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Twitter bans ads that contradict science on climate change

203 points by DocFeind 5y ago

cryptica 5y ago
There is no such thing as 'contradicting science' - Science is never settled, never certain. If it was, it would be called Mathematics.
- timcavel 5y ago
  Thought-crime alert! Science Ministry Rule 186 violation, do not question the science without a registered science license identifier attached.
timcavel 5y ago
Only the Science Ministry is authorized to ordain official science through the USA Fact-Check Algorithm, the canonical arbiter of truth.
npunt 5y ago
It seems a lot of people are responding to this from the 'allowable speech' and 'consensus is bad' perspective, which triggers the inevitable 'its a private platform' or 'its just one place' response. We should be looking at this from a threat model perspective. That certain subjects, at certain times, are subject to coordinated threats in order to gain power to those coordinating them. This isn't about 'scientific consensus', this is a known set of threat actors following a known playbook to spread FUD, 'flood the zone with shit', etc, for known reasons. Any human effort at scale is going to be subject to some amount of threat noise trying to get in the way of signal. We overcome these with institutional antibodies, things like practices and protocols and checks and balances (hopefully made transparent). We try to lower the noise floor so that the quality stuff is encouraged and sticks around. I feel like a lot of complaints fall back to unrealistic idealism because they don't have the insight on what the decision making apparatus is, where it is empowered and where it is limited, and how decisions were reached. That's a problem, but arguing that threats shouldn't be addressed is not the solution, because we already know how that plays out in institutions, communities, and societies. They fall apart.
staticassertion 5y ago
[flagged]
- millimeterman 5y ago
  I think anyone who's spent time on HN can attest that both are clearly true. HN is absolutely no better than the platforms it loves to decry (e.g. Reddit, Twitter, etc.) in terms of user behavior.
kweingar 5y ago
A lot of people here are making arguments about the nature of science and consensus, but I suspect that for many, this is not a sincerely/consistently held belief. For example, if the headline were instead “Twitter bans misleading ads for alternative medicine” (e.g. herbal teas that claim to cure cancer), we would not be seeing such strenuous objection.
- skissane 5y ago
  Most "misleading ads for alternative medicine" are trying to sell a product (the "medicine" in question) not simply spread a belief. Ads trying to sell people things are usually subject to different standards than ads simply trying to influence their opinion without any direct connection to any commercial product or service. I think your claim that people are being inconsistent is ignoring this important distinction.
helloworld11 5y ago
Considering the sheer amount of toxic, dishonest, manipulative rage-fueled garbage that Twitter allows or algorithmically promotes every day on so many subjects, this specific ban reeks of sanctimonious hypocrisy to say the least. All that aside from the simple fact that debate on such a complex subject should always be welcome (much like is the case with COVID and its vaccines, in which case it's possible to be against mandates while not arguing aginst the clinical value of vaccination in general), even if it includes points of view from deep within the denier camp. I don't doubt the science behind the reality of human-caused climate change, but even if some people do, rules like this will do nothing to make debate better, or spread better reasoning wider and further. They'll do the opposite, and only entrench bad ideas, rigid formalisms and ideological camps. Furthermore, there is indeed plenty of room for debate on policies, specifics, ranges and other aspects of climate change without one sinking into full blown denial of established evidence and data.
Thorentis 5y ago
I thought we moved past censoring people for having alternate scientific opinions hundreds of years ago.
- antifa 5y ago
  If it was a scientific opinion, you'd publish it for peer review.
unmole 5y ago
Does saying "Passenger vehicles account for ~7% of emissions and thus switching to EV's will not make a significant difference" count as disagreeing with science?
bediger4000 5y ago
A step in the right direction towards banning all untruthful ads! But wait, since advertising is almost exclusively lies, then Twitter might ban all ads! That would be great! Elon would have to finance all Twitter operations out of pocket, but he can afford it, it's a drop in the bucket for the world's richest, and therefore smartest, man!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mirceal 5y ago
  Elon is gonna save them. all ads will be welcome!
  - bediger4000 5y ago
    The Usenet experience says that people just melt away if too much ads/spam/pr0n show up. Of course, Usenet had a larger amount of externalization than Twitter does: Twitter runs its own infrastructure, while Usenet was almost entirely on participating sites' infrastructure. The situation is a little different. Even so, I expect that we'll find out what the Twitter ad/spam/grift tipping point is.
PraetorianGourd 5y ago
I guess this shows the slippery slope fallacy isn't always fallacious. The problem with "consensus" as a measure is that consensus is always moving. We need to encourage professional and laypersons alike to embrace the freedom to be wrong as everything is wrong until it is right. And what constitutes consensus? If Mazda puts out an ad saying that ICE cars contribute less than transoceanic shipping, is that acceptable? It's factual, but it goes against the consensus that ICE cars need to be eliminated. I get this is ads, not user generated content, though the chilling effect is there.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  > ICE cars contribute less than transoceanic shipping It's not factual, unless you are talking about bullshit measurement that focus on sulfur pollutants that we accept on the middle of the ocean because they do almost not damage there (and have no relation at all with Global Warming).
- tshaddox 5y ago
  > I guess this shows the slippery slope fallacy isn't always fallacious. No, it’s still always fallacious. The argument “it’s going to rain today because it’s Saturday and it always rains on Saturday” is fallacious even on the occasions that it does rain on Saturday.
  - CamperBob2 5y ago
    It's fallacious when dealing with logical entities. Humans aren't logical entities.
- rnd0 5y ago
  I disagree. I think that platforms have some sort of responsibility to vet the ads who run on their platform. Not just for science or politics but in general. 1/2 of the reason I have used an adblocker for 20 years is because of how often straight-up malware has made it onto advertising networks because of a lack of vetting.[1] There's a discussion to be had about twitter and social media removing posts and posters but I don't feel like this is that discussion. I feel like this is a positive (or at least neutral) development. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising#History
elicash 5y ago
Worth noting that political ads are already banned on Twitter and have been for a couple years: https://twitter.com/jack/status/1189634360472829952?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://twitter.com/jack/status/1189634360472829952?ref_src=... In practice, this leads to weird scenarios where Exxon can run promotional ads but climate groups can't run ads in opposition. I'm not saying this is the wrong policy necessarily, just that "politics" is a tricky thing to define. Labor unions can't run ads saying workers should demand more pay, but Amazon can run ads saying their jobs pay good wages. Edit: Also, I tried to find the original post but the blog is down, at least for the moment for me. https://blog.twitter.com https://blog.twitter.com -- anyway, here's a cached version: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ADXc6Wf2sSAJ:https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2022/accelerating-our-climate-commitments-on-earth-day+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ADXc6W...
- boomlinde 5y ago
  For as long as money is instrumental in determining the allocation of resources and power, the goals of commercial entities (and their propaganda) are inherently political in nature. By advocating for their own profit they are advocating for a certain resource distribution strategy that they want as many people to get on board with. What Twitter is really saying is that they are fine with political messages, just not from institutions and by means that are typically associated with democracy: for as long as you only represent your self-interest rather than constituents and members in a democratic sense you are free to propagandize as much as you want. The result is highly political, just directly anti-democratic.
- kornhole 5y ago
  It seems the best solution is to ban all advertising and money interest on the platform. Then Twitter would have a lower valuation, and they would not do that. It is a good thing we do have ad-free social media like Twitter such as Mastodon.
- blablabla123 5y ago
  I guess this also shows the limits of communities where the topic is basically everything
jesushax 5y ago
This is basically a good thing, but I'm always annoyed by the use of "science" like this, making it into an institution with a unified voice. If they used the word 'consensus' or 'studies' the claim would sound weaker, and they want to give it the weight of a quasi-religious absolute. Which is great for the tactical, rhetorical power of their argument, but plants the seed of their strategic downfall. If you do this enough, "science" is lowered to a political device commanding the same respect as sociology did in the Soviet Union (or even in the US, at this point), ie less than nothing.
