This is one of the strictest policies forbidding climate change denial.
Pinterest has a history of blocking damaging information before other online platforms, and it’s taking the same approach with climate change. Climate denial, misleading claims about solutions to climate change, misrepresentations of scientific evidence, and “damaging” fake assertions about natural catastrophes and other extreme weather are all prohibited by the social media platform. In other words, if it defies the widely accepted scientific consensus, it will most likely vanish.
Pinterest’s ad guidelines have been updated to “explicitly” prohibit marketing material that promotes climate change denial and conspiracy theories. Expert groups such as the Climate Disinformation Coalition and the Conscious Advertising Network assisted in the development of the policies.
The company claims to be the first major internet platform with “clearly defined” policies barring false climate change claims for both content and ads. That’s true to at least some degree. Facebook mainly labels misinformation and reduces its spread, while Twitter aimed to “pre-bunk” falsehoods during COP26but stopped short of banning them. YouTube, meanwhile, doesn’t let climate change deniers monetize videos.
The timing is apt, at least. A just-released UN report indicates the world has three years to level CO2 emissions if it wants to avoid environmental catastrophes, and that those emissions must drop by a quarter by 2030. Pinterest isn’t basing its stricter policies on that report, but it clearly shares the view that a unified public stance based on accurate information is necessary to limit global warming.
