Climate change: Google orders big change on YouTube to fight misinformation

Climate change is here and it is happening faster than ever. Humanity is to blame. However, there are a number of people who are in denial mode and this is despite the fact that so many scientific studies have shown that climate change is very much happening and that humanity will suffer the consequences of that in the form of extreme weather events from harsher heat waves to increasing instances of storms and floods and much more. To ensure that those promoting climate change denial content do not get rewarded, search giant Google has revealed that YouTube will hit these people where it hurts - their money. The world's largest video platform, YouTube, has announced that it will start demonetising content on the platform that includes climate change denial and thereby get rid of misinformation on the issue.

Not only will Google demonetise the content, but it will also limit monetisation tools to creators who post videos that deny climate change. This change in YouTube ad policy comes in the wake of an increase in the number of extreme weather events caused by climate change, Mashable India reported.

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"In recent years, we've heard directly from a growing number of our advertising and publisher partners who have expressed concerns about ads that run alongside or promote inaccurate claims about climate change," the company said in a statement.

"Advertisers simply don't want their ads to appear next to this content. And publishers and creators don't want ads promoting these claims to appear on their pages or videos," Google said.

The company further stated that the "content that includes claims that climate change is a scam or a hoax, or which deny well-established scientific consensus proving that the earth is warming up, or those that claim carbon emissions from human activities such as burning fossil fuels or producing meat do not contribute to climate change" will be demonetised under the new guidelines.

Google already restricts monetisation for certain types of sensitive content on the platform. Earlier, the tech giant also announced that it will ban all types of content that feature misinformation regarding the COVID-19 vaccines.

However, Google has not yet made it clear whether it will remove the content entirely from the platform as it did with vaccine-denial content.

The company's new rules concerning climate change were drafted with consultation from authoritative sources and will apply to Google ads served as part of the YouTube Partner Program.

Scientists and activists have been urging for a long time that more concrete action is required from everyone, especially big corporates, to both tackle climate change as well as misinformation about the issue and thereby provide information to the public that is based on science and facts as much as possible.