Climate Misinformation Is Rife on Social Media – and Poised to Get Worse

Disinformation campaigns are already happening. In the wake of the 2023 Hawaii wildfires, researchers at Recorded Future, Microsoft, NewsGuard and the University of Maryland independently documented an organized propaganda campaign by Chinese operatives targeting U.S. social media users.

To be sure, the spread of misleading information and rumors on social media is not a new problem. However, not all content moderation approaches have the same effect, and platforms are changing how they address misinformation. For example, X replaced its rumor controls that had helped debunk false claims during fast-moving disasters with user-generated labels, Community Notes.

False Claims Can Go Viral Rapidly
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg specifically cited X’s Community Notes as an inspiration for his company’s planned changes in content moderation. The trouble is false claims go viral quickly. Recent research has found that the response time of crowd-sourced Community Notes is too slow to stop the diffusion of viral misinformation early in its online life cycle – the point when posts are most widely viewed.

In the case of climate change, misinformation is “sticky.” It is especially hard to dislodge falsehoods from people’s minds once they encounter them repeatedly. Furthermore, climate misinformation undermines public acceptance of established science. Just sharing more facts does not work to combat the spread of false claims about climate change.

Explaining that scientists agree that climate change is happening and is caused by humans burning greenhouse gases can prepare people to avoid misinformation. Psychology research indicates that this “inoculation” approach works to reduce the influence of false claims to the contrary.

That’s why warning people against climate misinformation before it goes viral is crucial for curbing its spread. Doing so is likely to get harder on Meta’s apps.

Social Media Users as Sole Debunkers
With the coming changes, you will be the fact-checker on Facebook and other Meta apps. The most effective way to pre-bunk against climate misinformation is to lead with accurate information, then warn briefly about the myth – but only state it once. Follow this with explaining why it is inaccurate and repeat the truth.

During climate change-fueled disasters, people are desperate for accurate and reliable information to make lifesaving decisions. Doing so is already challenging enough, like when the Los Angeles County’s emergency management office erroneously sent an evacuation alert to 10 million people on Jan. 9, 2025.

Crowd-sourced debunking is no match for organized disinformation campaigns in the midst of information vacuums during a crisis. The conditions for the rapid and unchecked spread of misleading, and outright false, content could get worse with Meta’s content moderation policy and algorithmic changes.

The U.S. public by and large wants the industry to moderate false information online. Instead, it seems that big tech companies are leaving fact-checking to their users.

Jill Hopke is Associate Professor of Journalism, DePaul University. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation.