Facebook suspends environmental groups despite vow to fight misinformation
Facebook has suspended the accounts of several environmental organizations less than a week after launching an initiative it said would counter a tide of misinformation over climate science on the platform.
Groups such as Greenpeace USA, Climate Hawks Vote and Rainforest Action Network were among those blocked from posting or sending messages on Facebook over the weekend. Activists say hundreds of other individual accounts linked to indigenous, climate and social justice groups were also suspended for an alleged “intellectual property rights violation”.
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WE ARE CLIMATE HAWKS
Our Mission: To identify, train, and elect individual climate hawk leaders, while generating a political environment in which those leaders have the power to advance policies needed to address climate change.
Climate hawks recognize that climate change is the greatest challenge facing ours and future generations and not just another Democratic issue.
We don’t support those who duck or waffle when it comes to the climate, whether it be about climate disasters, Arctic drilling, or coal exports. We also don’t support climate peacocks who pretend to support climate protection, but don’t vote that way.
We are working to make taking campaign money from coal, oil, and gas companies unacceptable, given their business model is to exploit the vulnerable and cook the planet.
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The suspended people and groups were all involved in a Facebook event from May last year that targeted KKR & Co, a US investment firm that is backing the Coastal GasLink pipeline, a 670 km-long gas development being built in northern British Columbia, Canada.
The suspensions, the day before another online action aimed at KKR & Co, has enraged activists who oppose the pipeline for its climate impact and for cutting through the land of the Wetʼsuwetʼen, a First Nations people.
“Videos of extreme violence, alt-right views and calls for violence by militias in Kenosha, Wisconsin, are allowed to persist on Facebook,” said Delee Nikal, a Wet’suwet’en community member. “Yet we are banned and receive threats for permanent removal, for posting an online petition.”
Many of the accounts have now been restored, but a handful are still blocked, with no fuller explanation coming from Facebook.
In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson said: “Our systems mistakenly removed these accounts and content. They have since been restored and we’ve lifted any limits imposed on identified profiles.”
