the biggest repeat offenders; and close other loopholes that the report exposes, such as exempting politicians from climate fact-checks.

Lead Researcher and Writer of the report, Sean Buchan, said

“There is no way of looking at the evidence without concluding that Facebook have this issue squarely on the back burner. Despite the clear threat of climate inaction the world’s largest social media platform continues to profit from lies, denial and false solutions about climate change. This is Facebook playing the fiddle while the planet burns. The company needs to demonstrate alignment with their public statements on the climate, and take the threat to COP26 seriously”.

ENDS

Notes to Editor:

1) On the Back Burner: How Facebook’s Inaction on Misinformation Fuels the Global Climate Crisis can be downloaded here: https://bit.ly/fbclimatemisinfo
2) For media inquiries; please contact Sean Buchan
E-mail: sean@stopfundingheat.info
Phone: +44 7842 626 873

About Stop Funding Heat

Stop Funding Heat is a campaign dedicated to making climate denial and climate misinformation unprofitable, both in the press and on online platforms. With every year that passes, brands are increasingly unwilling to be associated with climate denial too and will pull their advertising accordingly, forcing press and platforms to clean up their act on climate misinformation. Stop Funding Heat is based on the successful model of Stop Funding Hate, which oversaw a marked reduction in hate speech across the UK’s major newspapers.

Petition to Facebook

This report launch is accompanied by a public petition to Facebook – for more information, please contact us.

About COP26

The 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) climate summit in Glasgow this year is the most pivotal since the conference in Paris in 2015, as it is the first COP to take place since the Paris Agreement’s measures come into effect.