Climate Activists Panic as Elon Musk’s Twitter Now Allows Debate on ‘Global Warming’

Climate activists are panicking that Twitter, under Elon Musk’s leadership, now allows dissenting views and debate on “global warming.”

Previously, under the previous management, Twitter was like the rest of Big Tech and silenced anyone who would dare question the official narrative on climate change, scientists or otherwise.

An organization called Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD), which describes itself as a coalition of “climate and anti-disinformation organizations,” is outraged at Twitter’s new direction under CEO Elon Musk.

Musk has long stated that his free speech plans for Twitter involved eradicating censorship on the platform to encourage more “town square” debate.

CAAD has just released a study (pdf), conducted on January 19, which accuses Musk of allowing so-called “misinformation” and “disinformation” about the alleged “climate crisis” to spread on the social media platform.

The study accuses Twitter of boosting the hashtag “#ClimateScam” to users when searching the word “climate,” as its top search result.

The hashtag has suddenly spiked on Twitter search results since July 2022.

Its appearance has been increasing ever since, according to CAAD.

The report said that “in 2022, denialist content made a stark comeback on Twitter in particular.”

CAAD alleged that at least 91,000 Twitter users reported the #ClimateScam hashtag more than 362,000 times by December.

“The source of its virality is entirely unclear, and re-emphasizes the need for transparency on how and why platforms surface content to users,” said the study’s authors.

They said that term appeared to be trending despite “data that shows more activity and engagement on other hashtags such as #ClimateCrisis and #ClimateEmergency.”

The research team claimed that the rise of the term in search results could not be explained by user personalization, the volume of content, or popularity.

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“A basic search for ‘climate’ on Facebook did not autofill with overtly skeptic or denialist terms; searching explicitly for #ClimateScam only showed 1.5k users mentioning the term, versus 72k for #ClimateEmergency and 160k for #ClimateCrisis.”

CAAD complained that the source of the #ClimateScam hashtag was unclear and that there was a need for transparency on how the search result came up.

“Equally, TikTok returned no search results for #ClimateScam, but instead suggested the phrase ‘may be associated with behavior or content that violates our guidelines.’”

The authors said that not enough of the content was labeled as misinformation by Twitter’s new management and claimed that it could not find a comparable trend or uptick in “#ClimateScam” on other platforms.

CAAD is partially funded by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a think tank, which is heavily funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The ISD said it is working with social media platforms to explore radicalization online, to minimize the impact of extremist recruitment by groups in Europe and North America.

Since buying Twitter in October, Elon Musk has reduced the social media team’s staff by 50 percent and cut down its content moderation team to protect freedom of expression.

Musk has been a critic of Twitter’s past relationship with federal authorities and the intelligence services.

He has released several batches of the bombshell “Twitter Files” since late last year.

READ MORE: Musk’s Father Says He’s ‘Really Afraid Something Might Happen to Elon’

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By Frank Bergman

Frank Bergman is a political/economic journalist living on the east coast. Aside from news reporting, Bergman also conducts interviews with researchers and material experts and investigates influential individuals and organizations in the sociopolitical world.

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