Twitter says it's banning ads pushing climate change denial as Silicon Valley ramps up its fight against climate misinformation

Silicon Valley giants have been banning advertisements that go against research on climate change.

The social media platform said on Friday that it is now treating advertisements that violate the scientific consensus on climate change with the same rules that govern how it treats ads that touch on violence, profanity, or exploitative content.

The company believes that climate denialism shouldn't be monetized and that misrepresentative ads shouldn't detract from important conversations about the climate crisis.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is one of the authoritative sources that will be consulted to determine which advertisements should be banned.

The company didn't say in the post how it would treat users who post climate misinformation, but it did say that it would share more about how it plans to shape climate conversations on its platform. Insider asked for comment, but did not receive a reply.

On Friday, the day after Earth Day, Twitter joined its Silicon Valley counterparts in rejecting advertisers that peddle misleading information about climate change.

Climate change deniers will no longer be allowed to monetize their content on its platforms, including YouTube.

Meta, which owns Facebook, pledged to fight climate misinformation. The Center for Countering Digital Hate found that the social media company failed to label around half of all climate misinformation posts as false.

By failing to do the bare minimum, Meta was exaggerating the climate crisis, according to the CCDH.

Facebook did not reply immediately.

A group of environmental non-profit groups released a report on the same day as the announcement of Twitter, saying that they weren't being transparent about how they were tackling climate change misinformation.

According to the report, the groups believe that transparency on climate misinformation and accountability for the actors who spread it is a precondition for a robust and constructive debate on climate change and the response to the climate crisis.