- RickJWagner 5y ago
  The great thing about science is that it can criticize itself, and later even completely change it's position. It's why science is never permanently 'settled', but only settled for the point in time, given the information available. It's probably best to always leave some room for discussion.
- elicash 5y ago
  Good news for you. Here's a direct quote from their post, which I believe their blog is currently down so don't blame you for not finding it: > To better serve these conversations, misleading advertisements on Twitter that contradict the scientific consensus on climate change are prohibited, in line with our inappropriate content policy.
  - dalmo3 5y ago
    > misleading advertisements on Twitter that contradict the scientific consensus climate change are prohibited I wonder if they still allow non-misleading advertising that contradict the scientific consensus.
  - torstenvl 5y ago
    That's more honest, but also more obviously problematic. Thank God publishing platforms didn't prohibit contradicting the scientific consensus on, say, Newtonian physics in the early 20th century.
qiskit 5y ago
> Twitter says it will no longer allow advertisers on its site who deny the scientific consensus on climate change, echoing a policy already in place at Google. Maybe someone should tell twitter, google, etc that science isn't supposed to work on consensus. Politics works on consensus. And when you mix politics with science, you get social darwinism/scientific racism/etc. > Twitter said it would provide more information in the coming months on how it plans to provide “reliable, authoritative context to the climate conversations” its users engage in, including from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The U.N.-backed science panel’s reports on the causes and effects of climate change provide the basis for international negotiations to curb climate change. The good old authoritarian, I mean authoritative sources. It's amazing how the entire establishment political/media/tech/etc all rallied around "authoritative sources". It's almost like someone flipped a switch and it's become a national mantra. "Authoritative sources", "authoritative sources", "authoritative sources". A UN backed science panel. Great. If there is one thing we all know about the UN, it's that the UN isn't political. An institution ruled by the US, Russia, China, Britain and France. Seems very trustworthy to me.
- olddustytrail 5y ago
  To address your last sentence: yes, if you can get those five countries to agree on anything, it's probably trustworthy.
  - bequanna 5y ago
    If you can get those five countries to agree on anything, the lobbyists/politicians running those countries have found some way to benefit from that message.
  - stretchwithme 5y ago
    Unfortunately, two of those countries aren't allowed to vote so we don't know what they agree on.
    - olddustytrail 5y ago
      Which two countries would those be?
gigatexal 5y ago
Good. This is twitter doing what it should in the public good.
- meatsauce 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - encryptluks2 5y ago
    - gigatexal 5y ago
      You folks seem to love the slippery slope argument. There’s clearly a difference between facts and fiction. Not allowing clearly and proven false advertising on the platform elevates that advertising and makes it even more valuable. At least to me. And makes me want to use the platform even more thereby increasing engagement and then driving up ad value and prices. Advertising honesty != a forced famine nor is it forcing Russian Americans into camps like we did to Japanese citizen in WW2.
  - VerminOctopus1 5y ago
    This is an absolutely absurd thing to say and is about half a degree away from reductio ad Hitlerum. We’re talking about misleading advertisements here, try to stay grounded when you think about these things.
- vixen99 5y ago
  You're just yea-saying. Who defines public good? You and Twitter whoever they are behind the scenes? Clearly there are matters of which we should know nothing. And folk like you will protect us.
  - gigatexal 5y ago
    If we stay within scope of the action taken here we can clearly see that this is Twitter enforcing some truth in its advertising. Now if it would just ban crypto ads … but I’m not head of advertising at Twitter so it won’t happen.
systemvoltage 5y ago
I believe that CC is a problem that I am 100% behind but how do we avoid this piggy backing and hijacking of CC initiatives to further some other agenda? Say increase profit margins or green wash people? Just recently I stayed in a Marriott hotel and my entire experience was marred with CC warning labels everywhere from Toiletteries to free breakfast in the morning. You know what would be better for CC? That hotel to not exist in the first place. There is no end in sight and no limit to what can be done for CC. So you have this unlimited power from random authorities masquerading behind CC. I think the problem with Climate Change movement is sort of like COVID. Restroom closed? Because COVID. Public Park Trail closed? COVID. Wtf!? No one challenges it. No is allowed to. It has all these side effects. We ought to double-down where things actually matter for the betterment of the planet and speak up against this other non-sense.
- seoaeu 5y ago
  It doesn't seem that hard to differentiate "Marriott is washing towels less often to save money, not because they care about saving water" from someone claiming that climate change isn't happening...
- chmod600 5y ago
  It's a bandwagon thing. Founders and early joiners of a movement are very different from people who join after a movement is already successful/catching on (perhaps widely or perhaps in one area/subculture). After something becomes so successful that you can't challenge it in any way (at least in some circles) it takes on the characteristics you describe. If someone pokes you in the eye and says it's for climate change, you can't say anything. None of this has to do with the accuracy of the original movement. CC can be very real and abused by politicians and other opportunists.
h2odragon 5y ago
- ChrisLomont 5y ago
  That's a myth. Read more on the history of that.
  - h2odragon 5y ago
    I have. One of my favorite highlights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_smoke_enema https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_smoke_enema
- VerminOctopus1 5y ago
  What is your point? Are you taking issue with the current corpus of evidence that exists around climate change?
WalterBright 5y ago
The scientific consensus used to be that the sun revolved around the earth, and you were put under house arrest if you published anything contradicting that. Then there was that scientific consensus that margarine was good for you and eggs caused heart attacks. Or that scientific consensus that disease could be cured by draining the bad blood out of your body. Or that scientific consensus that if you sailed west too far, you'd fall off the edge of the world. Or my favorite scientific consensus that in order to ensure a good harvest, it was necessary to chop the hearts out of your enemies and offer it to the gods.
- yongjik 5y ago
  > The scientific consensus used to be that the sun revolved around the earth ... Ever thought about why it took so long for this particular "scientific consensus" was reverted? Because geocentrism could explain the motions of planets pretty accurately, and the easiest actual evidence of heliocentrism was that apparent locations of stars should move very slightly following the motion of the Earth (i.e., parallax) - the effect was so small that the first measurement was made in 1838, about 200 years after Galileo's death. Until then, the apparent absence of parallax was a scientific evidence against heliocentrism. The lesson to draw is that it's not sufficient to have its proponent put under house arrest in order for a new theory to be accepted by the scientific community. Your new theory has to first explain all the things explained by the existing theory, and then some more that can not be explained by the existing one. I'll leave it to readers to conclude what that means in the context of global warming. Honestly I'm depressed by the level of discourse here. Otherwise mostly intelligent people are basically resorting to "Well some groups of people have been wrong about various things before, which proves that this particular (unrelated) group of people can be wrong, so instead of addressing the problem they say we have, let's debate for the umpteenth time whether the problem is real, again." It's a classical stalling tactic, and IMHO the only proper response is "Get out, adults are talking."
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    I'm sad you've entirely misunderstood my point. I thought it was obvious. The point is, no matter how sure you are that you're right, you might still be wrong. If you suppress opposing viewpoints, you're also suppressing any evidence that you might be wrong. There are also people who know they're wrong - they suppress dissent because the truth will remove the power they enjoy. Nobody likes being wrong. It's soooo much easier to just suppress any hint of being wrong. The only way we'll know the truth is to allow dissent. Suppression of dissent is what tyrants do.
dudul 5y ago
Reminds me of the old south park episode where 2 ultra scientific factions fight over some silly religious-like details. Science shouldn't be treated like a religion. Consensus in science changes all the time. New things are discovered and invented by Goin against the concensus.
