Facebook Oversight Board set to launch ahead of U.S. election

Facebook's Oversight Board confirmed to launch just before the U.S. election. Yahoo Finance's On The Move panel break down the latest developments.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: And let's turn to a different side of tech right now and social media. Apparently, the Facebook oversight board, this is something that has been talked about. An independent oversight board is going to be in place before the US election. Melody, this is something that the company has talked about for quite some time that folks have been calling for. Ahead of the US election, is it going to be in time to sort of stop some of the disinformation out there better than they're doing now?

MELODY HAHM: I think you already know my answer, Julie. TLDR, no. And if it seems like a surprise that things are happening piecemeal, that's intentional, right, from Facebook part because they want this burst of positive press. Of course, a lot of the recent slew of announcements have been coming out through reporting from the "Financial Times."

It was just two days ago we were talking about Nick Clegg, a VP of global affairs at Facebook, who did an interview specifically saying that they would be putting extra measures and be cautious about the election results and would be monitoring heavily a lot of that communication. So when it comes to this news about the oversight board, we don't really know exactly what the responsibilities and rights will entail.

We know Zuckerberg still has a lot of control, voting rights within Facebook. So even in previous shareholder events, there have been things on the docket that have been brought up by average investors, and it was immediately shut down because Mark Zuckerberg ultimately has a lot of control there.

So as much as we can say this is an independent committee, I just have to say it's a cautionary sort of tale saying not only is it too little too late, I think the entire ecosystem or infrastructure of that board, ultimately they'll be reporting to Zuckerberg to a certain extent, unless it's mandated in a regulatory manner from the federal government otherwise. So just taking everything with a grain of salt here.