Twitter has said it will ban ads that deny scientific consensus on climate change. The policy echoes one already in place at Google.
In a statement outlining its new rules, the social media company said: “Ads shouldn’t detract from important conversations about the climate crisis." However, there has been no indication that individual users' posts would be deleted or banned for denying climate change.
Twitter has been targeted by groups seeking to promote misleading claims about climate change. Other social media sites such as Facebook have also been targeted.
The announcement, coinciding with Earth Day, came hours before the European Union agreed upon a deal requiring big tech companies to vet their sites more closely for hate speech, disinformation and other harmful content. Twitter said it would provide more information in the coming months on how it plans to provide “reliable, authoritative context to the climate conversations” its users engage in, including from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The UN-backed science panel’s reports on the causes and effects of climate change provide the basis for international negotiations to curb climate change. The company already has a dedicated climate topic on its site and offered what it described as “pre-bunks” during last year’s UN climate conference to counter misinformation surrounding climate change.
