Twitter has announced it will no longer allow advertisements which deny the scientific stand on climate change, echoing a policy already in place at Google. 

“Ads shouldn’t detract from important conversations about the climate crisis”, the social media company said, Friday. There’s no indication of how this will affect what users post on the platform, which along with Facebook, has been increasingly used by groups wishing to promote misleading information about climate change. 

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Twitter’s decision came on Earth Day, celebrated on April 22, hours before the European Union (EU) decided that big tech companies need to be more careful about content promoting hate speech and other disinformation. 

The social media giant has said it’ll provide more information in the coming months on “reliable, authoritative context to the climate conversations” for users. 

Twitter already has a dedicated climate topic on the site in what was described as “pre-bunks” during the previous year’s United Nations climate conference for countering misinformation surrounding the matter. 

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However, this move from Twitter might draw ire from those who have already vilified the site for not allowing free speech. One of the most vocal critics is Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who is attempting to buy the company. 

Musk, for his part, has inventions which are climate-friendly, including Tesla’s electric cars, and the technology to suck carbon dioxide from the air. The latter has become especially important in light of a report that the only way to avoid the consequences of climate change is to suck CO2 from the air. At present, the technology which exists is not nearly enough to combat the total CO2 production. 

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The inventor’s ideals of free speech have also been criticized by ex-Reddit CEO Yishan Wong, who said “Censorship is inevitable on large social network platforms. If you run one of sufficient size, you will be FORCED to censor things”.