- dlivingston 5y ago
  Right, my fear with treating climate change as “settled, absolute, unquestionable wisdom” is that this puritanical attitude towards science potentially stymies researchers from postulating radical new ideas, or prevents other researchers from taking radical ideas seriously. To be clear, anthropogenic climate change is definitely a thing, and those who say it isn’t are either gaslighting or being gaslit. But even though Newton was right, Einstein was “more right.” Could an Einstein exist in climate science today, going against the “Settled Science™?”
  - seoaeu 5y ago
    So climate change deniers are engaging in gaslighting, but you don't think we should do anything to stop them... because maybe one of them stumbles on a scientific breakthrough?
    - dlivingston 5y ago
      > So climate change deniers are engaging in gaslighting Sometimes. Oftentimes they have just been lied to by political or cultural institutions that they trust. > but you don't think we should do anything to stop them It greatly depends on the context. In the case of ads on Twitter, I have no opinion as I'm not familiar enough with the nuances of this action to make a judgement. > because maybe one of them stumbles on a scientific breakthrough That's a misreading of my comment. My point was that a serious climate scientist may be afraid of pushing past the boundaries for fear of going against the very real orthodoxy. The orthodoxy, by the way, is a social thing, not a science thing. Many scientists have gotten 'cancelled' by randos on Twitter for publishing standard research.
  - 5y ago
onos 5y ago
Another voice here not happy about this. It’s as if the advocates here have no interest in learning anything from the history of science as a practice of argument by evidence. Banning arguments doesn’t convince anyone paying attention that the opponents are wrong it just makes people suspicious that the banners can’t defend their positions.
- olliej 5y ago
  In what way is forcing companies to promote misinformation, cons, and deliberate deception not an attack on their freedom of speech? In what way is not being required to promote something “banning arguments”? Twitter isn’t banning idiots spouting idiot views, anymore than it’s really banning white supremacy. But they don’t let you run racist ad campaigns.
- owisd 5y ago
  It's not banning arguments, just recognising that twitter ads aren't the best medium for certain arguments.
  - bencollier49 5y ago
    "It's not banning arguments, just recognising that the public sphere isn't the best place for certain arguments." And so on. That feels like a slippery slope to me.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - olliej 5y ago
      It seems like a slippery slope to say that Twitter must promote any message, regardless of content. Surely if Twitter has to publish content, it would be reasonable to require The New York Times to publish, and promote, an article from Storm Front. Or require Fox to publish, and promote, actual Climate Science content. Twitter is not even halting the argument, they’re just refusing to artificially promote it above other content.
    - 5y ago
kvetching 5y ago
tsol 5y ago
I wonder if this has anything to do with Elon Musk saying he wants to buy Twitter and change it for the public good
- kvetching 5y ago
chernevik 5y ago
"Contradicting science" is exactly how you do science.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  Are adverts scientific research now?
  - ComradePhil 5y ago
    They are when pharma does it.
- seoaeu 5y ago
  Yeah, but then you publish your theory (along with supporting evidence!) in academic publications. Who ever heard of a scientist taking out Twitter ads to push their fringe theory directly to ordinary people?
  - endominus 5y ago
    Efforts to ban "misinformation" are gaining ground pretty much everywhere, with full-throated support by government institutions and at most given token resistance from social media companies, if that. Banning misinformation or heterodox opinions in ads is the initial step; does anyone, in good faith, truly believe that's where it will stop? Facebook and YouTube already warn about videos that mention certain topics, hence some YouTubers saying phrases like "Hope you're staying healthy in these trying times" in case the platform deranked them for saying COVID. Soon, as the ability for algorithms to understand context evolves, discussion and especially disagreement of such things at all will be heavily censored (I'm sorry, "downranked") by algorithms on such sites, until they are essentially invisible. Also, it's not just about publishing papers. Scientists use Twitter to network and communicate their ideas with other scientists. To learn about what people are working on, interesting ideas in their field, and so on. If heterodoxy is banned from discussion, it becomes that much harder to challenge existing consensus, because they will be unable to communicate effectively with one another on public platforms.
CreateAccntAgn 5y ago
Scientific consensus on climate change is pretty well defined. Is anyone saying that messages that contradict them are correct sometimes and so Twitter is wrong in this action? Corps have been abusing capital to amplify their speech intentionally misleading public on this subject regardless of its harm. This imho is the right move.
- UberFly 5y ago
  What about Corps abusing capital to muffle speech? This isn't necessarily just about climate change.
TeeMassive 5y ago
"Twitter says it will no longer allow advertisers on its site who deny the scientific consensus on climate change" Does that mean if an advertisers sais the wrong thing elsewhere in public they will be banned?
civilized 5y ago
Awesome. Finally someone decided to ban something that's actually unambiguously bad, useless, and materially harmful. Even with Trump, whose banning I support, you could argue there was some value in knowing what the President had on his mind. I really don't need to know what Exxon's PR hacks want me to believe about climate change, even just for informational value. I'm extraordinarily well-aware of what they want me to think and why. Some things are just evil, and they become more evil and more powerful the more you feed them. Hitler was one. Exxon talking about climate change is another.
- 8note 5y ago
  I think it's interesting to know what Exxon's PR is thinking, though I don't think money spent is the right way to prioritize their thoughts vs anything else
  - pixl97 5y ago
    If you want to know what Exxon's PR is thinking just listen to your average Texas senator.
  - pornel 5y ago
    Exxon's PR is always thinking FUD, such as "banning our anti-scientific PR ads is a slippery slope towards banning all science (because who can tell the difference between new revolutionary theory that upends thousands of peer-reviewed papers in 280 characters, and our lies)".
Proven 5y ago
nharada 5y ago
Everyone in this thread talking about how "science is never settled" and maybe that's true, but this move isn't designed to discredit some competing scientists, it's designed to shutdown bad-faith propaganda paid for by oil companies and other entrenched interests. Curious how y'all would propose combating this type of misinformation. Or is this just something we should accept as a necessary evil on any platform?
politician 5y ago
Twitter needs to stop or be stopped. Censorship belongs to the government, not private institutions. Let the government pass legislation instructing Twitter about which speech is allowed. The government, at least in the US, is accountable to the people, but Twitter like other authoritarian regimes is accountable only to themselves.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- VerminOctopus1 5y ago
  So you want a more authoritarian government to clamp down on what businesses can and cannot do? Seems contrary to the freedom everyone on this website seems to be enamoured with. I’d expect private enterprises (emphasis on the word private) to be able to do just about whatever they want with their businesses in a “free” system.
  - politician 5y ago
    No, I want the public square to be operated by and for the public. Twitter is squatting on the public cyberspace and I think it’s about time that the government stepped in and told them that if they want to monetize free speech, that they have to uphold free speech and cannot manipulate the environment unilaterally. I know that “public cyberspace” is a weird phrase and hard to parse. I’m referring to the graph of communications between citizens of a country and between countries. In the US, this is a protected space, protected by our Constitution.
- 8note 5y ago
  So far, all laws around censorship are that it is up to private individuals which ideas they want to promote, and which ones they don't. Antitrust is a much better direction to tackle this kind of issue through. Twitter needs to be one way of seeing the underlying data, rather than having a monopoly on it.
  - politician 5y ago
AHappyCamper 5y ago
Thank goodness science is in COMPLETE agreement when it comes to climate. I mean, if there was more than one scientific opinion about climate, then this ban would be ludicrous....
mdavis6890 5y ago
Blood letting was the scientific consensus not long ago. You would have been spreading misinformation to question it.
- wtallis 5y ago
  Bloodletting and the practice of medicine as a whole both predate organized science. Transforming medicine into a scientific discipline is an incomplete work in progress, and discarding bloodletting is one of the consequences of that transition.
- lambdaba 5y ago
  Well just yesterday there was a story about how donating blood helps remove microplastics so...
