Google has been accused of authoritarian behavior after announcing that it will ban ads from YouTube videos with topics on denials of climate change.
In a controversial statement released Thursday, Google, which owns YouTube, announced that advertisers and publishers, as well as creators of YouTube videos, would be barred from earning ad revenue from content that runs counter to a well-founded scientific consensus on the existence and causes 'climate change', Axios reported.
"This includes content related to climate change as a scam, claims that deny that long-term trends are showing that the global climate is warming, and claims that deny that CO2 emissions or human activities are contributing to climate change."
This Big Tech Giant stated that they have decided to ban anyone who denies climate change from making money on their platforms in response to the frustrations of advertisers and content creators because of their messages that appear.
"Advertisers simply do not want their ads to be displayed alongside such content," the company said in a statement. "And publishers and creators don't want ads promoting these claims to appear on their pages or videos."
One of the authors of such videos, Vivek Ramaswamy, assessed this move as authoritarian because there is a growing fear that technology giants will censor progressive views.
He wrote on his Twitter account: "Big Tech said: It's time to end the debate on climate change."
Technical companies, including Google, Facebook and Twitter, have been repeatedly accused of censoring conservative voices on the Internet, many of whom have a more skeptical view of climate change.
In order to assess which content is considered inappropriate, employees of this company will "carefully review the context in which such allegations are made, distinguishing between content that cites false news as fact, and content that reports or discusses the topic."
The company added that it consulted with representatives of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Reports in order to create a policy, will use a combination of automated tools and human reviews to implement this new policy, which will take effect next month.
The announcement came just a day after Google unveiled a new suite of services that gives users more information on how to reduce CO2, and Google Maps is now showing its users the way they will pollute less as they travel.
Google Maps will calculate and estimate travel time for you along with options and tips for lower fuel consumption.
The program was developed in partnership with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the United States Department of Energy in Colorado and uses metrics such as road congestion.
"We believe this feature will have the same impact next year as removing more than 200,000 cars from the roads," Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a video announcement.
In addition, he said, Google Flights now displays CO2 emissions of different flight options, taking into account the type of aircraft used, route and seating capabilities, as first and business class seats have a greater impact on greenhouse effects than bus seats because they take up more space.
And the company’s hotel search function now shows whether the hotel is committed to sustainability and whether it has eco-certificates from independent organizations.
The company is also designing a new landing page for people looking for “climate change” and other basic climate sciences and the terms of this policy to display the “most reliable” information from neutral organizations, according to Axios.
All of this is part of the company's goal to enable "a billion sustainable actions" by 2022.
Meanwhile, Facebook launched the Climate Science Information Center last year.
The platform directs users to websites when searching for climate-related terms, and in countries where it is not available, the site directs users to the United Nations Environment Program website.
In February, the social media giant added a section aimed at “unraveling myths” about climate change, in consultation with experts from George Mason, Yale and the University of Cambridge.
The social network has also introduced a program in the UK that is starting to add tags to some users ’climate posts.
"We want to show people information that can help them interpret and react to common myths about climate change that they may encounter," Edward Palmieri, Facebook's director of sustainability, told Axios at the time.
John Cook, a climate communications expert with George Mason, also said that research shows that simply telling people they are wrong is not enough, "You also have to explain why or how it's wrong," he said of the idea of the Climate Science Information Center.
"It's important from a psychological point of view."
But big tech companies have been under scrutiny in the past for their apparent censorship. “We take action when a site or website violates our policies. In such cases, those pages and sites lose the ability to monetize through Google. ”
Khalisah/DailyNews