There will soon be no more ads denying climate change on Google
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/11221321?hl=en
> prohibit ads for, and monetization of, content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change
I don't think "science" means what they think it means...
The idea that it's fine for a bunch of snot-nosed purple haired leftist activists (sorry, I meant wise and scholarly even-handed moderators) to censor the de-facto public knowledge search infrastructure is ridiculous.
I love finding out that my hypothesis is falsified -- no matter where the data comes from. It means I'm about to learn something that I didn't expect. The best moments of my day.
Maybe that comes from being a programmer for 40 years. After being surprisingly wrong tens of times a day, you start to look forward to it.
Perhaps the self-proclaimed overlords of society's collective knowledge need to ... learn to learn, before putting the brakes on all that unruly and uncomfortable data?
The thing is, Google has decided not to accept money from people who are promoting a particular political agenda. It's their right to do so. Perhaps they should have gone a bit further and said that they were not going to accept money from people promoting the opposite agenda since advertising is not the place for scholarly discourse, but that wasn't the decision they made and it's their right to make that decision as a private entity.
Not to Google there isn’t.
I don’t want to ever been seen as defending Alex Jones, but everyone should have seen this coming.
When it was OK for FAANG to deplatform a person for legal but annoying things, when it was OK to shadow ban things you just don’t like, not only OK but rewarded to repeat intelligence community lies by saying things inconvenient truths are just “Russian Disinformation”, when someone felt the need to fact-check and obituary of a woman that died of the Covid vaccine, I mean… how many times do we need to slide down it to see call a low traction ramp what it is?
I hate that I sound like a conspiracy theorist, but is it really a conspiracy if they admit to it? This can not continue, I don’t think.
The plan appears to me to push it as far as they can and welcome in regulation as a capture scheme. I have no other explanations.
Is someone using this point to include changes to forest management as part of a wider climate change solution?
Or are they using it as a derailing tactic to take no action on climate change OR on forest fire management?
Because I find that this subject is a talking point used to justify inaction of any kind, not just the kind being disputed.
Nothing better than being spoon-fed the pure, raw truth straight from daddy Google himself.
Media Watch noted that this week, News Corporation newspapers across Australia (part of the Murdoch media empire, which also spans the US and UK) featured front covers embracing action towards climate change - for one of the first times ever [1]. Aside from the obvious shamble of so many papers sharing identical nearly content directed from a central source, this marks a radical shift in NewsCorp's commentary on climate change policy, and it's relationship to the Australian economy and people.
The fact that Google, one of the few larger players than NewsCorp in the advertising space, should be undertaking this kind of position perhaps shows that global risk assessment of climate change is starting to infiltrate large corporations, financial institutions and investors in a much more impactful way than previously.
Which is late, but great.
[1] https://imgur.com/a/keUz54x (Screenshot from the episode)
Asking for a friend.
Thus while Democrats and Republicans both vote against all of our interests only Republicans because of their unique interests have an incentive to spread lies. Insofar as popularity, these lies like smoking doesn't cause cancer are becoming increasingly unbelievable.
Specifically people used to literally argue that warming wasn't even real and now 2/3 of people in the US hold that its an issue and that government isn't doing enough to address it.
https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/06/23/two-thirds-of...
Interestingly among Democrats the belief that humans have a large effect on climate change is highly correlated with education with HS or less being 58%, some college being 73%, college grad 83%, and finally postgraduate 86%. Meanwhile among Republicans the breakdown is 21, 22, 22, 25. Among Republicans the politics is vastly more important than the science.
When google agrees to stop supporting harmful lies they aren't inherently taking a political stance. The republicans have merely politicized the truth. Bowing to this misdirection would itself be the political act. Lets take a stand for just worrying about the facts instead of the politics. This stand in my mind must necessarily include talking about the side which is spreading harmful lies.
Except that climate change is funded and backed by wall street, banks, media, etc. The real monied interests are on the side of climate change.
> Thus while Democrats and Republicans both vote against all of our interests only Republicans because of their unique interests have an incentive to spread lies.
But monied interests back both democrats and republicans.
> Specifically people used to literally argue that warming wasn't even real and now 2/3 of people in the US hold that its an issue and that government isn't doing enough to address it.
Wonder why that is? Oh that's right, the monied interests are backing neverending ads pushing climate change.
It's funny how everyone from the world bank, goldman sachs and google is backing climate change and you are saying it's the "monied interests" who are against climate change.
Think about it. If monied interests were against climate change, then google wouldn't be banning anti-climate change ads...
