By Elizabeth Culliford

(Reuters] – Facebook (NASDAQ 🙂 Advertisers promoted misleading climate change claims on the platform in recent week, as the COP26 conference was about to get underway.

After Nick Clegg (Facebook’s vice-president of global affairs) had highlighted the company’s attempts to counter climate misinformation through a blog, as the Glasgow summit started, Newsmax, a conservative media network, ran an advertisement on Facebook calling man-made global heating a “hoax.”

It was viewed more than 200k times. Candace Owens, a conservative commentator said that we are “just supposed to trust our government on climate science.” A U.S. libertarian think tank ran an ad about how modern doomsayers had incorrectly forecast climate crises over decades. 

Newsmax, Owens, and the Daily Wire paid for the advertisement from Owens’s Page. They did not reply to any requests for comment.

Facebook recently changed its name from Meta to Meta. It does not have any specific policies on misinformation about climate in advertisements or unpaid postings. Google (NASDAQ: Alphabet) stated last month that it will no longer permit ads contradicting scientific consensus regarding climate change to be posted on YouTube or its other services. However, it will allow material that makes false claims.

Facebook doesn’t usually remove incorrect information in posts unless it finds they cause real-world harm. It did this for COVID-19 falsehoods. According to the company, it degrades posts deemed false by third-party fact-checkers (Reuters being one of them) and bans advertisements that contain such falsified claims. Advertisers who repeatedly publish false information could be subject to Facebook advertising restrictions. The exclusion of politicians from the fact-checking applies to their ads.

A spokesperson from the company said that ads that promote climate misinformation are common on many social media platforms. “Facebook offers transparency in this way: While ads like these may be seen across multiple platforms, we require them to be accessible to the public through our Ad Library for seven years following publication.”

InfluenceMap is a UK-based think tank that identified misleading Facebook ads from various media outlets around COP26. It also discovered that fossil fuel companies, lobbying groups, and other organizations spent $574,000 to run political and social issue Facebook advertisements during the summit. This resulted in over 22 million impressions, and content that encouraged their environmental efforts, InfluenceMap called “greenwashing”.

The American Petroleum Institute paid to air an ad that repainted a natural scene in which it praised its efforts at tackling climate change. Meanwhile, BP (NYSE 🙂 America ran an ad that highlighted its support of climate-friendly policies with neon green writing.

API stated that “our social media posts are a fraction of the strong investments made by our companies every day.” It also said the API was committed to decreasing emissions. BP released a statement saying that they were “actively advocating” policies to support net zero including carbon pricing. This was through a wide range of transparent channels such as social media.

Facebook added informational labels to post about climate change. It directs users to the Climate Science Center. The new hub has facts and quizzes that is claimed to be visited daily by more than 100,000 people.

When asked by Mike Schroepfer about his concerns about misinformation being spread about climate at Facebook, he stated, “Obviously there has been concern about people posting misinformation about climate on Facebook.”

He stated that he was not confident in stating that they have everything right now. We constantly reevaluate the current state of the world and our roles in it. This includes allowing people to express themselves and intervening when harms are occurring that we can stop.

Although he did not answer directly why Facebook didn’t ban all misinformation ads, he said that it wanted people not to profit from misinformation.

EMPLOYEES: QUESTION POLICY

Employees have been arguing about the company’s approach to climate misinformation. Staff have been arguing on an internal message board about how to handle climate misinformation. They also flagged instances of misinformation on the platform.

These documents are part of a collection of disclosures Frances Haugen made to Congress and the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission by whistleblower Frances Haugen. Frances Haugen was a former Facebook product manger who quit in May. Reuters was among the few news organizations that were able to access the documents.

One staff member asked whether Facebook could begin removing misinformation from climate platforms and classified them in the comments to an April Facebook post.

Two researchers from outside who were working on Facebook’s climate change initiatives told Reuters that they wanted to see Facebook approach misinformation about climate with the same proactivity it showed for COVID-19 in the aftermath of the pandemic.

John Cook is a Monash University postdoctoral researcher fellow who advises Facebook about its climate misinformation efforts. “It’s arguably even more dangerous.”