America’s technology giants have come under fire for their role in the spread of fake news during the 2016 presidential campaign, prompting promises from Google and others to crack down on sites that spread disinformation.
Less scrutinized has been the way tech companies continue to provide a mass platform for the most extreme sites among those that use false or misleading science to reject the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. Google’s search page has become an especially contentious battleground between those who seek to educate the public on the established climate science and those who reject it.
Not everyone who uses Google will see climate denial ads in their search results. Google’s algorithms use search history and other data to tailor ads to the individual, something that is helping to create a highly partisan internet.
A recent search for “climate change” or “global warming” from a Google account linked to a New York Times climate reporter did not return any denial ads. The top results were ads from environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund.
But when the same reporter searched for those terms using private browsing mode, which helps mask identity information from Google’s algorithms, the ad for DefyCCC popped up.
“These are the info wars,” said Robert J. Brulle, a Drexel University professor of sociology and environmental science who has studied climate advocacy and misinformation. “It’s becoming harder and harder for the individual to find unbiased information that they can trust, because there’s so much other material trying to crowd that space.”
After being contacted by The New York Times in mid-December, Google said it had removed an ad from its climate search results, though it declined to identify which one. An ad from DefyCCC was still turning up at the top of searches days later. As of Wednesday, no ads at all were turning up for Times reporters and editors running these searches.
