Twitter will no longer sell ads with messaging that contradicts the United Nations’ (UN) scientists, according to a statement from the Silicon Valley tech giant.
“To better serve these conversations, misleading advertisements on Twitter that contradict the scientific consensus on climate change are prohibited, in line with our inappropriate content policy,” the statement says. “We believe that climate denialism shouldn’t be monetized on Twitter, and that misrepresentative ads shouldn’t detract from important conversations about the climate crisis. This approach is informed by authoritative sources, like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Reports.”
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is part of the UN.
The company also says it is “partnering with organizations committed to environmental conservation and sustainability,” and that those organizations include Earth Day Network, UN Environment Programme, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, UN Development Programme, Greenpeace, Voice for the Planet, Let Me Breathe, WWF, 350.org, FridaysForFuture, We Don’t Have Time, Climate Reality Project, and others.”
The rule change was issued Friday, which was also Earth Day.
Twitter has dubbed the initiative a “pre-bunk,” which it says helps stop the spread of misinformation before the information is made public in the first place.
“These pre-bunks will surface reliable, factual context across a range of key themes, like the science backing climate change and global warming realities,” according to a November press release.
But Twitter has a track record of wrongly labeling “misinformation.”
Just weeks before the 2020 election, The New York Post published a story containing the lewd contents of a laptop owned by President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. The younger Biden had left the laptop at a Delaware repair shop.
Twitter removed the story from its platform completely, and even locked The Post out of its own account for two weeks, during a period of time that was critical for the dissemination of political news and information.
Many claimed the laptop was “Russian disinformation.”
But the laptop and all of its contents turned out to be completely real, as re-confirmed by The New York Times earlier this year.
Twitter’s former CEO Jack Dorsey told the House Energy and Commerce Committee that blocking the story was a “total mistake” during a March 2021 hearing.
“It was literally just a process error. This was not against them in any particular way,” he said.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tenenssee Star and The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “UN Climate Change Conference UK 2021” by UN Climate Change.
