The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, being held in Glasgow as we speak, had Meta detail some of its efforts to combat the negative effects of climate change on the world.
Meta, or the artist formerly known as Facebook, has had quite an interesting relationship with going green as a cause. While CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been called out as immoral and profiteering on any number of occasions over his social media platforms, over Facebook's monopolistic tendencies, over user privacy, and so on and so forth. The man has had Congress breathing down his neck multiple times, and as far as this writer is concerned, for good reason too. However, climate change is an issue that Mark Zuckerberg, and by extension Meta, have taken very seriously, both in the past and present.
Back when it was known as Facebook, Meta posted an entire report of its effects to counteract climate change by bringing about the most positive change it could as a company. By 2021, Meta proudly declared all of its offices to be running on clean, renewable energy. The company had developed into a water positive company, which means that for every drop of water consumed, some more drinkable water was given back to communities. Much of the latter was achieved through the one job that you'd expect Meta to be good at: social outreach. Multiple different organizations and NGOs were made a part of these green initiatives, and good work has been accomplished. However, the journey is nowhere near being over yet.
Meta is expanding Facebook's Climate Science Center to now cover over a hundred different countries. The Center serves as an online source of climate-based factual accuracy, and can really help in terms of fact checking and general awareness within the Facebook community itself. To get the point across in a clearer manner, the social network is also adding expanding its usage of information labels. These labels, attached to posts with climate change in their discourse, redirect users to the Climate Sciences Center as a source of authentic information. Previously, these were limited to a handful of countries, but have now expanded themselves to over a dozen, with the likes of India, Brazil, and Spain in tow.
Meta's also collaborating with the UN and Spectre to make a couple of edits to Facebook's Messenger app. There have been updates to the social network's Act Now chat feature, which encourages users to actively become a part of the overall climate change conversation. In a positive manner, that is, no need for the conspiracy theorists to get their tinfoil hats. Ten new actions have been added to the interface, allowing for a lot more fun and engaging interactivity between users.
The company's also looking to help researchers out by activating Facebook's keyword detection feature. This is typically only activated by the social network during times of critical and bustling public events, such as election month and so on. One could argue, however, that due to the nature of climate change, it will always be a critical public event. Either way, researchers can now more easily gather publicly accessible data from the platform on the matter.
Climate change is a topic that warrants being taken more and more seriously with every passing month, especially for corporations and big businesses. If Facebook can take critical action in such times, so can everyone else.
Read next: Facebook Messenger tests three new updates which will change the way we use the platform currently
Meta, or the artist formerly known as Facebook, has had quite an interesting relationship with going green as a cause. While CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been called out as immoral and profiteering on any number of occasions over his social media platforms, over Facebook's monopolistic tendencies, over user privacy, and so on and so forth. The man has had Congress breathing down his neck multiple times, and as far as this writer is concerned, for good reason too. However, climate change is an issue that Mark Zuckerberg, and by extension Meta, have taken very seriously, both in the past and present.
Back when it was known as Facebook, Meta posted an entire report of its effects to counteract climate change by bringing about the most positive change it could as a company. By 2021, Meta proudly declared all of its offices to be running on clean, renewable energy. The company had developed into a water positive company, which means that for every drop of water consumed, some more drinkable water was given back to communities. Much of the latter was achieved through the one job that you'd expect Meta to be good at: social outreach. Multiple different organizations and NGOs were made a part of these green initiatives, and good work has been accomplished. However, the journey is nowhere near being over yet.
Meta is expanding Facebook's Climate Science Center to now cover over a hundred different countries. The Center serves as an online source of climate-based factual accuracy, and can really help in terms of fact checking and general awareness within the Facebook community itself. To get the point across in a clearer manner, the social network is also adding expanding its usage of information labels. These labels, attached to posts with climate change in their discourse, redirect users to the Climate Sciences Center as a source of authentic information. Previously, these were limited to a handful of countries, but have now expanded themselves to over a dozen, with the likes of India, Brazil, and Spain in tow.
Meta's also collaborating with the UN and Spectre to make a couple of edits to Facebook's Messenger app. There have been updates to the social network's Act Now chat feature, which encourages users to actively become a part of the overall climate change conversation. In a positive manner, that is, no need for the conspiracy theorists to get their tinfoil hats. Ten new actions have been added to the interface, allowing for a lot more fun and engaging interactivity between users.
The company's also looking to help researchers out by activating Facebook's keyword detection feature. This is typically only activated by the social network during times of critical and bustling public events, such as election month and so on. One could argue, however, that due to the nature of climate change, it will always be a critical public event. Either way, researchers can now more easily gather publicly accessible data from the platform on the matter.
Climate change is a topic that warrants being taken more and more seriously with every passing month, especially for corporations and big businesses. If Facebook can take critical action in such times, so can everyone else.
Read next: Facebook Messenger tests three new updates which will change the way we use the platform currently