Today, Fundación Maldita.es publishes “YouTube Lies: How the Largest Video Platform Finances Climate Misinformation, Going Against its Own Policies and the EU Digital Services Act”. An investigation intro how YouTube’s policies prohibit “ads for, and monetization of, content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change” but nevertheless, YouTube consistently fails to apply its rules on misinformation policy.
Fundación Maldita.es has identified 20 YouTube channels with an accumulated 21 million subscribers that spread climate misinformation previously debunked by Maldita. They are not outliers or low-impact creators: half of them rank among the top 50 most subscribed news and politics channels in Spain according to SubSub. The videos containing climate misinformation themselves have amassed more than 3 million views, and all of them display advertising and generate revenue for their creators and YouTube, in contradiction with the platform’s rules.
That in itself is concerning, but as part of the investigation we also reported the videos to YouTube as a violation of its advertising rules: in all of 20 cases, YouTube not only failed to take action on the content as per its own policies, but also did not even reply to our reports, in a flagrant and systematic violation of the EU Digital Services Act that obliges the platform “inform complainants without undue delay of their reasoned decision and of the possibility of out-of-court dispute settlement”. More than a month later, we are still waiting for a reply.
We find it hard to believe that YouTube cannot do better. The public has a reasonable expectation that any platform—but particularly one of YouTube’s size—must have the capacity to enforce the rules it makes for itself, but beyond the issue of capacity is one of willingness. On many of the videos in this investigation YouTube does display climate information banners that, according to its 2025 DSA risk assessment, appear on “videos related to topics prone to misleading information”. In other words: YouTube had already detected the videos have a high chance of being violative of its policies, and yet they continue to monetize them.
These findings call into question whether YouTube’s policies on climate misinformation have any real impact, and indicate the platform is actually offering financial incentives to produce that kind of content. Moreover, they showcase how YouTube is not complying with one of the more simple yet fundamental provisions of the EU Digital Services Act, its obligation to consider their users' claims regarding the application of the platform’s terms and conditions, and to inform them of YouTube’s view on the matter and possibilities for redress.