WASHINGTON — Search for the word “climate” on Twitter and the first automatic recommendation isn’t “climate crisis” or “climate jobs” or even “climate change” but instead “climate scam.”
Clicking on the recommendation yields dozens of posts denying the reality of climate change and making misleading claims about efforts to mitigate it.
Such misinformation has flourished on Twitter since Elon Musk bought it last year, but the site isn’t the only one promoting content that scientists and environmental advocates say undercuts public support for policies intended to respond to a changing climate.
“What’s happening in the information ecosystem poses a direct threat to action,” said Jennie King, head of climate research and response at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based nonprofit. “It plants those seeds of doubt and makes people think maybe there isn’t scientific consensus.”
Noah Berger – freelancer, FR34727 AP
The institute is part of a coalition of environmental advocacy groups that recently released a report tracking climate change disinformation in the months before, during and after the U.N. climate summit in November.
The report faulted social media platforms for, among other things, failing to enforce their own policies prohibiting climate change misinformation. It is only the latest to highlight the growing problem of climate misinformation on Twitter.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, allowed almost 4,000 advertisements on its site — most bought by fossil fuel companies — that dismissed the scientific consensus behind climate change and criticized efforts to respond to it, the researchers found.
In some cases, the ads and the posts cited inflation and economic fears as reasons to oppose climate policies, while ignoring the costs of inaction. Researchers also found that a significant number of the accounts posting false claims about climate change also spread misinformation about U.S. elections, COVID-19 and vaccines.
Twitter did not respond to questions from The Associated Press. A spokesperson for Meta cited the company’s policy prohibiting ads that have been proven false by its fact-checking partners, a group that includes the AP. The ads identified in the report were not fact-checked.
Under Musk, Twitter laid off thousands of employees and made changes to its content moderation that its critics said undercut the effort.
In November, the company announced it would no longer enforce its policy against COVID-19 misinformation. Musk also reinstated many formerly banned users, including several who spread misleading claims about climate change. Instances of hate speech and attacks on LGBTQ people soared.
Tweets containing “climate scam” or other terms linked to climate change denial rose 300% in 2022, according to a report released earlier this month by the nonprofit Advance Democracy. While Twitter labeled some of the content as misinformation, many of the popular posts were not labeled.
Musk’s new verification system could be part of the problem, according to a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, another organization that tracks online misinformation.
Jeff Chiu – staff, AP
Previously, blue checkmarks were held by people in the public eye such as journalists, government officials or celebrities. Now, anyone willing to pay $8 a month can seek a checkmark. Posts and replies from verified accounts are given an automatic boost on the platform, making them more visible than content from users who don’t pay.
When researchers at the Center for Countering Digital Hate analyzed accounts verified after Musk took over, they found they spread four times the amount of climate change misinformation compared with users verified before Musk’s purchase.
Verification systems are typically created to assure users that the accounts they follow are legitimate. Twitter’s new system, however, makes no distinction between authoritative sources on climate change and anyone with $8 and an opinion, said Imran Ahmed, the center’s chief executive.
“We found,” Ahmed said, “it has in fact put rocket boosters on the spread of lies and disinformation.”
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Musk starts quietly buying up Twitter shares, building his stake in the company. But it would be months before he disclosed this fact to the public.
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Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Musk's stake in Twitter tops 5%, but that fact is not disclosed until the following month. Musk was obligated to disclose his stake within 10 days of crossing the 5% threshold, but waited 21 days to do so. During that time, he continued building up his stake.
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The billionaire begins to make pointed statements about the platform from his account. "Twitter algorithm should be open source," he wrote, with a poll for users to vote "yes" or "no."
The following day, Musk tweets out another poll to his followers: "Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?"
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AP Photo/Richard Drew, File
Musk reaches out to Twitter cofounder and former CEO Jack Dorsey to "discuss the future direction of social media," according to a company filing later put out by the company. The two tech founders are known to have a bit of a billionaire bromance on and off Twitter.
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AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File
Twitter's board and some of its leadership team meet with representatives from Wilson Sonsini, a law firm, and J.P. Morgan to discuss the possibility of Musk joining the company's board, according a later securities filing. Dorsey is said to have told the board that "he and Mr. Musk were friends," according to the filing.
In the meeting, the Twitter board discussed wanting Musk to agree to "'standstill' provisions"," according to the filing. This would effectively "limit his public statements regarding Twitter, including the making of unsolicited public proposals to acquire Twitter (but not private proposals) without the prior consent of the Twitter Board."
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AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu, File
Musk is revealed to be Twitter's largest individual shareholder, with a more than 9% stake in the company.
News of the purchase sends shares of the social media company soaring more than 20% in early trading and kicks off a wave of speculation about how Musk might push for changes on the platform.
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AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announces Musk will join Twitter's board of directors. "Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our Board," Agrawal says in a post on Twitter.
As part of the appointment, Musk agrees not to acquire more than 14.9% of the company's shares while he remains on the board. His term on the board is set to go through 2024, according to a regulatory filing.
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AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File
Agrawal announces that Musk has decided not to join the board after all. "I believe this is for the best," Agrawal writes in a letter to the Twitter team.
The reversal opens the door for Musk to pursue a greater stake in the company -- and frees him to tweet his many thoughts about the company.
