money FB prepares to combat 2020 election misinformation: NYT
The New York Times reports Facebook is preparing for the possibility of President Trump casting doubt on the 2020 election results. Yahoo Finance’s Dan Howley joins Akiko Fujita to discuss.
Video Transcript
AKIKO FUJITA: Facebook is reportedly laying out contingency plans for the presidential election this fall. "The New York Times" reporting the social media giant is specifically preparing for the possibility of President Trump delegitimizing the election results. Let's bring in Dan Howley for the very latest on that front. And Dan, what specifically is Facebook doing? Or what specifically can they do to counter this?
DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, they're looking to try to stop anything that would have Trump or his team or campaign try to delegitimize the election after the fact, so if he does, indeed, lose. And doing that, they would have what's essentially a kill switch for certain political ads following the election. So they would, without kind of really giving much of an explanation from Facebook, shut off those ads so that Trump and his campaign wouldn't be able to push forward any kind of narrative about perhaps the election results being wrong or rigged or something along those lines.
They're also clamping down, obviously, on any chat that would hurt real-world voters, so things like saying that mail-in voting is a fraud. That is something that may end up being blocked on sites like Twitter or Facebook in particular. That's something that has been an issue, an ongoing issue. And Facebook has said that they are willing to block statements from the likes of President Trump if it would result in real-world harm.
Now we have seen Facebook take action on several occasions against the Trump campaign. They've taken down an ad that had Nazi imagery in it as related to a supposed antifa uprising that doesn't occur, and discussions on another topic that they had taken ads down for. So they obviously will make these kinds of moves based on the ad for-- the campaign side of things. And it seems like they're going to have to be willing to do it for President Trump himself if something like this occurs.
