I find the article to be disingenuous to the extreme, and indicative of the current trend of calling all politically disfavoured speech as "misinformation". They denounce the ad, but fail to actually note a single factual error or misleading claim beyond the broad statement that they presented fossils fuels as necessary for a quality of life and part of a green lifestyle. Yet surely if that's not true, then it should be trivial to point out the factual error, right? But they don't, they don't even bother, and at the time I'm writing this, the link to the actual report is a 404.

I'm not carrying water for Exxon and would like us to move to sustainable energy, but by the same measure I'm sick of being told that something is "misinformation" with no justification given other than the fact that it was put forth by unpopular person or organisation.

Perhaps the guardian can point out scalable sustainable ways to create billions of car tyres per year, corrosion resistant plastics for underground pipes and sea cables, sustainable scalable replacements for the cosmetics industry, and then call this misinformation.

Until then it’s basically them spreading misinformation about what quality of life without fossils is like.

This is such a gray and difficult area this propaganda pretending to be journalism is ridiculous.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but...

isn't there kind of a huge difference, regarding climate change, with using fossil fuels for plastics, etc, and burning them for energy?

Like - plastics (particularly in the ocean) do present a massive issue, but they're dwarfed by the problem that is C02 and climate change?

Yes. Even if we pump up all remaining oil and turn it into plastic, the CO2 impact will be negligible, because the carbon will remain captured in the (non-degrading) plastics.

From the article: “Some of the most significant tactics found included tying the use of oil and gas to maintaining a high quality of life”

This doesn’t say anything about plastics vs using oil as fuel. When you’re making big accusations about misinformation you should probably be clear and accurate in your journalism

> create billions of car tyres per year, corrosion resistant plastics for underground pipes and sea cables, sustainable scalable replacements for the cosmetics industry ...

Textbook example of climate misinformation. People are talking about not using fossil fuels. Nobody's talking about banning tires or lotions. (Well, I mean, nobody who's being taken seriously. I'm sure you'll find a few village idiots wanting to go back to wooden chariots, if you look hard enough.)

As I said above:

From the article: “Some of the most significant tactics found included tying the use of oil and gas to maintaining a high quality of life”

This doesn’t say anything about plastics vs using oil as fuel.

When you’re making big accusations about misinformation you should probably be clear and accurate in your journalism

And your so-called-quality of life comes with the price of extinguishing any future above ground for our grandchildren, mass extinctions, and a whole lot of low quality of life for the vast majority of humanity.

We MUST prioritize R&D for precisely the things you mention, but the onus is on industry to adapt, not stymie necessary conversations and necessary change.

Get on board

So reporting about problems that don't have obvious solutions is misinformation?

They’re not pointing out problems. They’re saying pointing out the other side of difficult problems is misinformation.

At that point unless you can factually prove your accusations you are basically slandering.

Those industries buy themselves a clean environment-friendly image

A recent example I found is Formula1 planning to be "carbon-free" by 2030 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51226066, but carbon-offsetting is something very discussable, and they wouldn't account for their fans carbon cost which represent 8 times theirs (a solution could be no spectators, and at this point they could avoid travelling around the planet which would save from almost all their pollution)

To be fair, I'm not especially against those producers, I think the ones that need to act responsibly are consumers and their elected governments. Consumption decrease → demand decrease → production will adjust accordingly

I disagree. The guardian article reports that according to some US senators, facebook permits ads that contain 'demonstrably false claims'. However, most of the article is about misinformation that is actually more subtle than having false claims.

It seems you mistake misinformation for false claims. They are not the same. Misinformation is a truth claim that has the intention to deceive in order to further an agenda. It's doesn't even have to be false!

For example, Shell used to push really hard that it 'planted 5 million trees' and invests in renewables in the Netherlands. The intention was clearly prop up a reputation as a green company. But actually, that investment is not even a blip on the radar compared to their continued investments in fossil fuels, including exploring new sources in the arctic, which is completely incompatible with the Paris agreement. This is pure greenwashing and rightly called misinformation, even which there isn't a single false truth claim.

Your post, on the other hand, has a couple of false claims, but it clearly isn't misinformation. Unless it's really good and you have me fooled.

By the way, the 404 isn't really the guardians fault, InfluenceMap seems to have (re)moved the report.

So saying facts, that they planted 5 million trees, is “misinformation” because they also pump a lot of oil?

Not that there ever was a definition of misinformation but wtf is your definition? And how the hell do you objectively decide what is misinformation if facts can be that?

