Climate misinformation in the spotlight

Facebook is facing mounting pressure from advocacy groups to weed out climate misinformation on its platform and be more transparent about the extent of the false or misleading claims.

What environmental groups say: A pair of reports released this week amid the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow found scores of accounts spreading climate misinformation and raised questions about the tech giant’s efforts to combat such content.

“Facebook is not solely responsible for climate misinformation existing, but it’s definitely amplifying the problem and a possible bigger problem down the line and doing nothing about it,” said Sean Buchanan, author of a Stop Funding Heat report published Thursday.

That report, along with another on the topic from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) published earlier in the week, were unveiled as global leaders gathered at the U.N. summit to discuss new efforts to address climate change.

The Stop Funding Heat report, released in partnership with the group Real Facebook Oversight Board, estimated an average range of between 818,000 and 1.36 million daily views of climate misinformation, citing data from monitoring platform CrowdTangle.

Authors found just 3.6 percent of climate misinformation identified on the platform had a fact-checking label applied.

Researchers studied 195 pages and groups identified as spreading climate misinformation, including 41 “single issue” groups and 154 that posted on a wider range of topics. The study focused on posts between January and August.

Facebook’s response: Facebook pushed back on the report’s findings and questioned the methodology used. A company spokesperson said the report seems to take a broader view of misinformation, and the platform’s fact checkers review content that contains a verifiable claim.