Google, YouTube to demonetize climate denial content

Google announced a new policy Thursday prohibiting the monetization of content that contradicts the scientific consensus on climate change.

That means that Google advertisers and publishers and YouTube creators will not be able to make ad revenue off of climate denialism.

“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,” the Silicon Valley giant said in a blog post.

The new prohibition marks some of the more aggressive action that a tech platform has taken against misinformation about climate change.

Google said Thursday that it consulted with representatives from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Reports to develop the policy.

The policy lists specific examples of content that would run afoul of the new rules, including content that refers to climate change as a “hoax or a scam,” denies that “long-term trends show the global climate is warming,” or denies that greenhouse gas emissions are behind the phenomena.

Google will begin to enforce the policy next month using a combination of automated moderation and human review.