And how is Facebook supposed to measure what facts are actually misinformation by your standards? Should they build an AI that is able to recognise that because shell pumps a lot of oil they shouldnt be able to run ads about planting 5m trees?

Do you realise what you are advocating for?

I've clearly defined the term misinformation, it's in my post please read it again.

I don't realize what I'm advocating for because I'm not advocating for anything. I'm just pointing out that misinformation is different from stating false facts, which isn't very controversial.

Also, greenwashing exists. It's a thing, I'm not making it up.

I'd argue that greenwashing is, indeed, misinformation. That is, it is misleading to categorize a company like Shell as an eco-friendly one.

https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/transport-travel/what-greenw...

I'm not sure what we can do about it, exactly. Facebook's product is clearly one that facilitates the manipulation of targeted individuals with misinformation, as is also seen with anti-vaxxers and the "Trump won" crowd.

In my opinion, the missing ingredient is a trusted and wise editorial function. I agree with you: I doubt we want an AI to do that.

The adverts probably don't contain any "facts" that can be easily disproved. Broad statements like "fossil gas can be green" are what you will find, but it's propaganda none the less.

By that standard, the Guardian article itself is propaganda because it insinuates malfeasance without making any specifically refutable claims.

And that's probably true. Almost all news is propaganda.

Does the phrase: the public interest, mean anything to you?

One profiteers externality is all of humanities shared future.

There is no planet B, and if we can’t take reasonable care of our home planet, we can’t be trusted with others.

I blame capitalism for incentivizing bad behavior and calling collective damage an externality

Is it really their job to restate something that has been proven for decades? Two entire generation have grown into adulthood with the truth about climate change being known, but for some reason, somehow, you're still calling opposition to fact "politically disfavored" when usually you would call that not factual, or misinformation at the least, and at worst disinformation, or otherwise deliberately misleading information. I'm sure a lot of facts in the world people don't like. That doesn't make it any less misinformation.

I don't know why you think that they need to restate what you should already know, and also seemingly already know because you state that you agree with it.

By not playing that game, to try to justify it further when there is no need, they're showing that it is indeed misinformation.

That climate change is real is proven and has long been proven. But they didn't claim that an oil company disputed that.

I 100% support green initiatives, but I had an argument with someone in Bay Area that basically boiled down to whether I should exist or not - because existence itself is waste of energy and warming up the planet. I wish I was joking.

Self-hatred, or general misanthropy, seems to be a strong element of the modern "environmental"/anti-energy-use movement.

It’s anger turned inward. That anger should be directed at the mentality and behavior killing planet earth.

To the degree that you impede solutions to climate change, you deserve some of that anger

What are the factual errors here?

> promoting claims that natural gas is a green or low carbon fuel, even though research by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says otherwise.

Context matters here. I have usually seen natural gas discussed in comparison to coal. And in that context, especially if you calculate point source emissions only, it is definitely true.

> continued use of oil as affordable, reliable and important to keep the US from relying on other countries for its energy supply.

Is any of this factually inaccurate? It is affordable on account of being the standard. It is reliable as we all use it without a second thought. And it is probably the energy source that is most reliably American at the current on account of rare earths.

There are still lots of areas where there are no real non oil and gas solutions, like steel making or tires.

I personally don't see oil and gas having much of a future long term, so I am by no means on their side, but if you want to fact check, you need to do it with a specific claim in context and the article gives no indication that this is what is going on.

> reliably American

What does this mean?

The USA controls the supply chain for obtaining energy from oil and most oil used in the USA comes from the USA. This is not the case with solar in my understanding. Not sure about wind.

A social network will contain misinformation. The solution isn't to force facebook to ban content, the solution is getting people educated so they can form their own opinion. That more or less already worked and everyone tries to reduce dependence on fossil fuel, so this isn't even a problem.

The problem with that approach is that social networks are where people are getting educated. For large numbers of people, social media is their gateway to other sources of information, including news, opinion & their interests.

> That more or less already worked and everyone tries to reduce dependence on fossil fuel, so this isn't even a problem.

Given that there is still large scale climate change denial and opposition to renewable power, I don't think you can be confident in that statement. Until recently, one of the largest polluters & economic powers in the world had a government that actively promoted fossil fuels over renewables and denied the fundamentals of anthropomorphic climate change. Environmental awareness & harm reduction is far from a given.

> Given that there is still large scale climate change denial and opposition to renewable power

You will never reach 100% consensus on any topic and acknowledging it does also not mean that you have to support certain policies.

