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On Wednesday, Pinterest announced that it would very much like to be excluded from the climate-change-denial narrative.
Under new policies developed with the Climate Disinformation Coalition and the Conscious Advertising Network (CAN), ads and content promoting climate misinformation or conspiracy theories will now be banned from the platform.
The move follows CAN’s open letter from the fall, which asked Pinterest and other Big Tech companies to crack down on climate misinformation and disinformation. Signees included Havas Media, Ben & Jerry’s, and Virgin Media O2.
What’s banned? According to the announcement, Pinterest will now prohibit content that:
- Denies climate change or its impacts are real.
- Denies that it’s man-made and backed by science.
- Goes against solutions backed by “well-established scientific consensus.”
- Misrepresents data via “omission or cherry-picking, in order to erode trust in climate science and experts.”
- Misleads people on public-safety emergencies, like natural disasters.
To implement the new policies, Sarah Bromma, head of policy at Pinterest, told us in an email that Pinterest will use “automated systems and moderator investigations to proactively take action on content that violates our community guidelines and/or advertising guidelines,” in addition to its Trust & Safety team reviewing reported content.
What’s allowed? Oil and gas companies, it seems, so long as they don’t explicitly misinform the public about climate change. According to Bromma, no companies or industries will be banned outright, but “all advertisers and companies must also follow [their] community guidelines, terms, and overall advertising guidelines.”
Put a filter on it: Tech companies have faced recent pressure to do more to curb climate misinformation–and that probably won’t let up anytime soon, given this week’s UN climate report.
- Google announced in October that it would stop running ads on YouTube videos and content promoting false claims about climate change, although research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) found it wasn’t exactly following through.
- Facebook said last year it would start to label some posts about climate change with links to its “Climate Science Information Center.” In February, CCDH said that the tech giant fell short of its promise, only labeling “half of posts promoting articles from the world’s leading publishers of climate denial,” per its analysis.—KH