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Google Still Breaking Its Climate Disinfo Policy And More Revealed In 'Deny, Deceive, Delay Vol 3.' [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-11-30  

The Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) coalition is back with another year of COP-watching, and the latest report has some interesting findings!

Remember how Google promised to stop selling ads on climate denial? Welp, it turns out that's still a lie! Check My Ads found Toyota ads, served by Google, on Brietbart articles calling climate change a "hoax," as well as an Adobe ad, again placed by Google, on a Daily Wire article claiming that academia is "suppressing anti-climate change narrative[s]." In all, a variety of supposedly reputable ad tech companies were servicing 15 key climate disinfo outlets (so if you haven't yet, consider installing an ad blocker ).

The CAAD report also found that since the mysterious July '22 #ClimateScam spike on Twitter , the hashtag has been boosted to the extent that it now out-performs #ClimateCrisis and #ClimateEmergency. Those used to be far more popular before the scam started popping up in the search bar.

The report revealed that "the engagement spikes surrounding #ClimateScam appear to be driven by a small group of accounts that regularly use the hashtag and garner thousands of likes and retweets for such content." So, the topic isn’t broadly being talked about, but it’s instead being pushed concertedly by users like " Wide Awake Media ." That account, which posts old clips of disinfo content and ads for its t-shirts and other merchandise, only had 322 followers in March of 2023 when it first used #ClimateScam. Since then, its following has grown "over 750 times," having gained over 250,000 followers and made 354 posts with #ClimateScam.

Calling climate change a scam on Musk's Twitter is such good business that you can now sell merchandise about how climate change is a scam.

Maybe, Musk's weird fanboys would argue, #ClimateScam is just super popular! But if that were actually the case, it'd show up on other platforms like Meta's Facebook and Instagram, which are hardly platforms upon which we'd lavish praise . However, on those websites, #ClimateScam "barely registers in comparison" to #ClimateCrisis and #ClimateEmergency. So no, it's not organically popular.

But that's not to say there's no climate disinfo on Meta. Quite the opposite! Major fossil fuel companies have spent millions of dollars on Meta ads, and in return have had their greenwashing ads put in front of hundreds of millions of users.

The CAAD team "identified 13 entities who posted 2,562 ads" between January and October of 2023, "with a total associated spend of $4.13 million-$5.21 million," which granted them "at least 246 million impressions of Facebook." Just four companies, "Shell, ExxonMobil, BP and TotalEnergies," are the main sources, though, as they "accounted for approx. 98% of the ad spend in this period."

And that's just the pre-COP report—stay tuned for fresh findings from CAAD as the negotiations get underway!

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[1] Url: https://dailykos.com/stories/2023/11/30/2208855/-Google-Still-Breaking-Its-Climate-Disinfo-Policy-And-More-Revealed-In-Deny-Deceive-Delay-Vol-3?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=community_groups_Climate+Hawks&pm_medium=web

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