Facebook Offers Double-Secret-Probation Loophole So Climate Liars Can Keep On Despite "Fact Checks"
A team of climate scientists working as approved fact checkers for Facebook evaluated a post last year by a White House-connected group that claims the world needs to burn more fossil fuels. The researchers found that the post by the CO2 Coalition was based on cherry-picked information to mislead readers into thinking climate science models are wrong about global warming. The post, which was published originally in the conservative Washington Examiner, was an opinion piece that had been marked as false, in accordance with Facebook's standards. The coalition, which is funded by groups that oppose regulations on fossil fuels, was prevented from advertising on the site.
It didn't last long. A "conservative" Facebook employee quietly intervened, overturning the fact check, and the misinformation was no longer labeled as false, according to the CO2 Coalition. The post was free to be shared, and a new loophole was created for the coalition and other groups that attack mainstream climate science. After the quiet decision by Facebook, the coalition says it and other groups that attack consensus climate science can share content that climate scientists have labeled as misleading because Facebook will consider it "opinion" and therefore immune to fact-checking.
The CO2 Coalition is increasingly focused on using Facebook to reach more people with its message that climate change fears are overblown and that burning more fossil fuels would help humanity, Executive Director Caleb Rossiter told E&E News this week. He sees the battle over its climate-related posts as part of a larger proxy war over how to reach an audience outside of conservative media. "It's a huge reach. You can reach so many people both with your posts and your advertisements," Rossiter said. "We're kind of like Donald Trump. We're not happy with the treatment we're getting from the mainstream media, we resort to social media. That's where our action is in larger part."
Rossiter said the coalition was also temporarily blocked from running ads after the fact-check. After the "false" label was removed from its climate models piece, the coalition is now again allowed to buy ads. It has run a number of ads with messages that distort climate change and make inflammatory statements such as "we are saving the people of the planet from the people who claim they are saving the planet." Those ads have received more than 50,000 impressions, Facebook data shows.
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https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063436369
= new reply since forum marked as read
In a complex and uncertain world it is good to have Facebook..always so reliably sleazy ...
I wish I could wean by parents off WhatsApp..They would gain IQ points if they dropped WhatsApp.
