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Crack Down On “New Climate Denial,” Nonprofit tells YouTube
🕑 Added 2024-01-21 16:00:10 +0000 UTC[This is a transcript with links to references.]
The Center for Countering Digital Hate put out a new report a few days ago, in which they warn that climate misinformation continuous to flourish on YouTube. They want YouTube to take more action. Let’s have a look
The Center for Countering Digital Hate is an American-British non-governmental non-profit organization. For their new report, they used artificial intelligence to crawl YouTube videos and to classify all types of climate misinformation that it came across.
They found that outright climate change denial, that is claims that the climate isn’t changing or that humans are not responsible for it, have strongly declined. Instead, the majority of climate misinformation is now what they call the “new denial”.
This encompasses claims that acknowledge the climate is changing and we are causing it, but it’s nothing to worry about, or it’s actually good for us, or if it’s not good then we can’t do anything about it anyway. To the “New denial” they also add a general dismissal of climate science or climate scientists as unreliable. Their analysis found that this “New Denial” now makes up 70% of all climate denial claims made on YouTube, up from 35 percent six years ago.
This shift has been going on for some years, and you will probably see the “new deniers” in the comment section below because they like to follow me around. It’s the type that claims carbon dioxide is good for plants therefore all is well, and all climate scientists are frauds and so on.
The main reason for this shift is probably that it’s simply become futile to ignore the evidence for climate change. A secondary reason may be that YouTube doesn’t allow monetization of videos of the old denial type, whereas the new denial type can be monetized. Personally, I think that’s only a small part of the reason because we’ve seen the same shift on twitter which until recently couldn’t be monetized all.
The report contains quite a few examples of videos that use the new denial. Most of them have few views, but some of them go into the millions, featuring people such as Jordan Peterson or being produced by Prager University. The center estimate that YouTube makes more than 13 million dollars in revenue each year from the new climate denial. Which doesn’t sound like much unless it’s in your own bank account.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate then calls on YouTube to update its policy. The current policy is: “We do not allow content that contradicts authoritative scientific consensus on climate change.” And the policy they recommended policy: “We do not allow content that contradicts the authoritative scientific consensus on the causes, impacts, and solutions to climate change.” They also recommend more demonetization on YouTube and other social media.
I see a big problem with that recommended change in policy. It’s that it’s crossing over from limiting the spread of scientific misinformation which I think is a good idea, to attempting to streamline people’s opinions about how bad the situation is and what a good solution would be. It’s crossing over from facts to opinions.
If someone claims that plants will benefit from the sudden change of climate zones, then that’s scientific misinformation alright. If someone says that they’re not worried about climate change and more worried about energy shortages, then that’s their opinion. And depending on where they live that opinion might not be all that crazy.
Indeed, you could also argue that I myself count as a “new denier” according to this center, because I’ve made a video explaining why I think all current plans to reach net zero are almost certain to fail.
So let me say it bluntly, I am not in favour of a policy change of this type. I am not happy of course that some people are making money peddling nonsense. But the problem isn’t the few people who produce this content, it’s the many who watch it. The problem is that a big part of them *want misinformation. They want misinformation -- consciously or subconsciously -- to justify conclusions that they hold dear, whether or not their reasoning is sound.
This is why I doubt that bans or demonetization are going to make much of a difference for the spread of misinformation: If there’s demand, there’ll be supply. Market forces alone won’t going to fix this issue because ads target the viewer, not the video creator. This means brands don’t really need to worry that they will be associated with content that the viewer dislikes because the vast majority of people click on a certain type of content because they like stuff that like.
Personally I think that the best way to combat misinformation is with information. I know that that’s very old school and that some studies seem to have found that people rarely change their mind when given new information. But I am somewhat, hmm, sceptical about the reliability of psychological studies.
Also, the very fact that the old climate denial is on the decrease speaks against it. People do evidently change their mind when confronted with facts. But yes, scientific misinformation is a really difficult problem and it’s bound to get much worse as more AI tools become available. I hope that someone, somewhere knows a good solution because I don’t have one. Though, maybe you do? Let me know in the comments.
Comments
I've noticed this shift over the years of arguing with AGW deniers who come in one of four flavors, all bad: a) libertarians who believe that government has no role in life but to enforce contracts, (b) religious zealots who believe that god created the earth for us and thus there is no concern for it to fail because, well, god, (c) those who believe that the earth is too big for us to affect it in any way and (d) those who believe that climate changes all the time and if an extinction event occurs, life will rebound in the future, sometime. Deniers, as you say, are ideologically opposed to environmentalism in general animals rights, that we have obligations to others, that we are overpopulated, that the market causes problems, that we have responsibilities, etc. As I've stated every time before, AGW simply exacerbates the sixth extinction event that we've been driving for decades, actually longer but the rate of ecosystem destruction and wildlife kill-off has increased since the 1970s.
As she predicted, some people WANT to understand Sabine wrong again, but she made the exacly right statement here. Personaly I think we indeed need some rules and regulations to make frutiful communication possible, on social media and everywhere. It´s the essence of free speech, not it´s death sentence.
Well... the thrust of S's post seems to be about the proliferation of a new kind of denier, climatologically speaking. And the thesis is that more info is needed vs. a new restrictive policy, except that the former is also a policy. But, I think there is a potential hypothesis here in all that: that the more the topic is banged around in the pinball machine of worldly discussions, including all the policy stuff, then better results will, eventually, occur. As far as millions being made off of the people clicking on the new denier posts, just remember that what goes up tends to come down.... and that that high number now will turn into a pop in the other direction when the typical angel's brain being exposed to it all figures it out in time. It goes in cycles, like the tulip markets in Holland.
