Prominent environmentalists and Democratic activists say Facebook is “allowing the spread of climate misinformation to flourish, unchecked” and urging the company’s external oversight board to intervene.
Driving the news: A new open letter with signatories including Stacey Abrams, Tom Steyer, and John Podesta (pictured) takes aim at the distribution of content from a group called the CO2 Coalition without warning labels or restrictions.
- The coalition argues more carbon emissions are a “net benefit” and rejects consensus science on warming.
Why it matters: The letter, organized by the recently launched group Climate Power 2020, could provide an early test for how the recently established oversight board deals with the topic.
The state of play: The letter to Helle Thorning-Schmidt, co-chair of the board, centers on recent reports about how Facebook addressed a CO2 Coalition post.
- “Instead of heeding the advice of independent scientists and approved fact-checkers from [the nonpartisan fact-checking group] Climate Feedback, Facebook sided with fossil fuel lobbyists by allowing the CO2 Coalition to take advantage of a giant loophole for ‘opinion’ content,” it states.
- “The loophole has allowed climate denial to fester by labeling it ‘opinion,’ and thus, avoiding the platform’s fact-checking processes,” the letter adds.
What’s next: It’s hard to say! Scott Rosenberg, the Axios managing editor for tech, notes that the oversight board hasn’t formally begun operating yet and will have discretion about which complaints to take on.
Read more at Axios
Face it Jack the Global Warming/Climate Change advocates don’t want the truth to be seen or heard
Science requires challenge and investigation and constant change and improvement. What are they afraid of??
This is good news.
If they are afraid of critics there must be something there to fear.
Never ceases to amaze me how extreme leftists find “disasters” in almost every normal thing. Weather is cyclic whether they know. ignore or pretend it’s not, Everyone should understand by now via the abuse, name calling and lies that they have nothing except a mad passion for power and control. I worked for many years in the printing industry where the old adage “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story” was a perpetual joke. However it is no longer a joke with rampant intimidation and lies costing everyone dearly while the Marxists march ever onward and further and further into extremism.
“The loophole has allowed climate denial to fester by labeling it ‘opinion,’ and thus, avoiding the platform’s fact-checking processes” – would that be the same fact-checking which relies on groupthink rather than facts?
From communism through Hitler, censorship and propaganda over free expression has been the chosen vehicle of fear and control of the left. When they can’t compete with science and the facts – they censor. Fact – CO2, along with water, are THE two basic molecular ingredients of life on earth. Any activist pretending to be an “environmentalist” that doesn’t understand this is not worthy of the name. Fact – today’s climate is well within the natural norms of our current Holocene interglacial period. We are currently at less than half of the average temperature of that entire twelve thousand years. Fact – we have been warming and cooling within a 4 degree temperature range for the entire Holocene. We are well within that range in spite of a 40% increase in life essential CO2. Fact – CO2 has been naturally declining from levels up to 7000ppm for the entire evolution of multicellular life. All life begins to die at 150ppm. During our current ongoing Pleistocene/Holocene ice age, CO2 drops to within 30ppm of lethal lows – 180ppm. Fact – the warming and pausing of the last half of 20th century is indistinguishable from the warming of the first half (when there was no significant increase in CO2. Fact – scientists who characterize the warming trend which has been happening since the 1600s, don’t call that warming “catastrophic”. Fact – climate change has been going on since climate began billions of years ago.
They refuse to debate, but demand censorship. What the Hell has happened to my country?
Who refuses to debate? Here is 573 pages of debate.
https://www.aps.org/policy/statements/upload/climate-seminar-transcript.pdf
A number of these experts, who have committed their lives to science and its pursuit of truth, have been slanderously treated by the likes of sceptical science.com including Judith Curry, John Christy, and Isaac Held. How can dialogue happen when viscous and sustained attacks from non-scientific groups seek to silence voices they don’t want to hear? Head over to that website and check out the list of people they silenced, and proudly display. Disgusting!