Facebook: Left Exposed As A Result Of COP26 Misinformation
It is a known fact that today’s society in 2021 rely so much on getting all of the information that we need to know at the click of a button, which is a positive as it means that we can access everything that we need to know almost instantly. Social media platforms are a gift especially to young people as they now have features where we can look at all of the worlds news updates whenever we please, However, overtime there have been several debates on whether or not we should believe what these articles are telling us as they may be written purely based on peoples opinion, the facts may simply not be correct as we have no real way of knowing this for sure. This problem has become even more talked about ever since the official COP26 starting date (31st November).
People need quick and easy ways of keeping up to date with what is going on, therefore, naturally they will take the fastest method of pulling their phone from their pocket and clicking these commonly used apps. Little did we all know that the information being sent to us could in fact be fake news and misleading.
Recently ‘Facebook’ have received accusations of being one of the biggest social media sites to actually be profiting (making money from) the misinformation on the current climate crisis. This issue needs to be brought up as this may well lead everyone to believe the lies that they are telling us, instead of finding out the truth which is in all of our rights to know so that we can all be a part of the change!
Campaign groups such as Stop Funding Heat and The Real Facebook Oversight Board said that Facebook is accepting paid advertisements on the social network that are pushing fake news about climate change and overall fuelling the spread of misinformation. These posts, the campaign groups claim, are receiving more than a million daily views of this kind of content. This shows just how much we have to put an end to this, as that is far too many people don’t know the truth about what is going on currently throughout our planet and being lied to by people we are taught to trust.
This, as we know is coming at a bad time for Facebook and its new partner company Meta, as this spreading of misinformation is already damaging the companies reputation, but it is important that we point out the flaws so that we can stay correctly educated.
A statement from the former product manager of Facebook urged Mark Zuckerberg to step down as company chief as she addressed MPs, saying the company could be stronger with someone willing to focus on user safety which essentially means that they are taking a step in the right direction in order to correct these problems for all of our best interests. Based on what Facebook itself classifies as climate misinformation, Stop Funding Heat’s report found that there are between 818,000 and 1.36 million daily views of climate misinformation on the platform. With all of these statistics coming to light in the public eye we should hope that people are now able to create their own opinions on these important climate matters.
It also found that just 3.6 per cent of fake posts about climate change had a “fact-checking label”, something Facebook uses to mark content that is deemed by their third-party fact-checkers as misinformation. Only 10.7 per cent of these posts were directing users to Facebook’s Climate Science Centre, a page created to go against this kind of content. The Climate Science Centre directs users who are reading misleading posts about the climate to actual truthful and reliable information/sources.
Hopefully with all of these facts this has opened your eyes to check exactly where your information is coming from, so that you are aware of exactly what is going on and don’t feel the need to rely on these potentially biased social media sites purely because of how easy it is to read their views.
Knowing the facts means that we can all be educated on how we as a society can act and put an end to this Climate Crisis!