Climate change has become so overwhelmingly obvious that most people can't be persuaded that its not real so the moneyed interests are focusing on proclaiming that they are on the right side of history while trying to blunt any effective change that would hurt their pockets.
That is why for example that its super important for you to recycle that coke bottle but not important for companies to stop poisoning the planet or paying for it to be poisoned elsewhere.
Climate change is a real issue and the overwhelming fact is we have a huge hand in the multitude of maladies that plague our planet and if we don't do something beyond trivial tokens like recycling a coke bottle we are all fucked. Few with substantial wealth to be gained in the short term are considering the long term effects and they are funding both sides to keep those costs from hitting close to home.
The difference to return to the first analogy is Democrats are trying to keep cigarette taxes low while Republicans are proudly proclaiming that manly men smoke and their grandad lived to 95 smoking on whiskey and bacon and 2 packs a day!
Democrat inaction may rob us opportunities to preserve our health, wealth, prosperity, and lives but Republican lies stand to rob us of even the awareness of an actual problem that is a necessary precondition for any sort of action.
Pretending these things are the same would be a mistake.
There are many controversial subjects in humanity where free expression of ideas may cause harm but ultimately freedom is more worthwhile than what it restricts.
But there are exceptions:
* GLobal pandemics with successful vaccinations where the choices we make affect the lives of millions
* Global climate change, inaction (or wrong action) will affect the lives of BILLIONS.
My question to those screaming censorship, which I have yet to receive a good answer on, is where they draw the line. The well known line for traditional free speech is incitement to violence or shouting fire in a crowded theater. If controlling vaccine misinformation for the sake of public health is censorship, what are the cases where controlling the propagation of patently false information isn't censorship?
The internet has opened the floodgates for bad actors to flood the airwaves with bad information, whether for their own gain or for malicious purposes – to the point where the sheer volume of bad information being pumped out makes "countering bad speech with better speech" a losing battle. The algorithmic bias towards controversial topics inherent in the systems we have created are only exacerbating the issue.
The American philosophy has always been to optimize for rebelling against a "tyrannical" government. That the freedom in the system must be such that if a dictator comes along, you have the guns and the freedom of speech to resist.
That's all well and good [citation needed], but it's not the only way. Most of the rest of the "progressive" "western" world (quotes because these words don't mean the same thing to everyone, but i'm using here to guide our understanding of what countries we are discussing) take the perspective that optimizing a society for the worst case scenario all the time means that people will die in the streets while billionaires get wealthier. This isn't abstract, the US is the richest country in the world by a lot, but is the worst western country in the world to be poor (assuming you like to be alive)
So, yes, your point is valid. There have been fascist governments. And state-manufactured famines. And all of the sorts.
But i feel like your hypothetical extends the norms past their breaking point. We have solutions for these things. It can't be up to a single leader to deem a pandemic in place and be the final word on it. There must scientific consensus and multiple people elected (not appointed) to positions where they can make this judgement through science not politics.
"It's a private company" argument works when private companies are much smaller or influential than governments. When private companies get so large and politically active, we have to break it apart.
The real question is who is pressuring google to do this in the first place. But I'd doubt we'll ever find that out.
> The real question is who is pressuring google to do this in the first place. But I'd doubt we'll ever find that out.
Well, if you read Google's statements from the article, Google's advertising partners are pressuring them to do this because the non-climate denying people buying Google's ad space, unsurprisingly, do not want their content run alongside drivel.
For example, try searching something considered stereotypical or racist. The only results you will get are ones about reparations or empowering minorities - no stereotypical or racist content whatsoever.
Uhhh. I think the people working there don’t want to directly empower harmful lies… even for money. Why would you think it’s some “other” when the obvious choice is simple? Additionally, there have long been bans and regulation on harmful content, it’s nothing more than “safety and soundness.”
I find it peculiar how you immediately bring up unrelated topics like “deny christ” and people who dislike google. It’s like you’re trying to generate outrage of something ordinary and I find it confusing.
Their is value in the objectivity you describe but it doesn't outweigh the survival of the human race. As to the genesis of such a policy consider its own staff and leadership. They are overwhelmingly educated individuals whose demographic overwhelmingly believes our actions are having a deleterious effect on the future of our and other species. As this decision will only earn them limited good will and will certainly cost them money I would suggest that this course of action is undertaken because they believe it is the right thing to do.
Which is just rationalization to justify something you agree with.
> If you believe that your actions that will contribute to death and deprivation of future generations then you are morally obliged to treat this case differently.
