Google does not cut ads for fake news climate videos – 05/02/2023 – Environment

In October 2021, Google pledged to stop placing ads alongside content that denies the existence and causes of climate change, so purveyors of false claims cannot make money on its platforms, including YouTube.

However, if you recently clicked on a YouTube video entitled “Who is Leonardo DiCaprio”, you may have come across a series of claims that climate change is a hoax and that the world is cooling down, following a Paramount+ announcement of the film ” 80 for Brady”, starring Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Sally Field and Rita Moreno.

Before another video purported to detail “how climate activists distort the evidence”, some users saw an ad for Alaska Airlines.

These are not aberrations, according to a coalition of environmental organizations and the Center for Countering Digital Hate. In a report released on Tuesday (2), researchers from the organizations accused YouTube of continuing to profit from videos that portrayed climate change as a hoax or exaggeration.

They found 100 videos, viewed at least 18 million times in total, that violated Google’s own policy. They found videos accompanied by ads for other big brands, such as Adobe, Costco, Calvin Klein and Politico. Even a Google search engine ad appeared before a video that claimed there was no scientific consensus on climate change.

“It really raises the question of what Google’s current level of enforcement is,” said Callum Hood, head of research at the Center to End Digital Hate.

It’s hard to gauge the full extent of misinformation on YouTube, the researchers said, because watching videos is time-consuming work and they have limited access to the data, leaving them dependent on laborious keyword searches on the platform. “I think it’s fair to say it’s probably the tip of the iceberg,” Hood added, referring to what they found.

Fonda, who runs a political action committee dedicated to tackling climate change, said in a statement that it was “disgusting that YouTube violates its own policy” by running fake weather videos with ads, giving more validity to the content, while ” the Earth is burning”.

“I am appalled that an ad for one of my films appears in one of these videos, and I hope YouTube stops this practice immediately,” Fonda said.

Ads for the food delivery service Grubhub appeared several times before the climate denial videos, The New York Times found. A spokesperson for Grubhub said the company was working with YouTube and other partners to “prevent Grubhub ads from appearing alongside content that promotes misinformation”.

Michael Aciman, a spokesman for YouTube, said in a statement that the company allowed “policy debates or discussions of climate-related initiatives, but when content crosses the line into climate change denial, we remove ads from running in those videos.”

He added that YouTube had removed ads from several videos flagged by researchers, including the one promoting “80 for Brady.”

As misinformation has become an increasing scourge online, YouTube has tried to balance its intent to be an open platform for diverse opinions with its interest in providing users with substantiated facts about important topics. In recent years, the platform has cracked down on the lie that the 2020 US presidential election was stolen and false claims about vaccines.

In 2021, when the company changed its rules on climate change, it said advertisers and publishing partners became increasingly uncomfortable appearing alongside inaccurate weather content.

Google’s policy applies to content that depicts climate change as a hoax or hoax, denies the long-term trend that the climate is warming, or denies that greenhouse gas emissions or human activity are contributing to climate change. climate change.

In some of the weather videos the researchers found — some with ads and some without — YouTube had a “context” box with credible information, signaling that it knew the videos made false or at least disputed claims.

“Climate change refers to long-term changes in temperatures and weather patterns caused primarily by human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels,” YouTube wrote, linking to a UN website on the subject.

Research by the Center to Stop Digital Hate and Climate Action Against Misinformation, an international coalition of more than 50 environmental advocacy groups, suggested that YouTube ignored or downplayed violating content. They identified another 100 videos that didn’t explicitly violate Google’s policies, but met a broader definition of climate misinformation that should also be addressed.

“This demonstrates that YouTube is currently profiting from a much broader range of climate misinformation than is covered by its strict policies,” the report said.

The videos cited by the group come from a variety of sources, including experts, podcasters and advocacy groups.

They also included industry giants like Exxon Mobil, which was accused of greenwashing for its contribution to carbon emissions, even though its videos did not explicitly violate YouTube’s policies; and mainstream conservative media like Fox News, whose videos sometimes did.

(In one, recently fired Fox anchor Tucker Carlson dismissed the fight against climate change as “a concerted effort by the government of China to undermine the United States and the West and take its place as a world leader.”)

Exxon Mobil and Fox did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Almost all of the videos featured ads, the researchers found, which meant that YouTube was monetizing the content and, in some cases, may have paid creators for the videos.

Ad placement is an automated process. Videos on the platform are usually targeted to specific viewers, which means that different users will see different commercials before the same video plays.

_{Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves}