The battle against the spread of misinformation on the worldwide web continues with the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, announcing a new move by the social media platform that will see them tackling falsehoods surrounding climate change.
According to CNBC the global media giant said that they would be adding a section to the climate change information hub that will include accurate facts about common climate misconceptions.
While denouncing that they were in any way responsible for being an “arbiter of truth” initially, Facebook has now acknowledged the huge role they play in the spreading of inaccurate information.
The company will use expertise from places like George Mason University, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, and the University of Cambridge to help identify and the myths.
Dr. Sander van der Linden of the University of Cambridge said, “The spread of damaging falsehoods endangers the level of international cooperation required to prevent catastrophic global warming. Facebook is in a unique position to counter the circulation of online misinformation, and the new climate ‘myth-busting’ section is an important step toward debunking dangerous falsehoods.”
Facebook is now committed to adding information labels to posts on climate change to direct people to the actual truth.