Don't point your finger at those that are in denial of your perspective, it won't help you solve anything.

If you try to ban them, they will get secondary support at least from people that support human rights like freedom of expression, which is also valid for wrong or stupid opinions.

So you have to go the difficult route of making a good argument for your position and convince others. There is no shortcut here.

Not looking for 100% consensus but it seems that we're barely just at majority consensus for the idea of anthropomorphic climate change and definitely not a majority consensus when it comes to potential solutions.

There is a parallel here with the paradox of tolerance, in that allowing equal free speech is definitely not an effective & consistent way of reaching the proper & correct consensus. Free speech is too often an academic argument used to justify our inhumanity.

For many people free speech seems to mean equal airtime & consideration for opposition minority & fringe ideas. But when the majority consensus of experts in a scientific field say one thing, providing equal public airtime to the fringe opposition is not accurate nor is it good education. Opposing ideas circulate within expert circles and it is there that they should be reviewed, not presented to the public as equal worth to the majority of other evidence.

I think the articles main position is that if facebook says that it is committed to climate action, then it needs to enforce its own policies around that, which means stopping misinformation & disinformation that does not align with the majority consensus of experts. To me that's an uncontroversial position.

However I have no expectation that facebook has the capabilities needed to ever fully & correctly enforce its policies and to expect it to do so is unrealistic wishful thinking. Unfortunately.

> allowing equal free speech is definitely not an effective & consistent way of reaching the proper & correct consensus.

I disagree profoundly with this assessment. I believe that a well researched and articulated position doesn't need to fear objection at all, it will grow with it in any case.

There are interests at play here that will deny established knowledge for self-serving purposes. These conflicts of interest need transparency. That is as true for companies as it is for any committee.

I admire your optimism for the marketplace of ideas but ultimately fear it bears little relation to reality. Not only are humans are terrible at making objective & rational choices but the marketplace itself is far from fair and balanced with regard to how people are exposed to ideas & positions. The marketplace assumes that humans are in general rational, decent and not purely motivated by self-interest or groupthink. The wide range of ideological forces and prejudices that exist in the world easily dispel this idea.

Even within a single mind we see people regularly holding two contradictory beliefs and accepting both of them, so if the marketplace of ideas fails in a single mind then I think is has little luck when it encounters large populations.

The marketplace of ideas doesn't always work. Same is true for art, the most popular isn't necessary the best. I have no illusions about this.

But I have to compare it to the alternatives and those do not convince at all.

There is no purely rational and selfless comittee. How would such a group be less self-interested and less vulnerable to group-think? Or less ideological or prejudiced? Because they have some self-imposed mission to a higher cause? Who doesn't?

You can have your benevolent dictator that handles logistical problems of exposure to ideas, but the less error prone way to get the best ideas implemented is a mechanism to boot him out, or in other words, his ideas need justification on the marketplace of ideas. So I must always allow objections.

How do you prevent the creation of McCarthyism 2.0? After all the current form of government is the best one, and anyone that says otherwise is spreading misinformation and must be deplatformed.

In the pro-choise vs pro-life case, should the wrong side be blocked from publishing adds?

What about drinking alcohol at 18? It's legal in most of the world.

Who is going to decide in each case? Are you sure they will have the same opinion than you?

It's true that this approach limits variance of reasonable opinion to within the Overton window (plus a bit or radical thinking either side). That is pretty much how society functions anyway. The window moves slowly but does get moved by many factors.

How strange that survival is something you have to convince people of the value of.

The mere fact that our collective behavior is what is causing this means that at some point there will be a fight for the steering wheel.

Humanity appears incapable of collective action. Any future historians, perhaps some kind of advanced insectoid races archeologists, will say that humanities Achilles heel was being incapable of collective action.

Piquing that uniquely human pride and arrogance is a deliberate strategy by some, but the consequences are dismissed by the same, as they are unable to grasp that this will lead to their own downfall too. Even the most dystopian arms dealer must eventually eat.

These were adverts from large corporations that Facebook published on their platform, not user content.

Facebook didn't publish them under their own name. Corporations did it, paid or not paid, who cares. The point is the users must be intelligent enough not to use facebook as their news and learning platform. If they want to believe whatever and decide the fate of the planet, so be it. Natural selection wins, we die as stupid species and the planet wins.

If it wasn't facebook, they'd find it elsewhere. Majority of the people is already opinionated and irreversibly ignorant.

