If you’re a YouTuber making cash with videos denying climate change, you may need a new job.
Google says it “will prohibit ads for, and monetization of, content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change” via new Google Publisher and YouTube Partner Program monetization policies.
Users of the AdSense, DoubleClick, and AdMob services fall under the Google Publisher umbrella; YouTube Partner Program members receive a cut of the revenues from ads shown on their videos. Countless people and organizations rely on these programs to make money.
Google says that its new policies apply to “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.”
But the company won’t just prevent ads from appearing on content that violates these new rules—it will also stop advertisers from making similar claims in their marketing. This should allow publishers and YouTubers to operate without being associated with these ad spots.
This announcement sits at the intersection of two recent trends at Google: providing more information about climate change-related subjects and fighting misinformation on its platforms.
The former was most recently shown with Google’s decision to highlight climate change-related information from trusted sources in search results, the addition of carbon emissions data to its flight-booking service, and the ability to choose the most fuel-efficient route in Google Maps.
The latter has been demonstrated in the company’s efforts to delete YouTube videos spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, and to reduce the visibility of misinformation related to the 2020 presidential election in its search engine.
Google says it plans to enforce these policies using “a combination of automated tools and human review to enforce this policy against violating publisher content, Google-served ads, and YouTube videos that are monetizing via YouTube’s Partner Program” starting next month.
