Google to prevent climate change deniers from making money from ads

Online giant Google will prohibit climate change deniers from being able to monetize their content on its platforms, the company announced on Thursday.

A new policy for advertisers, publishers and YouTube creators will prohibit ads for, and monetization of, content that "contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes" of climate change, the company 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," Google said.

"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."

Google would look at the context in which claims were made, differentiating between content that states a false claim as fact, versus content that reports on or discusses that claim.

Public debates

"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."

Google will begin enforcing the policy from November.