I expect a lot of advertisements to lie to me to be honest, especially political ones. They should be marked as advertising and this is something that was actually improved in the last years, even just for affiliations as the industry tried to hide the nature of their messages.

There are actually rules against false advertising, but they are ineffective. So people should have no illusion on content in ads. So much can be transported in education.

> the solution is getting people educated so they can form their own opinion. That more or less already worked

Are you sure? The spread of batshit crazy and easily debunkable conspiracy theories such as Q, flat earth, Pizzagate, Covid is fake, etc. and empty populist political movements and people ( UKIP, Brexit, AfD, Trump, FN, etc.) would imply otherwise.

Too many people are thoroughly incapable of forming their own opinion based on reality and actual provable facts.

Flat earth, Q and friends are not part of the endemic beliefs of the general population. These are fringe beliefs. People might have the wrong impression about their spread because people like to write a lot about them. Curiosity makes luminaries waste out time or offer us entertainment. Also attractive to people that aren't too sure about themselves and try look for reassurance while looking at the clearly absurd. "At least those are more stupid than I am", "If those are not afraid of X, why should I be?".

Ukip, Brexit, AfD, Trump, FN are different phenomena in my opinion.

Some of Brexits arguments were objectively correct and there are no certainly correct or wrong opinions here. Especially on hot button terms like sovereignty and self-determination. It depends on what level you look. Self-determination against the EU or Russia/China/US? There are different answers here and none of them is entirely true. But the opposition just shut them down, so people responded in kind. That it was basically 50:50 is surely accidental, but I like to see it as a hint.

The AfD is radicalized now, but it was firstly headed by someone that has been vindicated by projections other economists failed at. He isn't in the party anymore, but what do you think happened with those that shared his beliefs? Those were correct too, what do you think they believe about their opposition today?

These beliefs aren't mine, but I understand their distrust. In many cases it is distrust that was earned, not by their failure to form an opinion, quite the contrary their opposition was in many cases completely incapable to understand the nature of their opposition, which paints a shadow on their own judgements.

The indignation against people not being able to think is misplaced in many cases, that is also true for the other way around of course.

>flat earth,

There is no rational reason to believe this. True. But there is no rational reason to believe "CDC/Scientists can be trusted" as well.

So do you consider the statement "CDC can be trusted" to be a batshit conspiracy theory?

Trust. Intentions. Truth.

So many things that underlie society’s ability to function, and one damages them at our collective peril.

The boy who cried wolf is a story that teaches which moral lesson ?

You stop and ask for directions, what if the person deliberately lied to you and sent you to a dangerous place?

There is an implicit web of trust and kindness that comes from our ancient past and underlies all of society. Capitalism and political posturing are poisoning the well of all our drinking water.

Not sure what to make of your comment.

I feel like the threat of misinformation wouldn't be as significant if trust in institutions wasn't so abysmally low right now.

Everyone needs trusted sources to make sense of the world, and if politicians and traditional media sources have repeatedly demonstrated that they aren't very trustworthy, it makes sense that people will start looking elsewhere for their information. On top of that, advertising is pretty much just half truths and lies by omission at this point anyways.

Of course it is a lot easier to simply deflect this responsibility onto social media, but do we really want to be empowering these mega corporations to be arbiters of truth? Social media by design isn't really capable of moderating the inflows of content responsibly as it is.

An alternate conclusion might be to employ a third party firm. Actually two or more third party firms. There'd be some overlap and a majority vote among the overlap for strongly Approved / Rejected ads.

Crucially the rate of pay would be based on a given provider's quality for the over-reviewed test cases.

Also every provider would verify with "moron in a hurry" standard of confusion / disinformation. They might also flag questionable items for review by regulatory bodies in cases where it isn't clear.

Is it just me or are there a lot of HN commenters defending fossil fuels on any story related to the environment?

"thinktank InfluenceMap "

Will people catch on that the environment lobbyists are as powerful as big oil. And care about you as much as big oil.

At least big oil sold you a product, so they had some responsibility to make a product that benefits you. Environmental lobbyists like InfluenceMap have zero responsibility to either you or the environment, only the people funding them.

Let’s see, comparing a movement spawned by very clear science that we are endangering our future to an industrial lobby that is lying to maintain profits.

Sorry. Nope. That is intellectual dishonesty of the first rate.

Facebook let's everybody push misinformation; just like Twitter and Reddit. At this point, it'd just be more useful to point out who's spreading misinformation, what that is, why it's misinformation, and what the up-to-date facts are.

That it's been spread on social media is a given and not at all surprising.