Google Under Pressure From Climate Advocates To Demonetize Environmental Disinformation

Search engine giant Google is under pressure from climate advocates to help stop the growing number of inaccuracies published about the environment.

As per reports from civil society groups, the company is getting told to rigorously enforce policies that demonetize such kinds of disinformation online. There are so many ads put alongside inaccurate climate posts that keep popping up.

Now this is not the first time that the Android maker is getting called out for the act. The company did pledge to bring an end to the growing trend but despite its efforts, content of this sort is on the rise.

Recently, a new open letter was rolled out to the head of Google Sundar Pichai. Endorsed by so many signatures, they’re asking for quicker and stricter implementation of the act. The news comes as a growing number of weather concerns rocked the country recently.

Hurricanes are on the rise in the US, which gave rise to mountains of disinformation. This was just a short while before the much anticipated UNCOP29 climate summit was set to occur.

We are already aware of Google rolling out another policy in 2021 that stopped ads against content of this kind which ignored climate change. Anyone wishing to make money by lying on leading platforms wouldn’t have the content monetized. And YouTube was a part of the list.

Meanwhile, another letter from a number of groups such as the Union of Concerned Scientists confirmed that monetization hasn’t stopped and it’s still on the rise. This is why regulators are now speaking up against the issue and want Google to take immediate action before it’s too late. A lot of communities keep getting affected.

The letter also acknowledged Google’s efforts on this front and how some ads were stopped but others continue to align with misleading content related to climate change. Last month, another round of scrutiny against Google for the same reason arose. The campaign dubbed Global Witness saw $1.5M in revenue generated for the Epoch Times on the website in the past year.

Video streaming giant YouTube enabled monetization of such content where influencers were given high payrolls to promote the fake news. So it’s like doing wrong and getting masked with Google ads that reward the creators with huge sums of money, the reports show.

As of now, Google has yet to respond to all the allegations on this matter.

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World