Homegrove or working on the algo making sure climate change denial doesn’t get amplified.
Cankles-McJeggings
Morty-C-137
…Or….. that Holthaus’ tweet isn’t quite what it seems.
Holthaus has worked as a journalist and was founder of a weather service called Currently. Currently’s modus operandi seems to be creating news and content with the explicit aim and bias to promote “the climate emergency”.
https://currentlyhq.com/about/team/
Twitter started working with Currently last year and employed Holthaus full-time on a weather news service. This service ultimately appears to be Holthaus leading a team of editorial staff and writers to "produce newsletters and exclusive long-form content on Twitter via the company’s newly-acquired newsletter platform Revue, as well as membership-specific short-form content for users, such as ticketed live audio sessions via Twitter “Spaces” and audience Q&A services."
https://www.axios.com/2021/06/01/twitter-holthaus-tomorrow-weather-meteorologists
https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2021/06/01/twitter-partners-with-meteorologist-eric-holthaus-to-deliver-local-weather-content/
So basically Twitter were actively paying (or “amplifying”) Holthaus to lead the production of content which would be published across various Twitter channels, with the content being topical weather news stories which explicitly linked events to “the climate emergency” and “environmental justice”.
As far as I can tell the project flopped and the last remaining remnants of it I could find were published in March.
https://www.getrevue.co/profile/currently?via=twitter-card&client=DesktopWeb&element=publication-card
It could be that Holthaus was briefly moved to a different role, eg moderation after the one he was initially employed to do was axed, but I can’t find anything to suggest this was actually the case. He could also have just been axed already or effectively floating around as a zombie until his contract ended, and his tweet above tried to make his role sound cooler than it actually was, and the axing of it sound more slandering of what Twitter is doing now than is actually the case.
It is also worth noting that, regardless of the nuance of the role Holthaus was being paid by Twitter to do, he is someone who has been shown himself to spread disinformation on Twitter about climate change (albeit to fake it, rather than deny it):
https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2019/08/30/meteorologist-eric-holthaus-gets-fact-checked-on-hurricane-history-in-florida-a/
