A recently announced new policy from Google and YouTube is designed to limit the kinds of climate content you may see on their platforms.

Big Tech overlords are now preventing ads from appearing on content that questions the contribution of people to climate change, serving to disincentive skeptics and climate realists from creating content. But the soft censorship goes the other way too. The new policy also prevents ads purchased by organizations or people to promote climate change skepticism.

The Google policy roll-out read:

In recent years, we've heard directly from a growing number of our advertising and publisher partners who have expressed concerns about ads that run alongside or promote inaccurate claims about climate change. Advertisers simply don’t want their ads to appear next to this content. And publishers and creators don’t want ads promoting these claims to appear on their pages or videos.

That’s why today, we’re announcing a new monetization policy for Google advertisers, publishers and YouTube creators that will prohibit ads for, and monetization of, content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change. This includes 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.

Friends of Science is a climate realist non-profit with the very reasonable position that the sun - that big burning ball of gas in the sky- plays a larger role in climate change than your SUV. Friends of Science has a strong Youtube channel with some videos approaching 750,000 views.

Their youtube channel has never been monetized, however, if they want to purchase an ad to promote one of the many educational events they hold with actual scientists, they are now prohibited at least on Google.

This follows similar censorship from Facebook which has in the past blocked ads from Friends of Science. But according to FofS manager of communications, Michelle Stirling, the non-profit will not be silenced, regardless of the anti-science position Silicon Valley impose on creators.