  - mdavis6890 4y ago
    I think we should all be going in for our weekly blood filtering. Or maybe we can develop a wearable blood filter which we change periodically. Just be careful when you change it though.
    - mbg721 4y ago
      Every office would have a machine in the break room, but there's always that one person who never changes the filter...
staticassertion 5y ago
This is good news. Misinformation is cheap to produce and expensive to combat once it's out there. My opinion is that the only effective approach is to deplatform it entirely, as early in the process as possible.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  I think people can decide for themselves whether having arbiters of truth is "good news" or not. Personally this is just another step down the Orwellian slope, not really news as it's Twitter going about their usual agenda. Misinformation is a scary word though, can't have those gullible peasants falling for trickery, you know best for them!
  - staticassertion 5y ago
    Yeah, Orwell was definitely a big proponent of advertiser rights. Page one of 1984 is basically a damning indictment of how the Thought Police limit advertisers on social media, as I recall.
- dominotw 5y ago
  >Misinformation thats not what this is about.
  - staticassertion 5y ago
    It very obviously is. They're rejecting advertisers who project misinformation around climate change.
  - VerminOctopus1 5y ago
    Actually it seems like it’s explicitly about misinformation promoted by those with an interest in denying the realities of climate change.
TedShiller 5y ago
Let me point out that science has been wrong many times before
- tzs 5y ago
  How many of those times was the error corrected via ads in popular media?
Nextgrid 5y ago
There are good theoretical arguments against this in the comments, but I wonder whether in practice there have been occurrences where ads were useful in challenging the scientific status-quo and advancing science? It seems like in practice, this policy is primarily designed to prevent stupid politicians that deny science to advance their agenda or maybe snake-oil vendors that use ads denying science to sell their shit. Both of those are a good thing to me.
olivermarks 5y ago
"science' in this context is essentially a form of religious dogma. Who is twitter to say that science is settled, done and dusted? This is just the latest version of torturing people considered heretics to force them to recant their views and is antithetical to western liberal concepts of free speech, discussion and evolution of ideas https://www.upi.com/Archives/1981/02/26/Galileo-the-gifted-16th-Century-thinker-ostracized-by-the/9744352011600/#:~:text=Galileo%20claimed%20to%20have%20proven,torture%20and%20forced%20to%20recant https://www.upi.com/Archives/1981/02/26/Galileo-the-gifted-1....
- akomtu 5y ago
  Scientism as the new religion. This gradual shift from the feeling-based dogmas to dogmas based on shallow knowledge is, in fact, a sign of progress, that the majority of the populace starts putting knowledge before feelings.
  - puffoflogic 5y ago
    What's weird is that until COVID, scientism was on the way out of favor, with the sidelining of the New Atheists (Tyson, Hitchens, et al). It's funny how the movement managed to get revived just before it stepped through the pearly gates, as it were.
  - olivermarks 5y ago
    Sadly much of what passes for 'science' these days is actually slanted persuasion, feeling/fear manipulation and cancel culture
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
CWuestefeld 5y ago
This is great. No longer will I need to see people claiming that climate is an existential threat, likely to snuff out human society by the end of the century. Oh wait, those aren't the untruthful extremists we're talking about?
- 8note 5y ago
  I don't think they have the money to buy enough twitter ads for you to see them
  - jokethrowaway 5y ago
    They don't need to, they get organic tweets from any media publication. I can't say I've seen ads denying climate change anyway, the closest I've seen was stuff from Exxon saying something climate change friendly trying to convince you they support green policies.
cultofmetatron 5y ago
the single biggest thing we can do to slow down climate change is to drastically rethink our zoning policy. why do I need to get in a car and drive 10 minutes to grab some milk? because none of the land in the next few miles is zoned for a grocery store! We need to allow mixed use so that a lot of current errands that need a car could be easily performed on a bike.
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  That's definitely one of the reasons I don't live in the USA or in Russia. You guys spend too much time driving. The CO2 impact from cars is not that high though. Probably carbon sequestration is a fastest / cheapest route.
fzeroracer 5y ago
Scientists are not publishing ads on Twitter for their theories. Corporations are. What people are defending is corporate consensus, because ultimately that's who puts up ads that contradict the current research around climate change. Corporations have reached a generalized consensus that climate change isn't a problem to worry about right now, because to accept the opposite means change that would affect their business and profits. These two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Sometimes scientific consensus can be artificially created through the use of corporate backers; but a little bit of logical deduction in this scenario should make it obvious that the people with the largest profit incentives are those that have a vested interest in claiming climate change isn't an issue. That said, people arguing that scientific consensus doesn't exist is remarkably ignorant. It should take time and effort for any theory you publish to make its way to the forefront because otherwise you end up with a flood of charlatans, corporations and otherwise submitting bunk science in order to further their own profit or political motives.
deanCommie 5y ago
The terms "progressive" and "conservative" have been completely stripped of meaning in our political discourse, (like "agile"!) but fundamentally they have a core meaning. Progressive philosophy is to seek change to improve/fix problems, even with the risk that action can have side effects that also will need to be dealt with. Conservative philosophy is to maintain the status quo and not take action to address problems even if they are causing harm - until we can establish all possible side effects can be dealt with. ( https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Chesterton%27s_fence https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Chesterton%27s_fence ) Which is why it's so strange and disappointing to me to see the overall discourse on this site about Twitter and the steps they take to try to deal with misinformation on global society-impacting subjects like pandemics, vaccines, and climate change. People are not wrong to worry about knock-on effects, but it's shocking to me that by default most of the comment upvotes suggest it's preferable to do absolutely nothing and offer no moderation of content like this. This would never fly in our day-to-day jobs. If HackerNews is for startup enterpreneurs, being stuck in analysis paralysis is no way to build a startup. Progressive bias for action is the only available option.
yes_really 5y ago
I have a feeling that "contradict science on climate change" will only go one way. For example, economists agree that effects of climate change would be very small (compared to the world's economy) or even positive. David Friedman even thinks that climate change might be a *net positive* for the economy [1][2]. Is Twitter going to ban ads that say climate change will be a catastrophe? [1] https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/09/david_friedman_9.html https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/09/david_friedman_9.ht... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euL39f1kins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euL39f1kins
- npunt 5y ago
  Macroeconomics really strains the definition of 'science'. Few economists would place their field's predictive or descriptive power anywhere near that of chemistry, physics, biology, and all the other hard sciences that are part of climate science and the analysis of its effects. And I haven't yet seen people in the fact checking / 'allowable speech' sphere bring up most any social sciences as being settled or beyond reproach enough to take down content. Given that there are so many unknowns about the extent of the nth-order effects of climate change (e.g. ecosystem collapse), I find it laughable that economists have a macro model that has any level of certainty to it. They can't even get relatively static situations correct, let alone literally world-changing ones.
- imtringued 5y ago
  Considering humanity's desire for space exploration, not investing in climate change mitigations has negative effects on the economy outside earth. In fact, I would argue that the success of capitalism relies purely on its ability to force people to invent things that would appear pointless from a first glance. Yes, all those stupid startups that are failing are there to win the technological progress lottery. Meanwhile other economic models won't play the lottery which has a significant cost over the short term and be happy in some local minima.
- gaganyaan 5y ago
  Come on now, you're just being silly. "Yeah the ecosystem collapsed and everything's dying, but GDP is off the charts from all the cleanup work we're paying people to do!"
xyzzy21 5y ago
"Science" is NEVER decided and the fact they are doing this is specifically and explicitly ANTI-SCIENCE. It is itself misinformation.

