Zuckerberg’s embarrassing self own
Over the past week, more than 8 million people were exposed to climate misinformation.
Over the past week, more than 8 million people were exposed to climate misinformation. The primary lines of attack included allegations of hypocrisy on the part of climate activists for not objecting to the Blue Origin launch; amplification of former President Trump’s statement that the Green New Deal was “Green New Bullshit”; and general attacks on the Green New Deal. There was also general climate denial content, content attacking Tracy Stone Manning, the Biden Administration’s nominee to run the Bureau of Land Management, and attacks on the Biden Administration’s pledge to protect 30 percent of America’s land and water by 2030.
Just to summarize: the fact that Jeff Bezos went to space for 11 minutes doesn’t actually change anything in terms of the need to fight for responsible climate policy, Tracy Stone Manning is not an eco-terrorist, and the Biden Administration's plan to protect 30 percent of US land and water by 2030 does not put 30 percent of the country under federal control.
This week, Mark Zuckerberg gave an interview to The Vergecast, where he talked about the difficulties Facebook faces in clamping down on misinformation circulating on the platform and compared the work they’re doing to “...fighting crime in a city. No one expects that you’re going to fully solve crime in a city.”
As Inc’s Jason Aten points out, though, “...it’s safe to say that Zuckerberg’s analogy breaks down when you consider that generally speaking the police aren’t providing safe haven for the criminals, giving them a free tool to communicate with each other, and amplifying their efforts, helping them recruit more criminals. Another point worth mentioning is that if any city had a crime problem on the scale of Facebook's content moderation problem, not only would the police chief be fired, the Mayor and City Council would resign in disgrace.” Zuckerberg’s self serving analogy deteriorates even further when you consider the fact that on January 6, 2021, actual police officers defending the US Capitol against a violent insurrection were beaten, crushed in doorways, called racist slurs, and electrocuted by people driven by misinformation about the results of the 2020 election that was spread on Facebook.
If Facebook were to make one change to fight climate misinformation on its platform, what would you like it to do? Let us know at info@thetriplecheck.org.
See you next week!
In this space each week, triplecheck will share information on the climate misinformation we’re seeing online – what’s going viral, how many people are seeing it, and who’s responsible for moving it. triplecheck was initiated by the Climate Action Campaign and was created to develop innovative tools to help fight misinformation.