Analysis: Facebook failing to counter climate change misinformation

Feb. 23 (UPI) -- The Center For Countering Digital Hate said Wednesday that Facebook is falling short of its promises to tackle climate misinformation.

According to a new analysis by CCDH, Facebook fails to label half of posts promoting articles from the world's leading publishers of climate change denial.

"By failing to do even the bare minimum to address the spread of climate change denial information, Meta is exacerbating the climate crisis," CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed said in a statement.

Ahmed said climate change denial is designed to "fracture our resolve and impede meaningful action to mitigate climate change."

He said climate change misinformation flows unabated on Facebook and Instagram platforms owned by Meta.

CCDH said its analysis used the social analytics tool News Whip to assess 184 climate change denial articles published by the top 10 publishers of climate misinformation.

These articles have accumulated more than 1 million likes, comments or shares on Facebook, according to CCDH.

Meta's own CrowdTangle analytics tool was then used to identify the top public Facebook post for each article in the sample to see whether the articles were labeled as misinformation.

That analysis found 50.5% of the most popular climate change misinformation posts carried no warning labels.

CCDH said examples of climate change denial articles that carried no warning labels on Facebook include an article from Breitbart claiming global warming is not real and is a hoax and a Washington Times article claiming COVID-19 and climate change are being used to steal liberties.