'Facebook's algorithm is ultimately ensuring that the people most in need of good information are the ones least likely to get it,' said Global_Witness.
"When we simulated the experience of a climate skeptic user on the platform, within a few clicks Facebook's algorithm recommended content that denied the existence of man-made climate warming and attacked measures aimed at mitigating the climate crisis," wrote Global Witness."Much of this content deployed culture war tactics to polarize debate around climate change and demonize environmental movements.
After Jane"liked" Facebook's first recommendation, a page called Climate Depot—a U.S.-based outlet run by Marc Morano, the communications director of a conservative nonprofit thathuman-caused climate change a"myth"—she was given another"menu of recommendations that Facebook's algorithm thought, based on her existing likes, she would find engaging."
Eager to see if this was just a one-off, we replicated this test with the same account to see what kinds of climate content would be amplified to Jane, whose online behavior thus far demonstrated an interest in climate disinformation. Using two different anti-climate pages as our starting points, we followed the pages recommended to Jane to understand at what point, if at all, Facebook's algorithm would intercept the bad information with reputable climate science information.
Of the 18 pages recommended to Jane, only one did not contain any climate disinformation. Twelve of themincluded climate disinformation. Of the content we analyzed, only 22% of climate disinformation posts possessed a Climate Science Center flag. As a sub-category, only 34% of climate denial content possessed a flag.