Climate change denial really is part of the economy: The Guardian reports:
Google let Daily Wire advertise to climate crisis deniers, research showsA media outlet founded by conservative influencer Ben Shapiro paid Google to advertise on search pages questioning whether the climate crisis is real, according to new research from a disinformation watchdog group.
The Daily Wire bought ads on search terms over the past year such as “climate change is a hoax” and “why is climate change fake,” meaning that when people Googled these phrases, stories from Shapiro’s outlet were some of the first results that appeared, the research found.Google sold these ads even after announcing a new policy in October 2021 prohibiting ads that promote climate crisis denial. Its CEO, Sundar Pichai, publicly stated at the time that “when people come to Google Search with questions about climate change, we’ll show authoritative information from sources like the United Nations.”
“Google’s hypocrisy knows no bounds,” said Imran Ahmed, CEO of the US and UK-based Center for Countering Digital Hate, which provided its research exclusively to the Guardian. “They’re actually selling the right to climate deniers to spread disinformation.”
Based on these estimates, researchers say that The Daily Wire could have spent almost as much as $60m on more than 150 Google search term ads over the past two years on various topics. These search term ads also included such phrases as “argument against reparations”, “bill gates population control”, and “why does george soros hate america.” More than a dozen of the search terms were climate-related, including:
- ‘climate change is a hoax’
- ‘climate change is a lie’
- ‘why is climate change fake’
- ‘climate change debunk’
- ‘the real truth about wind turbines’
- ‘is global warming a scam’
The Google spokesperson would not comment on the spending estimate.
- ‘the climate change scam’
Also important here is the estimated $60 million that a single radical right, dark free speech website like The Daily Wire spent over two years. That is a huge amount of money for just one of dozens of similar radical right lies and slanders sites. When I talk about the radical right’s propaganda Leviathan, I really mean Leviathan. The amount of money being pumped into climate change denial, lies, slandering and crackpottery is staggering. By my estimates, at least hundreds of millions/year in money for dark free speech is going to protect tens or hundreds of billions in profit.
For the sake of transparency, The Daily Wire was one of the seven big radical right websites that banned me in 2016 when I tried to engage there. That site is loaded with lies, slanders, emotional manipulation, crackpottery and an absolute intolerance for inconvenient facts, truths and reasoning and contrary opinions.
Once again, the capitalist moral imperative called profit pushes aside everything else that gets in the way, including inconvenient truth and democracy. At least for big corporations, nothing they say can be trusted. It’s called public relations. It is also known as dark free speech, or deceptive propaganda, lies, slanders, irrational emotional manipulation and/or self-serving/crackpot reasoning to some.
In cases of possible dark free speech, e.g., like this and just about everything else coming from radical right elites, corporations, politicians, ideologues, religious zealots, grifters, traitors, public relations firms, Mike Lindell, MTG, Boebert, Jim Jordan and the like, Germaine’s rule of thumb is this simple but effective free advice:
Distrust but verify if you’re in the mood, have the time, and
can do it, but stay distrustful if you don’t, aren’t and/or can’t.
This is a pretty effective operating procedure. Not perfect, but pretty good. Sometimes some truth gets miscategorized, but no system in a complex system like politics that is chock full of dark free speech and corrupt money will be perfect.
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~Ibid redux: Climate change denial really is part of the economy: The Guardian reported in 2019:
Revealed: Google made large contributions to climate change deniers
The obscure law that explains why Google backs climate deniers
Google has made “substantial” contributions to some of the most notorious climate deniers in Washington despite its insistence that it supports political action on the climate crisis.
Among hundreds of groups the company has listed on its website as beneficiaries of its political giving are more than a dozen organisations that have campaigned against climate legislation, questioned the need for action, or actively sought to roll back Obama-era environmental protections.
The list includes the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a conservative policy group that was instrumental in convincing the Trump administration to abandon the Paris agreement and has criticized the White House for not dismantling more environmental rules.
Google has made “substantial” contributions to some of the most notorious climate deniers in Washington despite its insistence that it supports political action on the climate crisis.
Among hundreds of groups the company has listed on its website as beneficiaries of its political giving are more than a dozen organisations that have campaigned against climate legislation, questioned the need for action, or actively sought to roll back Obama-era environmental protections.
The list includes the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a conservative policy group that was instrumental in convincing the Trump administration to abandon the Paris agreement and has criticized the White House for not dismantling more environmental rules.
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~Ibid double redux: Climate change denial really is part of the economy: The Guardian reported in 2019:
The obscure law that explains why Google backs climate deniersWhen [former Google CEO] Eric Schmidt was asked on a radio show in 2014 why Google was supporting an ultra-conservative climate-denying pressure group in Washington, the then chairman of the internet giant offered an unequivocal response: it was wrong and Google was not going to do it again.
“The consensus within the company was that that was some sort of mistake and so we’re trying to not do that in the future,” Schmidt told NPR. People who opposed or questioned climate science were making the world “a much worse place”, he added, and Google “should not be aligned with such people”.
But five years later, Google still funds more than a dozen organizations that deny the climate crisis and oppose political action to try to solve it. Among them is the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), the group that launched the notorious Cooler Heads Coalition two decades ago, a group of conservative and libertarian pressure groups dedicated to dispelling the “myths” of global heating.
For Google, providing financial backing to groups such as CEI and the Cato Institute – staunch free marketeers – has nothing to do with climate science, and everything to do with its effort to curry favor with conservatives on its most pressing issue in Washington: protecting an obscure section of the US law that is worth billions of dollars to the company.
The law – known as section 230 of the Communications Decency Act – was established in the 1990s, at a time when the internet was in its infancy, and helped to give rise to internet giants, from Google to Facebook, by offering legal immunity to the companies for third party comments, in effect treating them as distributors of content and not publishers.
Section 230, in effect, allowed Google and Facebook to be shielded from the kinds of libel laws that can ensnare other companies, such as newspapers.
The law has important advocates across the political spectrum, from Democrats who hail it as a triumph of free speech, to Republicans who say it has promoted free enterprise and innovation.
But now some lawmakers, including Republicans, think it might be time to revise section 230. The senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, has said Google’s alleged bias in favor of Democrats means it is not a neutral platform and should not be protected from liability.
Google’s decision to give to groups such as CEI reflects an attempt to win friends in Republican and conservative circles, and support those lawmakers on the right who are champions of section 230.
This is evidence pints to:
- The extreme radicalization of the radical right Republican Party and the fear and spending it engenders from any threatened industries, not just limited to Google and social media;
- The extent to which threatened industries will go to defend their profits at the expense of everything else, including (i) inconvenient fact, truth and reasoning, (ii) morality, (iii) democracy and civil liberties, and (iv) anything else that winds up being collateral damage in the endless ruthless capitalist war for profit; and
- The fact that the Republican Party leadership is dominated by politicians, major donors and capitalist ideological zealots to the point that it is had become a ruthless, mendacious capitalist political force unto itself, with core moral values and policy goals being accumulation of as much power and wealth as possible, even if democracy, civil liberties, the Republic and the rule of law fall as collateral damage.
Q: Is all of this over the top hyperbole, lies and/or nonsense, or is there something here to be moderately to deeply concerned about?
that Google lies to them at least sometimes
(These people ought to know because they live and
breathe what Google does, not just what it says)
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