Research by Global Witness, a human-rights body, has shown that Facebook is increasingly pushing climate sceptics towards extreme disinformation and conspiracy groups.
In the research released on Wednesday, Global Witness found that Facebook’s algorithm amplified doubts rather than pushing people toward reliable information pertaining to climate change.
Global Witness is part of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a Washington-based libertarian think tank against the consensus on climate science.
To undertake the research, researchers working with the rights body created two users – climate sceptic “Jane” and “John” who followed established scientific bodies, after which they tracked what Facebook’s algorithm suggested to both accounts.
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Jane soon saw content denying man-made climate change, including pages calling it a “hoax” and attacking measures to mitigate its effects.
“Examples included posts accusing the “green movement” of “enslaving humanity” and calling the United Nations “an authoritarian regime with less credibility than Bugs Bunny,” the body said.
The researchers also had Jane’s account “liked” a Facebook page spreading climate disinformation, as a “starter” page, repeated this process twice, each time choosing a page with at least 14,000 followers, and expressed scepticism about the existence of climate change or its human origins.
Recall that in 2009, former US Vice-President Al Gore cited climate scientists, saying: “There is a 75% chance that the entire North Polar ice cap during some of the summer months could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years.”
Story was adapted from BBC.
