Facebook takes new steps to stop the spread of election misinformation

Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Christoforous, Brian Sozzi, and Rick Newman discuss Facebook’s latest moves to tackle misinformation ahead of the presidential election.

Video Transcript

BRIAN SOZZI: All right, Facebook is taking new steps to stop the spread of misinformation online. Starting today, posts about the election may come with new labels. The labels will tell users to visit Facebook's Voting Information Center for official updates on the election.

Our senior columnist Rick Newman joins us now. Rick, will this really make a difference?

RICK NEWMAN: I guess it'll probably absolve Facebook a little bit of any responsibility for outright meddling, such as they had to deal with back in 2016. I mean, we know now that there were all kinds of Russian propaganda efforts on Facebook that Facebook did not detect. And they even denied that was happening months-- months after the election.

So we now know what the game is. I think what Facebook is trying to do is, number one, actually help voters a little bit. But more than that, just show that they're on the problem. And even so, they're not saying they're going to be 100% effective at ferreting out bogus information about the election. They're just saying they're going to make a better effort to direct their users to legitimate information.

I went looking this morning for this Voter Information Center. It doesn't seem to be up yet. So I can't tell you what it's actually going to look like. But it's better than what they did in 2016, at least, which is nothing.