203 points by DocFeind 5y ago

There is no such thing as 'contradicting science' - Science is never settled, never certain. If it was, it would be called Mathematics.

timcavel 5y ago
Thought-crime alert! Science Ministry Rule 186 violation, do not question the science without a registered science license identifier attached.

timcavel 5y ago

Only the Science Ministry is authorized to ordain official science through the USA Fact-Check Algorithm, the canonical arbiter of truth.

npunt 5y ago

It seems a lot of people are responding to this from the 'allowable speech' and 'consensus is bad' perspective, which triggers the inevitable 'its a private platform' or 'its just one place' response. We should be looking at this from a threat model perspective. That certain subjects, at certain times, are subject to coordinated threats in order to gain power to those coordinating them. This isn't about 'scientific consensus', this is a known set of threat actors following a known playbook to spread FUD, 'flood the zone with shit', etc, for known reasons. Any human effort at scale is going to be subject to some amount of threat noise trying to get in the way of signal. We overcome these with institutional antibodies, things like practices and protocols and checks and balances (hopefully made transparent). We try to lower the noise floor so that the quality stuff is encouraged and sticks around. I feel like a lot of complaints fall back to unrealistic idealism because they don't have the insight on what the decision making apparatus is, where it is empowered and where it is limited, and how decisions were reached. That's a problem, but arguing that threats shouldn't be addressed is not the solution, because we already know how that plays out in institutions, communities, and societies. They fall apart.

staticassertion 5y ago

[flagged]

millimeterman 5y ago
I think anyone who's spent time on HN can attest that both are clearly true. HN is absolutely no better than the platforms it loves to decry (e.g. Reddit, Twitter, etc.) in terms of user behavior.

kweingar 5y ago

A lot of people here are making arguments about the nature of science and consensus, but I suspect that for many, this is not a sincerely/consistently held belief. For example, if the headline were instead “Twitter bans misleading ads for alternative medicine” (e.g. herbal teas that claim to cure cancer), we would not be seeing such strenuous objection.

skissane 5y ago
Most "misleading ads for alternative medicine" are trying to sell a product (the "medicine" in question) not simply spread a belief. Ads trying to sell people things are usually subject to different standards than ads simply trying to influence their opinion without any direct connection to any commercial product or service. I think your claim that people are being inconsistent is ignoring this important distinction.

helloworld11 5y ago

Considering the sheer amount of toxic, dishonest, manipulative rage-fueled garbage that Twitter allows or algorithmically promotes every day on so many subjects, this specific ban reeks of sanctimonious hypocrisy to say the least. All that aside from the simple fact that debate on such a complex subject should always be welcome (much like is the case with COVID and its vaccines, in which case it's possible to be against mandates while not arguing aginst the clinical value of vaccination in general), even if it includes points of view from deep within the denier camp. I don't doubt the science behind the reality of human-caused climate change, but even if some people do, rules like this will do nothing to make debate better, or spread better reasoning wider and further. They'll do the opposite, and only entrench bad ideas, rigid formalisms and ideological camps. Furthermore, there is indeed plenty of room for debate on policies, specifics, ranges and other aspects of climate change without one sinking into full blown denial of established evidence and data.

Thorentis 5y ago

I thought we moved past censoring people for having alternate scientific opinions hundreds of years ago.

antifa 5y ago
If it was a scientific opinion, you'd publish it for peer review.

unmole 5y ago

Does saying "Passenger vehicles account for ~7% of emissions and thus switching to EV's will not make a significant difference" count as disagreeing with science?

bediger4000 5y ago

A step in the right direction towards banning all untruthful ads! But wait, since advertising is almost exclusively lies, then Twitter might ban all ads! That would be great! Elon would have to finance all Twitter operations out of pocket, but he can afford it, it's a drop in the bucket for the world's richest, and therefore smartest, man!

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mirceal 5y ago
Elon is gonna save them. all ads will be welcome!
- bediger4000 5y ago
  The Usenet experience says that people just melt away if too much ads/spam/pr0n show up. Of course, Usenet had a larger amount of externalization than Twitter does: Twitter runs its own infrastructure, while Usenet was almost entirely on participating sites' infrastructure. The situation is a little different. Even so, I expect that we'll find out what the Twitter ad/spam/grift tipping point is.

PraetorianGourd 5y ago

I guess this shows the slippery slope fallacy isn't always fallacious. The problem with "consensus" as a measure is that consensus is always moving. We need to encourage professional and laypersons alike to embrace the freedom to be wrong as everything is wrong until it is right. And what constitutes consensus? If Mazda puts out an ad saying that ICE cars contribute less than transoceanic shipping, is that acceptable? It's factual, but it goes against the consensus that ICE cars need to be eliminated. I get this is ads, not user generated content, though the chilling effect is there.

marcosdumay 5y ago
> ICE cars contribute less than transoceanic shipping It's not factual, unless you are talking about bullshit measurement that focus on sulfur pollutants that we accept on the middle of the ocean because they do almost not damage there (and have no relation at all with Global Warming).
tshaddox 5y ago
> I guess this shows the slippery slope fallacy isn't always fallacious. No, it’s still always fallacious. The argument “it’s going to rain today because it’s Saturday and it always rains on Saturday” is fallacious even on the occasions that it does rain on Saturday.
- CamperBob2 5y ago
  It's fallacious when dealing with logical entities. Humans aren't logical entities.
rnd0 5y ago
I disagree. I think that platforms have some sort of responsibility to vet the ads who run on their platform. Not just for science or politics but in general. 1/2 of the reason I have used an adblocker for 20 years is because of how often straight-up malware has made it onto advertising networks because of a lack of vetting.[1] There's a discussion to be had about twitter and social media removing posts and posters but I don't feel like this is that discussion. I feel like this is a positive (or at least neutral) development. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising#History

elicash 5y ago

Worth noting that political ads are already banned on Twitter and have been for a couple years: https://twitter.com/jack/status/1189634360472829952?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://twitter.com/jack/status/1189634360472829952?ref_src=... In practice, this leads to weird scenarios where Exxon can run promotional ads but climate groups can't run ads in opposition. I'm not saying this is the wrong policy necessarily, just that "politics" is a tricky thing to define. Labor unions can't run ads saying workers should demand more pay, but Amazon can run ads saying their jobs pay good wages. Edit: Also, I tried to find the original post but the blog is down, at least for the moment for me. https://blog.twitter.com https://blog.twitter.com -- anyway, here's a cached version: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ADXc6Wf2sSAJ:https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2022/accelerating-our-climate-commitments-on-earth-day+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ADXc6W...

boomlinde 5y ago
For as long as money is instrumental in determining the allocation of resources and power, the goals of commercial entities (and their propaganda) are inherently political in nature. By advocating for their own profit they are advocating for a certain resource distribution strategy that they want as many people to get on board with. What Twitter is really saying is that they are fine with political messages, just not from institutions and by means that are typically associated with democracy: for as long as you only represent your self-interest rather than constituents and members in a democratic sense you are free to propagandize as much as you want. The result is highly political, just directly anti-democratic.
kornhole 5y ago
It seems the best solution is to ban all advertising and money interest on the platform. Then Twitter would have a lower valuation, and they would not do that. It is a good thing we do have ad-free social media like Twitter such as Mastodon.
blablabla123 5y ago
I guess this also shows the limits of communities where the topic is basically everything

jesushax 5y ago

This is basically a good thing, but I'm always annoyed by the use of "science" like this, making it into an institution with a unified voice. If they used the word 'consensus' or 'studies' the claim would sound weaker, and they want to give it the weight of a quasi-religious absolute. Which is great for the tactical, rhetorical power of their argument, but plants the seed of their strategic downfall. If you do this enough, "science" is lowered to a political device commanding the same respect as sociology did in the Soviet Union (or even in the US, at this point), ie less than nothing.

