YouTube to stop monetizing climate change denial videos

Google cleans the house: following the decision to demonetize last week anti-vaccine content on YouTube, the company has also added climate change denial to the list of videos creators can no longer make money on.

Google announced the latest policy change through a support page where the Ads team explains why they made this decision. The answer is much less altruistic than it seems.

“We have heard directly from a growing number of our advertising partners and publishers who have expressed concerns about ads running alongside or promoting inaccurate claims about climate change,” Google said. “Advertisers just don’t want their ads to appear alongside this content.”

Who would have thought that Google’s advertisers wouldn’t love their whimsical, well-organized ads to appear alongside conspiracy theories? Google’s new policy should help combat this, even if it doesn’t appear to be a complete ban on the topic.

Under the new policy, YouTube creators cannot make money for any content that contradicts “a well-established scientific consensus on the existence and causes of climate change.” This includes content that says climate change is a scam or denies the more and more obvious warming up trend that is invading the planet. This also includes any content that denies that human and tight Gas emissions play an important role in the onset of climate change.

The company plans to enforce its new policy starting next month using a combination of algorithms and human moderation. The rules will apply to all ads served by Google, publisher content and YouTube videos that are part of the YouTube Partner Program. However, there is no explicit mention on the rest of the YouTube platform, and if you will still come across the Mass conspiracy theorist content that afflicts YouTube. Looks like, unless it’s explicitly linked to climate change or covid vaccines, conspiracy theories have carte blanche.