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AP Photo/Eric Risberg
Musk stuns the industry by making an offer to acquire all the shares in Twitter he does not own at a valuation of $41.4 billion. The cash offer represents a 38% premium over the company's closing price on April 1, the last trading day before Musk disclosed that he had become the company's biggest shareholder.
"I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy. However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company," Musk writes in his offer letter. "Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it."
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AP Photo/Jed Jacobsohn
Twitter's board of directors adopts a "poison pill" provision, a limited-term shareholder rights plan that potentially makes it harder for Musk to acquire the company.
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AP Photo/Richard Drew
Musk lines up $46.5 billion in financing for the deal, including two debt commitment letters from Morgan Stanley and other unnamed financial institutions and one equity commitment letter from himself, according to a regulatory filing.
The billionaire also reveals that he has not received a formal response from Twitter a week after his acquisition offer. He said he is "seeking to negotiate" a definite acquisition agreement and "is prepared to begin such negotiations immediately" — an apparent reversal from his statement in his acquisition offer letter that it would be his "best and final" offer.
Although he is the richest person in the world, much of Musk's wealth is tied up in Tesla stock, and some followers of the company speculate that it could be challenging for Musk to raise debt against the historically volatile stock.
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AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File
Twitter announces that it has agreed to sell itself to Musk in a deal valued at around $44 billion. At a conference later in the day, Musk describes his offer to buy Twitter in characteristically sweeping terms as being about "the future of civilization," not just making money.
At an all-hands meeting that afternoon, Twitter employees raise questions about everything from what the deal would mean for their compensation to whether former US President Donald Trump would be let back on the platform.
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Scott Olson/Getty Images
Filings reveal Musk sold $8.5 billion of his Tesla stock in the three days after Twitter board agreed to the sale for an average of $883.09 per share. The filings did not disclose the reason for the sale, but Musk appeared to be raising funds to buy Twitter.
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AP Photo/Paul Sakuma
Musk raises another $7 billion in financing for the deal. The new investors include Oracle founder Larry Ellison, cryptocurrency platform Binance and venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, according to a filing.
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Alex Brandon/AP
Musk confirms what many have assumed for weeks: he would reverse Twitter's Trump ban if his deal to buy the company is completed.
"I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump, I think that was a mistake," Musk said. "I would reverse the perma-ban. ... Banning Trump from Twitter didn't end Trump's voice, it will amplify it among the right and this is why it's morally wrong and flat out stupid."
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AP Photo/John Raoux, File
Musk aims to increase Twitter's annual revenue to $26.4 billion by 2028, up from $5 billion last year, according to a New York Times report, citing Musk's pitch deck presented to investors. To achieve that lofty goal, Musk intends to bolster Twitter's subscription revenue and build up a payments business while decreasing the company's reliance on advertising sales, according to the report.
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AP Photo/Gregory Bull
Twitter confirms to CNN Business that the platform is pausing most hiring and backfills, except for "business critical" roles, and pulling back on other non-labor costs ahead of the acquisition. In addition, Twitter says general manager of consumer, Kayvon Beykpour, and revenue product lead, Bruce Falck, are leaving the company.
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AP Photo/Gregory Bull
Musk tweets that the deal is on hold, linking to a Reuters report from nearly two weeks earlier, about Twitter's most recent disclosure about its amount of spam and fake accounts. The figure cited in the report, however, is in line with prior quarterly disclosures.
"Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users," Musk tweeted.
Shares of the social media site plummet after Musk's announcement, dropping more than 10% at market open. Two hours after announcing the hold, Musk says he remains set on purchasing Twitter. "Still committed to acquisition," he wrote.
Later in the day, Musk says his team is testing Twitter's numbers and "picked 100 as the sample size number, because that is what Twitter uses to calculate <5% fake/spam/duplicate."
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Hannibal Hanschke/Pool Photo via AP, File
Musk tweets out that Twitter's legal team accused him of breaking a nondisclosure agreement when the billionaire revealed the platform's sample size for automated user checks is allegedly just 100 users.
"Twitter legal just called to complain that I violated their NDA by revealing the bot check sample size is 100! This actually happened," wrote Musk.
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AP Photo/Eric Risberg
The standoff over bot accounts continues as Musk exchanges a series of tweets with Agrawal over the issue. After Agrawal carefully explains how Twitter attempts to combat and measure spam accounts, Musk responds with a poop emoji.
Musk follows up with a somewhat more thoughtful question. "So how do advertisers know what they're getting for their money?" Musk asked. "This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter," he added.
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AP Photo/Martin Meissner
Musk announces that his acquisition of Twitter "cannot move forward" until he sees more information about the prevalence of spam accounts, claiming that the social media platform falsified numbers in filings. Without citing a source, he claims in a tweet that Twitter is "20% fake/spam accounts" and suggests Twitter's previous filings with the SEC were misleading.
Later in the day, Musk posts a poll to his Twitter followers: "Twitter claims that >95% of daily active users are real, unique humans. Does anyone have that experience?" before calling on the SEC to evaluate the platform's numbers. "Hello @SECGov, anyone home?" Musk tweets, in an apparent attempt to get the regulator to look into the matter.
In a statement, Twitter says it remains "committed to completing the transaction on the agreed price and terms as promptly as practicable." Later, the company says it intends to "enforce the merger agreement."