RickJWagner 5y ago
The great thing about science is that it can criticize itself, and later even completely change it's position. It's why science is never permanently 'settled', but only settled for the point in time, given the information available. It's probably best to always leave some room for discussion.
elicash 5y ago
Good news for you. Here's a direct quote from their post, which I believe their blog is currently down so don't blame you for not finding it: > To better serve these conversations, misleading advertisements on Twitter that contradict the scientific consensus on climate change are prohibited, in line with our inappropriate content policy.
- dalmo3 5y ago
  > misleading advertisements on Twitter that contradict the scientific consensus climate change are prohibited I wonder if they still allow non-misleading advertising that contradict the scientific consensus.
- torstenvl 5y ago
  That's more honest, but also more obviously problematic. Thank God publishing platforms didn't prohibit contradicting the scientific consensus on, say, Newtonian physics in the early 20th century.

qiskit 5y ago

> Twitter says it will no longer allow advertisers on its site who deny the scientific consensus on climate change, echoing a policy already in place at Google. Maybe someone should tell twitter, google, etc that science isn't supposed to work on consensus. Politics works on consensus. And when you mix politics with science, you get social darwinism/scientific racism/etc. > Twitter said it would provide more information in the coming months on how it plans to provide “reliable, authoritative context to the climate conversations” its users engage in, including from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The U.N.-backed science panel’s reports on the causes and effects of climate change provide the basis for international negotiations to curb climate change. The good old authoritarian, I mean authoritative sources. It's amazing how the entire establishment political/media/tech/etc all rallied around "authoritative sources". It's almost like someone flipped a switch and it's become a national mantra. "Authoritative sources", "authoritative sources", "authoritative sources". A UN backed science panel. Great. If there is one thing we all know about the UN, it's that the UN isn't political. An institution ruled by the US, Russia, China, Britain and France. Seems very trustworthy to me.

olddustytrail 5y ago
To address your last sentence: yes, if you can get those five countries to agree on anything, it's probably trustworthy.
- bequanna 5y ago
  If you can get those five countries to agree on anything, the lobbyists/politicians running those countries have found some way to benefit from that message.
- stretchwithme 5y ago
  Unfortunately, two of those countries aren't allowed to vote so we don't know what they agree on.
  - olddustytrail 5y ago
    Which two countries would those be?

gigatexal 5y ago

Good. This is twitter doing what it should in the public good.

meatsauce 5y ago
[flagged]
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  - gigatexal 5y ago
    You folks seem to love the slippery slope argument. There’s clearly a difference between facts and fiction. Not allowing clearly and proven false advertising on the platform elevates that advertising and makes it even more valuable. At least to me. And makes me want to use the platform even more thereby increasing engagement and then driving up ad value and prices. Advertising honesty != a forced famine nor is it forcing Russian Americans into camps like we did to Japanese citizen in WW2.
- VerminOctopus1 5y ago
  This is an absolutely absurd thing to say and is about half a degree away from reductio ad Hitlerum. We’re talking about misleading advertisements here, try to stay grounded when you think about these things.
vixen99 5y ago
You're just yea-saying. Who defines public good? You and Twitter whoever they are behind the scenes? Clearly there are matters of which we should know nothing. And folk like you will protect us.
- gigatexal 5y ago
  If we stay within scope of the action taken here we can clearly see that this is Twitter enforcing some truth in its advertising. Now if it would just ban crypto ads … but I’m not head of advertising at Twitter so it won’t happen.

systemvoltage 5y ago

I believe that CC is a problem that I am 100% behind but how do we avoid this piggy backing and hijacking of CC initiatives to further some other agenda? Say increase profit margins or green wash people? Just recently I stayed in a Marriott hotel and my entire experience was marred with CC warning labels everywhere from Toiletteries to free breakfast in the morning. You know what would be better for CC? That hotel to not exist in the first place. There is no end in sight and no limit to what can be done for CC. So you have this unlimited power from random authorities masquerading behind CC. I think the problem with Climate Change movement is sort of like COVID. Restroom closed? Because COVID. Public Park Trail closed? COVID. Wtf!? No one challenges it. No is allowed to. It has all these side effects. We ought to double-down where things actually matter for the betterment of the planet and speak up against this other non-sense.

seoaeu 5y ago
It doesn't seem that hard to differentiate "Marriott is washing towels less often to save money, not because they care about saving water" from someone claiming that climate change isn't happening...
chmod600 5y ago
It's a bandwagon thing. Founders and early joiners of a movement are very different from people who join after a movement is already successful/catching on (perhaps widely or perhaps in one area/subculture). After something becomes so successful that you can't challenge it in any way (at least in some circles) it takes on the characteristics you describe. If someone pokes you in the eye and says it's for climate change, you can't say anything. None of this has to do with the accuracy of the original movement. CC can be very real and abused by politicians and other opportunists.

h2odragon 5y ago

ChrisLomont 5y ago
That's a myth. Read more on the history of that.
- h2odragon 5y ago
  I have. One of my favorite highlights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_smoke_enema https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_smoke_enema
VerminOctopus1 5y ago
What is your point? Are you taking issue with the current corpus of evidence that exists around climate change?

WalterBright 5y ago

The scientific consensus used to be that the sun revolved around the earth, and you were put under house arrest if you published anything contradicting that. Then there was that scientific consensus that margarine was good for you and eggs caused heart attacks. Or that scientific consensus that disease could be cured by draining the bad blood out of your body. Or that scientific consensus that if you sailed west too far, you'd fall off the edge of the world. Or my favorite scientific consensus that in order to ensure a good harvest, it was necessary to chop the hearts out of your enemies and offer it to the gods.

yongjik 5y ago
> The scientific consensus used to be that the sun revolved around the earth ... Ever thought about why it took so long for this particular "scientific consensus" was reverted? Because geocentrism could explain the motions of planets pretty accurately, and the easiest actual evidence of heliocentrism was that apparent locations of stars should move very slightly following the motion of the Earth (i.e., parallax) - the effect was so small that the first measurement was made in 1838, about 200 years after Galileo's death. Until then, the apparent absence of parallax was a scientific evidence against heliocentrism. The lesson to draw is that it's not sufficient to have its proponent put under house arrest in order for a new theory to be accepted by the scientific community. Your new theory has to first explain all the things explained by the existing theory, and then some more that can not be explained by the existing one. I'll leave it to readers to conclude what that means in the context of global warming. Honestly I'm depressed by the level of discourse here. Otherwise mostly intelligent people are basically resorting to "Well some groups of people have been wrong about various things before, which proves that this particular (unrelated) group of people can be wrong, so instead of addressing the problem they say we have, let's debate for the umpteenth time whether the problem is real, again." It's a classical stalling tactic, and IMHO the only proper response is "Get out, adults are talking."
- WalterBright 5y ago
  I'm sad you've entirely misunderstood my point. I thought it was obvious. The point is, no matter how sure you are that you're right, you might still be wrong. If you suppress opposing viewpoints, you're also suppressing any evidence that you might be wrong. There are also people who know they're wrong - they suppress dissent because the truth will remove the power they enjoy. Nobody likes being wrong. It's soooo much easier to just suppress any hint of being wrong. The only way we'll know the truth is to allow dissent. Suppression of dissent is what tyrants do.

dudul 5y ago

Reminds me of the old south park episode where 2 ultra scientific factions fight over some silly religious-like details. Science shouldn't be treated like a religion. Consensus in science changes all the time. New things are discovered and invented by Goin against the concensus.

