A human-rights group has accused Facebook of pushing climate change sceptics towards extreme disinformation and conspiracy groups.
In a report released today, Global Witness claims that Facebook’s algorithm amplified people’s doubts rather than nudging them towards reliable information.
According to the BBC:
Researchers created two users – climate sceptic “Jane” and “John” who followed established scientific bodies.
They then tracked what Facebook’s algorithm suggested to both accounts.
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”.
Meanwhile, John’s account began by liking the page of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations scientific body.
And in contrast to Jane, John was consistently shown reliable science-based content.
As the simulation continued, Facebook began to recommend even more extreme and fringe content to Jane, including conspiracy theories, such as ones about “chem trails” – false claims condensation left by planes contains chemical agents that can control the weather.
In response, Facebook said its algorithms are designed to reduce misinformation.
Is Facebook deliberately sending climate change sceptics to echo chambers on its platform? Undoubtedly. That’s what social media was set up to do, to sell your opinions and beliefs back to you, over and over. The thinking behind it is simple.
Man made climate change is a hoax. We know that. It’s part of a longstanding agenda to enslave humanity. Just look at the solutions on offer to combat it, right?
So then, how would you go about preventing people from actually doing something about it?
Social media is the answer, kind of. If you can get people on social media to chat about Orwellian agendas and then send them into groups and onto pages where they’ll see content that tells them they are right, they’re not likely to take any real-world steps to resist their enslavement.
How many times have you read a post saying something like; “Enough is enough! We have got to get rid of these bastards now!” or “It’s time we put a stop to this, for our children!”
And of course, nobody stops anything, but the tweet gets a few hundred likes and shares. Yeah, I bet the elites are shitting themselves.
Oh and by the way, there is nothing false about the claim that the weather can be and is being manipulated. Surely the BBC has heard of cloud seeding?
