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misinfo_climate_change_denial.txt

» Community Standards Feedback
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Policy for Misinformation - Climate Change Denial?

I'm writing to find out if we have a policy regarding Climate Change denial, specifically
human involvement towards climate change. Is this covered in our misinformation
enforcement of inform treatments and downranking? I'm wondering because this is science-
based we think differently about how this is treated to opinion-based fact checking.

This particular example is someone who is sharing an article denying climate change as man
made and is due to solar orbiting. He posted as free form text rather than the article link to get
around our inform treatments?

Example:

https://m.facebook.com/story.php

Article source: https://halturnerradioshow.com/. /nasa-climate-change.

10 Comments Seen by 545

Oe’ :

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Thanks for the cveston fl ve don't remove misinformation except in very
narrow cases in which we have strong evidence that the content may lead to

imminent offline harm against people. However, we do apply different treatments
to content containing claims rated as false by third-party fact checkers, including
down-ranking. EP" the Content Distribution Policy team should be able to
offer some more info how these policies would apply to this particular piece of

content.
oO ;

Like Reply

We don't have a specific policy for climate change denial. If a fact-checker rates a
particular piece of content related to climate change as false, then we'll downrank
and show UI on that content with a link to the debunking artitle. The use case of
copy-pasting the text of a link to get around URL enforcement is an interesting
one - we haven't seen that too much before. ©

eply



  
  

hat is the level of granularity at which we evaluate false claims relating to
climate change? The pasted article says:

Not only is climate change not ma ide, but the er trend
actually that the Earth's climate ng through a cot 1 period

Was this article flagged as false by our fact checkers because it says
climate change is not man-made, or because it says the Earth's climate is
going through a cooling period? Or did our fact checkers debunk the
specific (unfounded) hypothesis of solar orbiting?

\'m curious what standards of proof are necessary for our fact checkers to
evaluate climate denial as false. Do they need to specifically debunk the
mechanisms proposed, or does all climate denial already meet the
standards of "false", considering the existing scientific consensus? (As
points out, this is a rare ‘political’ issue that has an already evident
e-based truth to it. We don't need to re-evaluate decades of climate
science every time someone claims it is wrong).

O11

Like - Reply - ly

I'm curious what standards of proof are necessary for our fact
checkers to evaluate climate denial as false.

The fact checkers are third-party organizations, so presumably they each Chats

I ee jeg

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Was this article flagged as false by our fact checkers because it says
climate change is not man-made, or because it says the Earth's climate is
going through a cooling period? Or did our fact checkers debunk the
specific (unfounded) hypothesis of solar orbiting?

I'm curious what standards of proof are necessary for our fact checkers to
evaluate climate denial as false. Do they need to specifically debunk the
mechanisms proposed, or does all climate denial already meet the
standards of "false", considering the existing scientific consensus? (As

oints out, this is a rare ‘political’ issue that has an already evident
ae truth to it. We don't need to re-evaluate decades of climate
science every time someone claims it is wrong).

O'

Like - Reply — ly

I'm curious what standards of proof are necessary for our fact
checkers to evaluate climate denial as false

The fact checkers are third-party organizations, so presumably they each
have their own standards.

ne out; this is a rare 'political' issue that has an already
ev! cience-based truth to it

it seems problematic to treat scientific consensus as the definitive truth for
the purpose of suppressing content that disagrees with it.

Scientific consensus is occasionally overturned. It wasn't too long ago that
everyone knew stomach ulcers were caused by stress and excess stomach
acid. The idea that they were caused by microbes was debunked in 1954.

\f Facebook had been around at the time, we might have faced pressure to
stop crackpots from spreading their debunked claims. After all, encouraging
people to take antibiotics instead of managing their stress could put them at
risk of stomach cancer, and such frivolous antibiotic use endangers
everyone else by breeding resistant bacteria. They'd already been rejected
by medical journals and fined for treating patients with their debunked
remedies.

Today, however, we know most stomach ulcers are caused by bacteria,
Multiple studies of ulcer patients had missed the presence of H. pylori, or
misclassified it, or dismissed it as coincidental. The Nobel Prize came after
many years of pushing back against scientific consensus.

Of course, most crackpots really are crackpots. Probably. As far as we know.

