YouTube and its owner Google, announced this week that they would no longer permit monetization on videos featuring climate denial. That’s a nice way of saying that disagreeing with progressives on climate change is on its way to becoming a thoughtcrime.
What step do you think comes next?
Sara Fischer reports at Axios:
Google, YouTube to prohibit ads and monetization on climate denial contentGoogle and YouTube on Thursday announced a new policy that prohibits climate deniers from being able to monetize their content on its platforms via ads or creator payments.Why it matters: It’s one of the most aggressive measures any major tech platform has taken to combat climate change misinformation.Details: Google advertisers and publishers, as well as YouTube creators, will be prohibited from making ad revenue off content that contradicts “well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change,” the company’s ads team said in a statement.
- “This includes content referring to climate change as a hoax or a scam, claims denying that long-term trends show the global climate is warming, and claims denying that greenhouse gas emissions or human activity contribute to climate change.”
- Ads and monetization will still be allowed to run alongside other climate-related topics, like public debates on climate policy, impacts of climate change, and new research around the issue.
The company claims this decision was driven largely by advertisers. Call me a denier, but I simply don’t believe it. These companies are run by social justice warriors of the left and I think that ideology drives every decision they make.
This is just the next step in censoring anyone the left believes is spreading so-called misinformation. Of course, those rules didn’t apply for the four years under Trump when every liberal news outlet was spreading a conspiracy theory about Trump colluding with Russia. Is the monetization coming off of those videos too? How about all the 9/11 conspiracy theory videos?
Here’s part of the official statement from Google:
Addressing climate change denialIn recent years, we’ve heard directly from a growing number of our advertising and publisher partners who have expressed concerns about ads that run alongside or promote inaccurate claims about climate change. Advertisers simply don’t want their ads to appear next to this content. And publishers and creators don’t want ads promoting these claims to appear on their pages or videos.That’s why today, we’re announcing a new monetization policy for Google advertisers, publishers and YouTube creators that will prohibit ads for, and monetization of, content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change. This includes content referring to climate change as a hoax or a scam, claims denying that long-term trends show the global climate is warming, and claims denying that greenhouse gas emissions or human activity contribute to climate change.When evaluating content against this new policy, we’ll look carefully at the context in which claims are made, differentiating between content that states a false claim as fact, versus content that reports on or discusses that claim. We will also continue to allow ads and monetization on other climate-related topics, including public debates on climate policy, the varying impacts of climate change, new research and more.
This is censorship, plain and simple.
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