dlivingston 5y ago
Right, my fear with treating climate change as “settled, absolute, unquestionable wisdom” is that this puritanical attitude towards science potentially stymies researchers from postulating radical new ideas, or prevents other researchers from taking radical ideas seriously. To be clear, anthropogenic climate change is definitely a thing, and those who say it isn’t are either gaslighting or being gaslit. But even though Newton was right, Einstein was “more right.” Could an Einstein exist in climate science today, going against the “Settled Science™?”
- seoaeu 5y ago
  So climate change deniers are engaging in gaslighting, but you don't think we should do anything to stop them... because maybe one of them stumbles on a scientific breakthrough?
  - dlivingston 5y ago
    > So climate change deniers are engaging in gaslighting Sometimes. Oftentimes they have just been lied to by political or cultural institutions that they trust. > but you don't think we should do anything to stop them It greatly depends on the context. In the case of ads on Twitter, I have no opinion as I'm not familiar enough with the nuances of this action to make a judgement. > because maybe one of them stumbles on a scientific breakthrough That's a misreading of my comment. My point was that a serious climate scientist may be afraid of pushing past the boundaries for fear of going against the very real orthodoxy. The orthodoxy, by the way, is a social thing, not a science thing. Many scientists have gotten 'cancelled' by randos on Twitter for publishing standard research.
- 5y ago

onos 5y ago

Another voice here not happy about this. It’s as if the advocates here have no interest in learning anything from the history of science as a practice of argument by evidence. Banning arguments doesn’t convince anyone paying attention that the opponents are wrong it just makes people suspicious that the banners can’t defend their positions.

olliej 5y ago
In what way is forcing companies to promote misinformation, cons, and deliberate deception not an attack on their freedom of speech? In what way is not being required to promote something “banning arguments”? Twitter isn’t banning idiots spouting idiot views, anymore than it’s really banning white supremacy. But they don’t let you run racist ad campaigns.
owisd 5y ago
It's not banning arguments, just recognising that twitter ads aren't the best medium for certain arguments.
- bencollier49 5y ago
  "It's not banning arguments, just recognising that the public sphere isn't the best place for certain arguments." And so on. That feels like a slippery slope to me.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - olliej 5y ago
    It seems like a slippery slope to say that Twitter must promote any message, regardless of content. Surely if Twitter has to publish content, it would be reasonable to require The New York Times to publish, and promote, an article from Storm Front. Or require Fox to publish, and promote, actual Climate Science content. Twitter is not even halting the argument, they’re just refusing to artificially promote it above other content.
  - 5y ago

kvetching 5y ago

tsol 5y ago

I wonder if this has anything to do with Elon Musk saying he wants to buy Twitter and change it for the public good

kvetching 5y ago

chernevik 5y ago

"Contradicting science" is exactly how you do science.

mhh__ 5y ago
Are adverts scientific research now?
- ComradePhil 5y ago
  They are when pharma does it.
seoaeu 5y ago
Yeah, but then you publish your theory (along with supporting evidence!) in academic publications. Who ever heard of a scientist taking out Twitter ads to push their fringe theory directly to ordinary people?
- endominus 5y ago
  Efforts to ban "misinformation" are gaining ground pretty much everywhere, with full-throated support by government institutions and at most given token resistance from social media companies, if that. Banning misinformation or heterodox opinions in ads is the initial step; does anyone, in good faith, truly believe that's where it will stop? Facebook and YouTube already warn about videos that mention certain topics, hence some YouTubers saying phrases like "Hope you're staying healthy in these trying times" in case the platform deranked them for saying COVID. Soon, as the ability for algorithms to understand context evolves, discussion and especially disagreement of such things at all will be heavily censored (I'm sorry, "downranked") by algorithms on such sites, until they are essentially invisible. Also, it's not just about publishing papers. Scientists use Twitter to network and communicate their ideas with other scientists. To learn about what people are working on, interesting ideas in their field, and so on. If heterodoxy is banned from discussion, it becomes that much harder to challenge existing consensus, because they will be unable to communicate effectively with one another on public platforms.

CreateAccntAgn 5y ago

Scientific consensus on climate change is pretty well defined. Is anyone saying that messages that contradict them are correct sometimes and so Twitter is wrong in this action? Corps have been abusing capital to amplify their speech intentionally misleading public on this subject regardless of its harm. This imho is the right move.

UberFly 5y ago
What about Corps abusing capital to muffle speech? This isn't necessarily just about climate change.

TeeMassive 5y ago

"Twitter says it will no longer allow advertisers on its site who deny the scientific consensus on climate change" Does that mean if an advertisers sais the wrong thing elsewhere in public they will be banned?

civilized 5y ago

Awesome. Finally someone decided to ban something that's actually unambiguously bad, useless, and materially harmful. Even with Trump, whose banning I support, you could argue there was some value in knowing what the President had on his mind. I really don't need to know what Exxon's PR hacks want me to believe about climate change, even just for informational value. I'm extraordinarily well-aware of what they want me to think and why. Some things are just evil, and they become more evil and more powerful the more you feed them. Hitler was one. Exxon talking about climate change is another.

8note 5y ago
I think it's interesting to know what Exxon's PR is thinking, though I don't think money spent is the right way to prioritize their thoughts vs anything else
- pixl97 5y ago
  If you want to know what Exxon's PR is thinking just listen to your average Texas senator.
- pornel 5y ago
  Exxon's PR is always thinking FUD, such as "banning our anti-scientific PR ads is a slippery slope towards banning all science (because who can tell the difference between new revolutionary theory that upends thousands of peer-reviewed papers in 280 characters, and our lies)".

Proven 5y ago

nharada 5y ago

Everyone in this thread talking about how "science is never settled" and maybe that's true, but this move isn't designed to discredit some competing scientists, it's designed to shutdown bad-faith propaganda paid for by oil companies and other entrenched interests. Curious how y'all would propose combating this type of misinformation. Or is this just something we should accept as a necessary evil on any platform?

politician 5y ago

Twitter needs to stop or be stopped. Censorship belongs to the government, not private institutions. Let the government pass legislation instructing Twitter about which speech is allowed. The government, at least in the US, is accountable to the people, but Twitter like other authoritarian regimes is accountable only to themselves.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
VerminOctopus1 5y ago
So you want a more authoritarian government to clamp down on what businesses can and cannot do? Seems contrary to the freedom everyone on this website seems to be enamoured with. I’d expect private enterprises (emphasis on the word private) to be able to do just about whatever they want with their businesses in a “free” system.
- politician 5y ago
  No, I want the public square to be operated by and for the public. Twitter is squatting on the public cyberspace and I think it’s about time that the government stepped in and told them that if they want to monetize free speech, that they have to uphold free speech and cannot manipulate the environment unilaterally. I know that “public cyberspace” is a weird phrase and hard to parse. I’m referring to the graph of communications between citizens of a country and between countries. In the US, this is a protected space, protected by our Constitution.
8note 5y ago
So far, all laws around censorship are that it is up to private individuals which ideas they want to promote, and which ones they don't. Antitrust is a much better direction to tackle this kind of issue through. Twitter needs to be one way of seeing the underlying data, rather than having a monopoly on it.
- politician 5y ago

AHappyCamper 5y ago

Thank goodness science is in COMPLETE agreement when it comes to climate. I mean, if there was more than one scientific opinion about climate, then this ban would be ludicrous....

mdavis6890 5y ago

Blood letting was the scientific consensus not long ago. You would have been spreading misinformation to question it.

