An Australian climate group has come up with an audacious scheme to trick social media algorithms into showing accurate scientific information to climate denialists using an unlikely weapon: a cookie recipe.
The Australian Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC)’s NewsJacker campaign has been created to help young Australians persuade people in their lives who deny the science of man-made climate change.
Identifying the role of poor-quality climate news and misinformation that’s rife online as a key problem in promoting denialism, the NewsJacker campaign attempts to wrest back control of social media algorithms and advertising technology and use them to promote high-quality science content.
The NewsJacker scheme revolves around a normal-looking website for a cookie recipe. AYCC, assisted by marketing firm Clemenger BBDO, has built a custom website that has “specially designed technology … [which] prompts the internet to think they care about the climate”, according to the group’s media release.
The campaign encourages people to send this website to their friends and family as a Trojan horse that will in theory inject climate science into their newsfeed.
How does it work? When a user opens the cookie recipe website, a few things happen. First, the website invisibly opens other websites in the background — such as the latest IPCC report. A user’s visit to these websites — unbeknown to them — is captured by the browser cookies. These digital footprints are a signal to other platforms and websites which can interpret them as people interested in accurate climate information. A second part of the website is the presence of another piece of code called the Facebook pixel that identifies the individual as someone who has visited that website so that AYCC can target paid social media advertising at them in the future.
The idea of manipulating what other people see online by taking advantage of web infrastructure isn’t new. In 2019, a controversial company called The Spinner promised to use a similar technique to surreptitiously show articles to a subject, encouraging a behaviour like going vegetarian or even to initiate sex as a service.
Dr Katharine Kemp is a UNSW associate professor at the faculty of law and justice and deputy director of the Allens Hub for Technology, Law & Innovation whose research focuses on Australian privacy and data privacy. She said the campaign was an innovative way to tackle misinformation. But she questioned the effectiveness of visiting a single website to influence a user’s overall digital footprint, noting that many people would be visiting a significant number of websites every day.
“I do wonder how well it works technically,” she told Crikey.
Clemenger BBDO’s Leigh Arbon acknowledged that influencing algorithms was difficult and that the campaign’s paid advertising was to ensure campaign efficacy.
“If people look at their news feed and question the agenda — whether it’s a piece of paid advertising or whatever their algorithm has served up — that’s what we’re trying to create,” he told Crikey.
Kemp said the campaign drew attention to the massive impact ad tech and digital platforms have had on our information ecosystem and the lack of regulation. She did, however, caution the ethics of trying to influence what other people see without their consent.
“You can see they have Robin Hood intentions, but they’re doing something that might not strictly fit with what the individuals themselves have sought out,” she said. “But they’re doing it for the greater good.”