You are talking about a company that helped foster the "revolutions" in the middle east and europe that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands/millions of people. I don't think the death of anyone is on their minds. Your logic is also what pro-lifers use. Will google ban planned parenthood ads? Would you support it? You and google are the defenders of future generations right?
> They are overwhelmingly educated individuals whose demographic overwhelmingly
Such a fine line between educated and indoctrinated.
> believes our actions are having a deleterious effect on the future of our and other species
Ah, the same demographics that uses the most energy, creates the most waste, responsible for the destruction of most species, living in cities where most wild life was wiped out. I'm part of the demographics you describe and rather than the false virtues you attributed to the demographics, I'd say the demographics is self-righteous, hypocritical, brainwashed, etc.
> Their is value in the objectivity you describe but it doesn't outweigh the survival of the human race.
If that was the case, wouldn't it be better to shut down google and all industrial activity? But of course, no real scientist believes climate change will be the end of the human race. It's just politically driven people who scare monger with lies. Obviously you don't believe that climate change will wipe out the human race since you are using the internet.
Ignoring the fact that google didn't ban such ads for 25 years, lets say you are right. Lets try a categorical imperative on your logic. Google would have to ban everything from the US government/military, every media organization, every fast food, soda, pharmaceutical, gambling, etc ads.
Funny how ads that will directly lead to the deaths of hundreds of millions of people are okay to you, but ads that will lead to the death of hardly anyone is banned.
What's the percentage of anti vs pro climate change ads? 1 to 1000? You see pro-climate change ads everywhere. You hardly see anti-climate change ads. So this has nothing to do with ads but politics. Google is just going to use it to silence politicians.
Honestly, your argument is humanity will become extinct. So lets cheer google banning some ads. I know your ideology/religion is climate change, but does that make any sense to you? So funny to see people defend google - a monstrous corporate entity.
Edit: this may be a bit too snarky but hyperbolic posts appear to have become a norm on this site and it has become all too obvious that these types of posts are more interested in soundbite style shaming than actual discussion.
What part of "millions will die" is difficult to understand? I don't think genocide is part of the hacker ethos.
It's not me "believing", it's no sane person believes it. What "evidence" are you talking about? If you have evidence, then you should inform the bankers, government officials, business leaders, etc because they aren't planning on the world ending anytime soon.
> If we don’t act
Act? You mean ban 0.00000001% of ads on google?
> a lot of people will die
Not anymore. Google banned 0.00000001% of their ads.
> our supply chains will be severely disrupted (do you think the current chip shortage is serious?)
Honestly, do people bother to think anymore? You are just parroting talking points. Why are you so worried about supply chains if we are all going to be dead?
> and that could cause a partial collapse of our civilisation.
So which is it. The end of humanity
There was a time when I was like you. When I was still in school and watched Al Gore's "documentary".
You went from "existential risk to humanity" to "a lot of people will die" to "supply chains" to "could cause a partial collapse of our civilization". It's almost like you don't know what you are talking about and just parroting nonsense you saw on TV or read on the news.
Climate change happens with or without humans. It will be detrimental to some, beneficial to others. As with all things, it'll have its winners and losers. We will adapt. Whatever the case, life will go on.
Certainly, if we faced existential risk, we wouldn't let google exist and certainly wouldn't allow google's founder to boat around the world and buy up property in new zealand. The world is ending but all the rich people are living the good life. But you have the evidence after all. That's why you jumped from "existential risk" to a possible "partial" collapse of civilization.
I seriously doubt it.
Google caused revolutions in the Middle East? How exactly?
Letting people claim that it’s not real to build “credibility” with the same people who don’t believe in the objective fact does not but build “credibility” for the liars
There was a 98-0 vote in a senate saying climate change is real. No one denied it.
Not sure what kind of "objectivity" you are demanding here. Hypothetically, if someone searched for "who created linux" and if there happened to be a really popular page that started with "Steve Jobs created Linux in the summer of 1978..." at the first spot, everyone working at Google Search would have considered it a failure and asked "How can we fix this?", definitions of objectivity be damned.
Denying climate change is not that different. It's not "wrongthink", it's simply wrong, and hence less useful to users than results that are not wrong.
It’s an anti climate change ad , they are removing blatantly wrong information. It’s not like it’s censoring legitimate research or something, it’s removing garbage ads.
Damm.
>As a result, content that calls into question or denies the scientific consensus around anthropogenic climate change will not have Google advertising alongside it. In addition, Google will no longer run any advertising that "contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change."