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Of course, most crackpots really are crackpots. Probably. As far as we know.
But a few of them aren't, and we won't know which ones until much later.
It's a mistake to assume any scientific question has been answered "once
and for all", and it'd be a mistake to adopt a policy that would've prevented
the people who were right about H. pylori all along from trying to win people
over to their side.

1
Like Reply jy Edited ©

a. do not need to declare the question has been

answered “once and for all" in order to refer to the currently understood
state of the question and use that when making decisions. As the scientific
understanding of climate change evolves, it is reasonable that the fact
checkers will update their standards of disbelief when evaluating claims.
However, so long as the current consensus holds, | would hope that our fact
checkers are aware of it.

What | am asking is whether the current non-crackpot scientific viewpoint is
considered by the third-party fact checkers when evaluating the
truthfulness of claims that climate change is fake. If the fact checkers do
not weigh the existing evidence against new claims, then | think that it is
reasonable to say these fact checkers are not qualified to fact-check
assertions about scientific understanding, and we should assign climate-
related fact checking to a different organization that is prepared to evaluate

claims in context of the preponderance of evidence that supports the
scientific consensus.

Like - Reply - ly

  

if the research that led to widespread acceptance of
€ idea that H. pylori causes ulcers were being done today, instead of in the
1980s, and the people involved were discussing it with other researchers on

Facebook, do you believe labeling their posts as "misinformation" and Chats
D a ri hnice?

   

    

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f the research that led to widespread acceptance of
the idea that H. pylori causes ulcers were being done today, instead of in the
1980s, and the people involved were discussing it with other researchers on
Facebook, do you believe labeling their posts as "misinformation" and
downranking them would be the right choice?

| think, since we understand that scientific consensus can change over time,
we have the responsibility to be a little more humble than that.

Like - Reply . ly - Edited oO

facebook is not a scientific journal. The researchers’ work
would still be reviewed by other scientists and discounted or accepted
based on its merits. When the scientific understanding of ulcers changes,
our fact checkers can update the information they use when evaluating
claims about the science.

You say we should be humble. | think that in this case humility means
referring back to the mountains of corroborative evidence prepared by
climate scientists, rather than evaluating incredible new claims in a vacuum.

Like Reply

   
 

However, we're currently arguing without data. Rather than debating the
dynamics of scientific opinion, I'm curious to hear what | or
someone who works on Misinformation, has to say about our fact checkers
and their policies.

 
 
    

Like Reply. 1y

‘when the scientific evidence changes...." sorry, just where is this
scientific evidence? all the hard science journals do not show strong
support for the current political movement, and citing climate models
instead of data does not make truth. This sounds more like an attempt to
beat down opposing opinions under the guise of “fact checking..

Like Reply - ty

O02

facebook is not a scientific journal.

Indeed. Doesn't that mean we should be /ess willing to enforce our
understanding of scientific consensus as dogma, though? Chats

 

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The researchers’ work would still be reviewed by other scientists and
discounted or accepted based on its merits.

Eventually, sure. Barry Marshall wasn't taken seriously at all until a stunt in
which he deliberately infected himself, and the evidence continued to be
rejected by gastroenterologists for decades.

| When the scientific understanding of ulcers changes, our fact
checkers can update the information they use when evaluating claims
about the science.

Under that policy, we would've downranked posts about H. pylori and
labeled them "misinformation" for twenty years, even though they were
correct. In other words, that policy would have causeds to spread
misinformation of our own and falsely accuse the people who were trying to
spread correct information.

At the very least, | think a policy like this would need to include a plan for
compensating the people who we falsely accused, because | don't think
unflagging a post or reversing a ban twenty years after the fact would come
close to undoing the harm.

| think that in this case humility means referring back to the mountains
of corroborative evidence prepared by climate scientists, rather than
} eValuating incredible new claims in a vacuum

If we acknowledge that scientific consensus isn't set in stone, then
punishing users for dissenting from it means we're saying it's more
important to agree with us, or our chosen experts, than to speak the truth. |
think that's the opposite of humility.

JYLORG

Delayed Gratification: Why it Took Everybody So Long
to Acknowledge that Bacteria Cause Ulcers — Journa...

 

Stepney O24

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