In October 2021, Google pledged to stop placing ads next to content that denied the existence and causes of climate change, so purveyors of the false claims could no longer monetize their platforms, including YouTube.
And yet, if you recently clicked on a YouTube video titled “Who is Leonardo DiCaprio,” you may have found a jumble of claims that climate change is a hoax and that the world is cooling down after a Paramount+ ad for the movie’ 80 for Brady’. with Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Sally Field and Rita Moreno.
For another video purporting to describe “how climate activists distort the evidence,” some users saw an ad for Alaska Airlines.
According to a coalition of environmental organizations and the Center for Countering Digital Hate, these are not anomalies. In a report published Tuesday, researchers from the organizations accused YouTube of continuing to profit from videos that portrayed the changing climate as hoaxes or exaggeration.
They found 100 videos, viewed at least 18 million times in total, that violated Google’s own policies. They found videos accompanied by advertisements for other major brands such as Adobe, Costco, Calvin Klein and Politico. An ad even popped up for Google’s search engine before a video claiming there was no scientific consensus on the changing climate.
“It really begs the question of what Google’s current level of enforcement is,” Callum Hood, head of research at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said in an interview.
It’s hard to judge the full extent of misinformation on YouTube, researchers say, because watching videos is time-consuming work and they have limited access to data, which makes them dependent on tedious keyword searches on the platform. “I think it’s fair to say this is probably the tip of the iceberg,” Mr Hood added, referring to what they had found.
Ms Fonda, who heads a political action committee dedicated to fighting climate change, said in a statement that it was “abhorrent that YouTube should violate its own policies” by featuring climate hoax videos with advertisements, lending the content even more validity while “the earth is burning.”
“I am appalled that an ad for one of my films appears on one of those videos, and I hope YouTube stops this practice immediately,” Ms. Fonda said.
Ads for Grubhub, the food delivery service, appeared multiple times for climate denial videos, The New York Times found. A spokeswoman for Grubhub said the company worked with YouTube and other partners to “prevent Grubhub ads from appearing next to content that promotes misinformation.”
Michael Aciman, a spokesperson for YouTube, said in a statement that the company “allows for policy debate or discussion of climate-related initiatives, but when content crosses the line of denying climate change, we remove ads from those videos.”
He added that YouTube has removed ads from several videos the researchers flagged, including the one promoting “80 for Brady.”
As misinformation has become a bigger scourge online, YouTube has tried to balance its desire to be an open platform for diverse opinions with the importance of providing users with proven facts on important topics. In recent years, the platform has cracked down on lies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and false claims about vaccines.
In 2021, as the company changed its rules on climate change, it said advertisers and publishing partners became increasingly uncomfortable appearing next to inaccurate climate content.
Google’s policy applies to content that refers to climate change as a hoax or scam, denies the long-term trend that the climate is warming, or denies that greenhouse gas emissions or human activities contribute to climate change.
Among some of the climate videos researchers found — some with ads and some without — YouTube had a “context” box with authoritative information, indicating it knew the videos contained false or at least disputed claims. “Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns, caused primarily by human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels,” YouTube wrote, linking to a United Nations site on the subject.
The investigation by the Center for Countering Digital Hate and Climate Action Against Disinformation, an international coalition of more than 50 environmental organizations, suggested that YouTube had overlooked or ignored violent content. They identified another 100 videos that did not explicitly violate Google’s policies, but met a broader definition of climate disinformation that should also be covered.
“This shows that YouTube currently benefits from a much wider range of climate disinformation than is covered by its narrowly framed policies,” the report said.
The videos the group cited come from a variety of sources, including experts, podcasters and advocacy groups.
They also included industry giants such as Exxon Mobil, which was accused of “greenwashing” its contribution to carbon emissions even though its videos did not explicitly violate YouTube’s policies; and mainstream conservative media such as Fox News, whose videos sometimes did. (In one, Fox’s recently fired host Tucker Carlson dismissed the fight against climate change as “a concerted effort by the government of China to hinder the US and the West from taking their place as the world’s leader”.)
Exxon Mobil and Fox did not immediately respond to a request for comment
Nearly all of the videos contained ads, the researchers found, which meant YouTube was monetizing the content and in some cases may have paid creators for the videos. Placing advertisements is an automated process. The platform’s videos are often targeted at particular viewers, meaning that different users see different commercials before playing the same video.
Creators can receive compensation from YouTube as members of the company’s affiliate program after they accumulate 1,000 subscribers and users watch 4,000 hours of their videos. It was unclear how many videos containing climate misinformation came from creators in the program.
“What makes YouTube particularly dangerous is that they share profits per video,” said Claire Atkin, co-founder of Check My Ads, an advocacy group that studies online advertising and was not involved in the study. “When someone posts this information to Facebook, they don’t make any money, but when someone posts a video to YouTube, they have the opportunity to earn a full salary from disinformation.”
She said YouTube was a powerful force in radicalizing people online and needed to work harder to curate the content on its platform. “The fact that they haven’t changed that, that they’re still funding — not promoting, financing – by directing advertisers to sponsor disinformation about climate change is yet another proof of their ineptitude.
