Groups skeptical of climate change are gaming Google's largely automated ad systems to promote misleading claims that reject established climate science
Groups that reject established climate science can use the search engine's advertising business to their advantage … Tweets: @themadstone , @fahrenthold , @hirokotabuchi , and @dangillmor Tweets: Maddie Stone / @themadstone : For me, this is most terrifying part of this @nytimes story on climate change deniers gaming search algorithms. Tech giants are literally encouraging us to live in separate realities. http://www.nytimes.com/... http://twitter.com/... David Fahrenthold / @fahrenthold : How Climate Change Deniers Rise to the Top in Google Searches. Amazing story by @nytimes. http://www.nytimes.com/... Hiroko Tabuchi / @hirokotabuchi : Type the words “climate change” into Google, and you could get.. ads that call it a hoax. My latest, via @NYTimes http://www.nytimes.com/... Dan Gillmor / @dangillmor : How Climate Change Deniers Rise to the Top in Google Searches (spoiler: the deceivers are really clever at faking out the platforms). http://www.nytimes.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This 2018 investigation is the origin point of a now well-documented pattern: groups rejecting established climate science buying their way to the top of search results through Google's largely automated ad auction, which matches queries to ads without editorial judgment. The reporting drew immediate reaction from journalists including Maddie Stone, who framed the core risk as tech giants 'encouraging us to live in separate realities.'
What came after confirms the gap was structural, not a one-off. Two years later, researchers found sites monetizing health misinformation through the same AdSense and DoubleClick infrastructure, with Google saying those specific sites didn't violate policy. After a 2021 demonetization pledge, CCDH found in 2023 that [[a:839587|ads from major brands still ran on climate-denial YouTube videos with over 18 million views]] — while Twitter moved first among social platforms by banning denial ads outright against the IPCC benchmark.
First-order effects
- Advertisers' brands are being placed alongside climate-denial content without their knowledge or consent, because Google's automated matching — not human review — decides where ads run.
Second-order effects
- Platform-by-platform divergence follows: Twitter's move to ban climate-denial ads using IPCC reports as its reference pressures Google and Facebook, whose weaker enforcement CCDH documented when Facebook failed to label over half the posts linking to denial articles.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, ad-policy credibility shifts from written pledges to audited enforcement — external researchers like CCDH become de facto regulators, and brands demand exclusion controls as a condition of spending.
The trend: Platform misinformation policy is converging on externally benchmarked ad bans (IPCC-style references) enforced under researcher audit, replacing trust in automated ad systems to self-police.