The leftist U.K.-based Center for Countering Digital Hate just launched a broadside attack against nine conservative digital outlets with its “Toxic Ten” report. The report aimed to silence entire outlets for writing stories that don’t follow the leftist climate policy narrative.
Hyperbolic reports used unrelated data to suggest that Facebook users shouldn’t care about just 0.00012 per cent of engagements made in the previous year. It also equated any discussion of eco-hypocrisy, data manipulation, George Soros or Marxist ideology in relation to climate policy to so-called “disinformation” that must be silenced.
This pro-censorship behaviour would make it impossible to have a legitimate discussion about real issues.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate, partly funded partially by a group tied to communist China had great success selling its old pro-censorship list. It highlighted what CCDH considered the top sources of so-called “disinformation” about vaccines, dubbed the “Disinformation Dozen.” Then the organization turned its sights to online news media that occasionally cover the climate policy debate.
Report’s Methodology Biased, Misleading and Manipulative
CCDH’s report lacked transparency and used questionable data from a biased source. Further, the method used to find so-called “disinformation” articles was full of prejudices.
The group claimed to analyze 6,983 “climate denial articles” for its study, but declined to provide a specific list of articles included. That’s a huge problem with research transparency. The query it used to locate the articles was not included, raising multiple questions.
To search for articles that mentioned keywords about climate change, the query was created. Also, the query needed the article to contain at least one keyword from the long list of keywords the authors believed would suggest that it was a climate-related article.
One of these was the word “realism,” as though anyone who wishes to debate what is and is not real about climate change is to be silenced. Another example are the words “hypocrite” or “hypocrisy.” Including those words shows that the authors consider any discussion of the excess use of carbon in private jets, large motorcades or enormous mansions by people pushing climate policy should be dismissed, demonetized and shut down.
It is also forbidden, apparently, to speak about any “lie” connected to the data behind climate change, or any “manipulation” of that data. All news organizations are required to simply take what is presented, without asking questions. Also unacceptable is any discussion of any relationships between climate change and “Marx” or “Marxism,” or liberal billionaire George “Soros,” who funds numerous leftist organizations.
According to this study, it is not possible to question the ideology and/or financing behind climate policy narratives. Though other such terms are used, the last one that raises concern is the phrase “climate lockdowns.” The left would likely prefer nothing more than for discussion of this phrase to be tossed on the trash heap of “conspiracy theory” history and soundly dismissed.
It’s not so simple, though, when The Guardian and Forbes both published the results of a study that claimed a global lockdown of the scope of the COVID-19 lockdowns would be needed every two years for the next decade in order to meet the requirements of the Paris Climate Agreement.
CCDH doesn’t provide a complete list of posts that were evaluated in this study. The report only contains a handful of examples. Based on the nature of this study, it is obvious that the majority are linked posts. The engagement generated by linked posts is only a fraction that of other posts.
CCDH overestimates the impact of climate posts on the total scope of Facebook’s activities in an effort to sell its agenda which is dangerous to free speech, open policy discussion and freedom of expression. Even leftist reporters admitted that its data regarding engagement with conservative websites and stories was exaggerated. Western Journal’s article and his piece explained that engagement metrics indicate how controversial a posting is, rather than how many readers are actually being affected by it.
NewsWhip was used to compile data regarding engagements. NewsWhip can be viewed as an insecure source and used often to write attacks on conservatives. It has made a point to use its data to combat so-called “fake news,” even supporting Facebook’s biased left-wing fact-checkers.
NewsWhip also committed to providing its data either for free or at low-cost to certain organizations working against alleged “disinformation.” It is unclear whether CCDH was a beneficiary of the so-called “Data for Democracy” program in preparing its list.
Although the Report is lacking context, it does contain plenty of hyperbole
Although CCDH cited large numbers as evidence of their effect, they aren’t as significant as it seems. The organization used excessive language in its discussion of the climate policy debate and implied that it needed to take immediate action. CCDH’s attempts to tie the climate policy debate to the COVID-19 policy debate fell completely flat.
CCDH trotted out what it portrayed as a very concerning number: 709,057 total interactions with the so-called “climate denial articles” between Oct. 2020 and Oct. 2021. However, numbers are meaningless without context.
Facebook said that its average number of monthly active users is 2.91 million. SMPerth in Australia conducted a study of Facebook data and found that the average Facebook user engages in 17 posts per month. This includes liking 11 posts, commenting on five posts, sharing one post, and sharing 5 posts.
When we did basic math using these numbers, it was found that the 706,057 interactions within a year amounted roughly to 0.00012 percent the total Facebook interactions during that period. It is quite a tiny number. It isn’t a figure worth the time and effort required to demonetize and deplatform 10 online companies.
CCDH tried to convince its readers that those it is attacking are peddling “disinformation” when they use the words “climate alarmism.” It even used this phrase in the definition it concocted for “climate disinformation” and “climate denial,” which it listed in the appendix. The definition stated that people engage in so-called “disinformation” “typically by referring to climate science using phrases such as ‘climate alarmism’ or ‘climate fraud.’” However, in its report, it engaged in hyperbolic language that is difficult to call anything but alarmism.
The first words used in the report are, “We are at a climate tipping point.” That is followed up with phrases such as “It is the greatest crisis ever faced by our species.” This language is alarmist by definition. Americans were warned that they are at a tipping points. It has been compared to “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.”
A 2006 article on a website that promotes climate change stated that the 10-year time frame for action is very narrow. Five years ago that window had closed, but we’re still not in the position to prevent the climate catastrophe we predicted. It is nonsensical to claim that calling out truly alarmist and hyperbolic language as such deserves to be demonetized and deplatformed — especially when using hyperbolic language to do it.
The report then goes on to compare so-called climate “disinformation” to “ vaccine and COVID-19 disinformation,” saying that both “obfuscate the truth by overwhelming us with claims and questions designed in bad faith to confuse the debate so action is delayed. ”The authors chose this comparison because of the organization’s previous success with its “Disinformation Dozen” report. COVID-19, however, is not a good comparison to the points the authors attempted.
The virus data proved “experts” wrong time and time again. Some stories initially labeled “conspiracy theories” have borne out to in fact be supportable if not undeniably true, such as the Wuhan lab leak. Comparisons to the climate policy debate favor skeptics rather than the so-called “experts.”
The CCDH report also noted, “[t]he most potent tool of these self-serving parties is social media, a public forum where the most extreme, conspiratorial, and damaging content is rewarded with amplification.” The problem with this statement is that so many of the studies that purportedly prove that social media amplifies “extreme, conspiratorial, and damaging content” are easily debunked, and may have even used faulty data.
CCDH stated in its report that the websites highlighted “are the main producers of content that sows climate change skepticism” pretending there is “more extensive debate than there really is.” This statement relies on the old “97 percent consensus” myth that has been debunked. To prove its point, the fact that the report had to dig up an untrued statement discredits itself.
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