Facebook may be failing to tag a large amount of climate misinformation posted on its site, a study released today indicates. Researchers from the Center for Counter Digital Hate 184 exceptionally popular stories from what it identified to be the top ten publishers of climate change denial content in the world (a list that includes Russian state media, The Daily Wire, Breitbart and others). It found that roughly half (50.5 percent) of the stories failed to trigger Facebook’s information labels designed to flag coverage on climate change. Stories from such heavily trafficked news outlets should be the easiest targets for fact-checkers, suggesting that much more climate misinformation is evading Facebook’s screening.
Last year Facebook (which has since rebranded as Meta) to flag climate change coverage in a number of countries, including Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Nigeria,…