wtallis 5y ago
Bloodletting and the practice of medicine as a whole both predate organized science. Transforming medicine into a scientific discipline is an incomplete work in progress, and discarding bloodletting is one of the consequences of that transition.
lambdaba 5y ago
Well just yesterday there was a story about how donating blood helps remove microplastics so...
- mdavis6890 4y ago
  I think we should all be going in for our weekly blood filtering. Or maybe we can develop a wearable blood filter which we change periodically. Just be careful when you change it though.
  - mbg721 4y ago
    Every office would have a machine in the break room, but there's always that one person who never changes the filter...

staticassertion 5y ago

This is good news. Misinformation is cheap to produce and expensive to combat once it's out there. My opinion is that the only effective approach is to deplatform it entirely, as early in the process as possible.

hunterb123 5y ago
I think people can decide for themselves whether having arbiters of truth is "good news" or not. Personally this is just another step down the Orwellian slope, not really news as it's Twitter going about their usual agenda. Misinformation is a scary word though, can't have those gullible peasants falling for trickery, you know best for them!
- staticassertion 5y ago
  Yeah, Orwell was definitely a big proponent of advertiser rights. Page one of 1984 is basically a damning indictment of how the Thought Police limit advertisers on social media, as I recall.
dominotw 5y ago
>Misinformation thats not what this is about.
- staticassertion 5y ago
  It very obviously is. They're rejecting advertisers who project misinformation around climate change.
- VerminOctopus1 5y ago
  Actually it seems like it’s explicitly about misinformation promoted by those with an interest in denying the realities of climate change.

TedShiller 5y ago

Let me point out that science has been wrong many times before

tzs 5y ago
How many of those times was the error corrected via ads in popular media?

Nextgrid 5y ago

There are good theoretical arguments against this in the comments, but I wonder whether in practice there have been occurrences where ads were useful in challenging the scientific status-quo and advancing science? It seems like in practice, this policy is primarily designed to prevent stupid politicians that deny science to advance their agenda or maybe snake-oil vendors that use ads denying science to sell their shit. Both of those are a good thing to me.

olivermarks 5y ago

"science' in this context is essentially a form of religious dogma. Who is twitter to say that science is settled, done and dusted? This is just the latest version of torturing people considered heretics to force them to recant their views and is antithetical to western liberal concepts of free speech, discussion and evolution of ideas https://www.upi.com/Archives/1981/02/26/Galileo-the-gifted-16th-Century-thinker-ostracized-by-the/9744352011600/#:~:text=Galileo%20claimed%20to%20have%20proven,torture%20and%20forced%20to%20recant https://www.upi.com/Archives/1981/02/26/Galileo-the-gifted-1....

akomtu 5y ago
Scientism as the new religion. This gradual shift from the feeling-based dogmas to dogmas based on shallow knowledge is, in fact, a sign of progress, that the majority of the populace starts putting knowledge before feelings.
- puffoflogic 5y ago
  What's weird is that until COVID, scientism was on the way out of favor, with the sidelining of the New Atheists (Tyson, Hitchens, et al). It's funny how the movement managed to get revived just before it stepped through the pearly gates, as it were.
- olivermarks 5y ago
  Sadly much of what passes for 'science' these days is actually slanted persuasion, feeling/fear manipulation and cancel culture

deleted 5y ago

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CWuestefeld 5y ago

This is great. No longer will I need to see people claiming that climate is an existential threat, likely to snuff out human society by the end of the century. Oh wait, those aren't the untruthful extremists we're talking about?

8note 5y ago
I don't think they have the money to buy enough twitter ads for you to see them
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  They don't need to, they get organic tweets from any media publication. I can't say I've seen ads denying climate change anyway, the closest I've seen was stuff from Exxon saying something climate change friendly trying to convince you they support green policies.

cultofmetatron 5y ago

the single biggest thing we can do to slow down climate change is to drastically rethink our zoning policy. why do I need to get in a car and drive 10 minutes to grab some milk? because none of the land in the next few miles is zoned for a grocery store! We need to allow mixed use so that a lot of current errands that need a car could be easily performed on a bike.

jokethrowaway 5y ago
That's definitely one of the reasons I don't live in the USA or in Russia. You guys spend too much time driving. The CO2 impact from cars is not that high though. Probably carbon sequestration is a fastest / cheapest route.

fzeroracer 5y ago

Scientists are not publishing ads on Twitter for their theories. Corporations are. What people are defending is corporate consensus, because ultimately that's who puts up ads that contradict the current research around climate change. Corporations have reached a generalized consensus that climate change isn't a problem to worry about right now, because to accept the opposite means change that would affect their business and profits. These two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Sometimes scientific consensus can be artificially created through the use of corporate backers; but a little bit of logical deduction in this scenario should make it obvious that the people with the largest profit incentives are those that have a vested interest in claiming climate change isn't an issue. That said, people arguing that scientific consensus doesn't exist is remarkably ignorant. It should take time and effort for any theory you publish to make its way to the forefront because otherwise you end up with a flood of charlatans, corporations and otherwise submitting bunk science in order to further their own profit or political motives.

deanCommie 5y ago

The terms "progressive" and "conservative" have been completely stripped of meaning in our political discourse, (like "agile"!) but fundamentally they have a core meaning. Progressive philosophy is to seek change to improve/fix problems, even with the risk that action can have side effects that also will need to be dealt with. Conservative philosophy is to maintain the status quo and not take action to address problems even if they are causing harm - until we can establish all possible side effects can be dealt with. ( https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Chesterton%27s_fence https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Chesterton%27s_fence ) Which is why it's so strange and disappointing to me to see the overall discourse on this site about Twitter and the steps they take to try to deal with misinformation on global society-impacting subjects like pandemics, vaccines, and climate change. People are not wrong to worry about knock-on effects, but it's shocking to me that by default most of the comment upvotes suggest it's preferable to do absolutely nothing and offer no moderation of content like this. This would never fly in our day-to-day jobs. If HackerNews is for startup enterpreneurs, being stuck in analysis paralysis is no way to build a startup. Progressive bias for action is the only available option.

yes_really 5y ago

I have a feeling that "contradict science on climate change" will only go one way. For example, economists agree that effects of climate change would be very small (compared to the world's economy) or even positive. David Friedman even thinks that climate change might be a *net positive* for the economy [1][2]. Is Twitter going to ban ads that say climate change will be a catastrophe? [1] https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/09/david_friedman_9.html https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/09/david_friedman_9.ht... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euL39f1kins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euL39f1kins

npunt 5y ago
Macroeconomics really strains the definition of 'science'. Few economists would place their field's predictive or descriptive power anywhere near that of chemistry, physics, biology, and all the other hard sciences that are part of climate science and the analysis of its effects. And I haven't yet seen people in the fact checking / 'allowable speech' sphere bring up most any social sciences as being settled or beyond reproach enough to take down content. Given that there are so many unknowns about the extent of the nth-order effects of climate change (e.g. ecosystem collapse), I find it laughable that economists have a macro model that has any level of certainty to it. They can't even get relatively static situations correct, let alone literally world-changing ones.
imtringued 5y ago
Considering humanity's desire for space exploration, not investing in climate change mitigations has negative effects on the economy outside earth. In fact, I would argue that the success of capitalism relies purely on its ability to force people to invent things that would appear pointless from a first glance. Yes, all those stupid startups that are failing are there to win the technological progress lottery. Meanwhile other economic models won't play the lottery which has a significant cost over the short term and be happy in some local minima.
gaganyaan 5y ago
Come on now, you're just being silly. "Yeah the ecosystem collapsed and everything's dying, but GDP is off the charts from all the cleanup work we're paying people to do!"

xyzzy21 5y ago

"Science" is NEVER decided and the fact they are doing this is specifically and explicitly ANTI-SCIENCE. It is itself misinformation.