Facebook says it will now attach labels to posts about climate change

Social networks like Facebook and Twitter fight misinformation on a daily basis, and most notably took steps last year during the US presidential elections when it labelled former US President Donald Trump’s many social media posts as misleading. Facebook has now announced that it will label posts related to climate change shared by users on the platform.

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In a blog post shared earlier today, Facebook said it was expanding its Climate Science Information Center, which also features deep dives into various topics related to climate change. While it currently exists in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the United States, the CSIC will now be accessible by users in India, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Spain, South Africa and Taiwan.

The company said it already send users to the CSIC who have searched for climate-related terms in countries that had support for the center. Announcing that they were starting to add support for “information labels” to posts on climate in the United Kingdom. These posts would send people directly to the CSIC. Facebook also said these new labels would expand to more countries soon.

However, what is oddly missing from Facebook’s blog post is the kind of posts that will be marked or labelled. “To debunk the myths with current and specific facts, we’ve brought in climate communication experts from the George Mason University, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the University of Cambridge,” the blog post said.

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“Misinformation about climate change long predates the internet, but has been greatly amplified in our new digital world. This new mythbusting section of the Facebook Climate Science Information Center can help raise public climate change awareness and understanding worldwide,” Dr Anthony Leiserowitz, Yale Program on Climate Change Communication said in a statement.