Pinterest is banning climate misinformation ads and posts in its latest effort to block harmful content on its virtual message board service, the company said Wednesday.
The ban includes any content that denies the existence or impact of climate change, or denies that humans affect global warming and that the phenomenon is supported by scientific consensus. Inaccurate reports of natural disasters and extreme weather events will also be removed, as will misrepresentations of scientific data by omission or picking of the icing on the cake intended to erode confidence in climate science.
Sustainability searches on Pinterest are on the rise, with zero waste lifestyle searches rising 64 percent over the past year.
Google said in October it would stop showing ads on YouTube videos and other content promoting false claims about climate change. Some publications are no longer accepting advertisements from fossil fuel companies, while ad agencies are increasingly rejecting industry work.
A report released this week by a panel of experts convened by the United Nations concluded that countries must drastically reduce fossil fuel emissions in the coming years to avoid a disastrous level of global warming.
Pinterest has blocked several categories of ads over the years, banning ads featuring culturally adapted and inappropriate costumes in 2016, anti-vaccine content in 2017, political ads in 2018, and weight loss ads in 2021. In response, companies like Shapermint changed hands. their marketing campaigns for women of all body types, according to Pinterest.
Ads account for all of Pinterest’s revenue. The company, which declined to say how many climate misinformation ads it had caught in the past, said it used human moderators, automated systems and user reports to enforce its policies.
Sarah Bromma, Pinterest’s head of policy, said the company wanted to avoid misinformation before it became popular on the site. Tech giants like Meta and Twitter have faced backlash from users and advertisers for allowing hate speech, conspiracy theories and misleading content on their services.
“We always want to make sure that our policies are forward-looking, that we don’t wait to be inundated with some form of malicious content and then move,” she said. “At that point, it’s a little too late.”
