Facebook is in hot water after getting involved in the debate over whether offshore wind farms are responsible for an increase in whale deaths along the East Coast.
Environmentalist Michael Shellenberger has accused the internet giant of “censoring accurate information” after it posted a content warning on a post about 300 whales washing ashore since 2017.
Officials admit there has been an “unusual death” on the East Coast over the past six years with reports of strandings from New York to North Carolina, but insist the string of new wind farms is not responsible.
The controversy exploded days after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was threatened with contempt from Congress amid claims the social media company had removed posts at the direction of the Biden White House.
“Facebook is censoring accurate information about the relationship between industrial wind energy development and the increase in whale deaths off the East Coast,” Shellenberger said.
Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has been accused of deleting Facebook posts on White House orders
In January, a dead humpback whale is retrieved from New York’s Lido Beach
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration keeps track of humpback whale and whale deaths. These are some of the locations where they have washed up since December, and some have seen multiple strandings
“Why is Facebook censoring accurate information and spreading disinformation?”
Work is underway to build two new wind farms off the coast of Rhode Island and Massachusetts after the White House pledged to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030, enough to power 10 million homes.
Two are already operating off the coast of Rhode Island and Virginia Beach, despite the wrath of conservationists and commercial fishermen, and the $10 billion development in Virginia is expected to feature more than 175 wind turbines by 2026.
In January, the environmental group Clean Ocean Action asked President Joe Biden to intervene and halt the wind farm projects, arguing that it was linked to whale deaths.
“We went too far and too fast,” said Cindy Zipf, executive director of Clean Ocean Action.
More than 2.2 million acres are allocated to offshore wind and 10,000 miles to cables.
“This alarming number of deaths is unprecedented in the last half-century, the only unique factor from previous years being the outrageous scope, scale and size of offshore wind power plant activity in the region.”
The last dead whale washed up on New Jersey’s Takanassee Beach on Saturday, and this year is on course to become the East Coast’s worst ever recorded fatal strandings.
Environmentalist Michael Shellenberger claims his Facebook boss is helping government officials distort the truth about whale deaths
More than 175 wind turbines are planned for development near Virginia by 2026.
Shellenberger called the issue the “biggest environmental scandal in the world” and this week posted a series of angry messages to his thousands of Facebook followers.
“The government says it’s not because of the wind industry’s high-decibel pile-driving and boat traffic in previously pristine waters,” he wrote.
‘They lie. And now we have the proof.’
That prompted Facebook watchdogs to issue a warning, claiming the post “lacked context and could mislead people.”
It also linked to an article by Facebook partner Factcheck.org that said there is no reason to believe wind farms are to blame.
“Various factors, experts and officials have said, may increase the risk of these hazards,” the auditors wrote.
‘Firstly, climate change is warming the oceans and changing the distribution of prey on which marine species depend.
“As a result, whales are changing their migration routes and moving out of protected areas and closer to shore, where they are more vulnerable to ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear.”
It pointed to autopsies conducted by the official National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showing that 40 percent of dead humpback whales were killed by hitting boats or getting entangled in ropes.
But they admit, “The causes for the other 60 percent were inconclusive, in part, officials say, because the carcasses decay quickly, making it difficult to pinpoint a cause of death.”
Facebook automatically moved reduces the visibility of posts flagged by its fact-checking partners, including AFP, reducing the visibility of false or misleading content.
But earlier this month, parent company Meta changed its settings allowing users to partially disable the fact-checking they see.
“We’re giving people on Facebook even more power to control the algorithm that ranks posts in their feed,” a Meta spokesperson told AFP.
Right whales are among the species that have washed up dead on East Coast beaches
Some environmental groups have attributed the death to offshore wind turbines. In March 2023, a whale stranded in Seaside Park in New Jersey
We’re doing this in response to users telling us they want more control over what they see in our apps.”
“For the past 20 years, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said his social media company is the “digital equivalent of a town square,” committed to factual accuracy and protecting the natural environment,” Shellenberger said.
“Facebook knows its ‘fact checks’ are just their ‘opinion’.
“So labeling FactCheck.org, which in this case is simply repeating misinformation from the US government, as a ‘fact checker’ is disinformation.”