BERLIN — Twitter says it will no longer allow advertisers on its site who deny the scientific consensus on climate change, echoing a policy already in place at Google.
“Ads shouldn’t detract from important conversations about the climate crisis,” the company said in a statement outlining its new policy Friday.
It was not clear that this change would impact the content of users’ posts on social media sites, Facebook and Instagram. Groups have been targeting these platforms to spread misleading climate claims.
This announcement, which coincides with Earth Day, came just hours after the European Union signed a deal for big tech companies that would require them to inspect their sites for hate speech and disinformation.
Twitter said it would provide more information in the coming months on how it plans to provide “reliable, authoritative context to the climate conversations” its users engage in, including from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The U.N.-backed science panel’s reports on the causes and effects of climate change provide the basis for international negotiations to curb climate change.
The company already has a dedicated climate topic on its site and offered what it described as “pre-bunks” during last year’s U.N. climate conference to counter misinformation surrounding climate change.
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