A few weeks ago, we pointed out that Google, despite having 10 months to figure out how to enforce their partial-answer policy of just demonetizing climate disinfo, is failing to take ads off of climate denial videos on YouTube.
They did then demonetize a couple of the videos, and since then we've kept an eye out for more examples. Turns out there's plenty!
Here's Larry Elder with a video claiming electric vehicles are bad for the environment, which is false, unless of course you're talking about them relative to improving public transit, cycling, and pedestrian transportation options, which he's not.
A Sky News video that's 3 years old, and has over 2 million views, is claiming global cooling is coming. It's not, but they're earning money off of ads on the video anyway! Same goes for a more recent clip, where Roy Spencer complains about Google demonetizing his blog — but not this video about it, or this other one about supposed censorship of a newsletter that linked to Spencer's disinfo-spreading blog.
Marc Morano's been pushing his climate lockdown conspiracies, spreading disinfo on monetized videos at NewsMax and elsewhere, as is Alex Epstein.
Tucker Carlson's rant about cavemen relying on fossil fuels is monetized, because apparently "climate disinfo" doesn't include being wrong about when fossil fuels were developed by an order of thousands of years.
Michael Shellenberger's anti-renewable TED Talk is nearing 5 million monetized views, something we noticed because he tweeted about it, and followed up with a piece of his in phrenology-loving Quillette. Shellenberger also stars in a monetized video by John Stossel, blaming environmentalists for the complicated situation in Sri Lanka in a video almost certainly produced with Koch bucks, given Stossel's prized spot as a top Koch Institute contractor.
Antisemitic British Infowarrior Paul Joseph Watson is making money off a video blaming environmentalists for the end of pubs, while Bjorn Lomborg and Jordan Peterson are making money for Ralph Schoellhammer's channel.
And then perhaps this one should only be half-demonetized, but the debate between Steve Koonin and Andy Dessler is monetized, despite Reason's ample Koch et al. funding.
Perhaps most amusingly, a video attacking Australian scientists who dared suggest the country's anti-disinfo actions should actually, you know, address disinfo, is monetized.
With over a dozen examples of monetized disinformation, the question is: does YouTube demonetize anything on its own, or is it just waiting for other people to moderate the platform?
Maybe we need to start a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for the corporate giant to hire someone to do this full time. The company only made $16 billion in the second quarter of 2022.
Apparently that's not enough to afford to actually enforce their lackluster disinfo policy!
