Facebook taking ‘very aggressive measures” to remove vaccine misinformation: Carolyn Everson

Carolyn Everson, Vice President of Facebook’s Global Business Group, joins 'Influencers with Andy Serwer' to discuss the social network's actions throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Video transcript

ANDY SERWER: There were other people who were spreading misinformation about vaccines, Carolyn. What were you guys doing to combat that? And how do you think that has fared?

CAROLYN EVERSON: Yes, so we are taking very aggressive measures to get vaccine misinformation off the platform. We have fact-checkers in dozens of countries around the world that are really working around the clock to look at not just misinformation about vaccines, but misinformation more broadly. We see it as an absolute imperative to try to get misinformation off the platform and redirect people to accurate information, which is why the vaccine center is so important.

ANDY SERWER: Let me ask you about your core responsibilities, which are advertising on the platform. How is the business looking right now? Is it picking up, or was it consistent throughout the pandemic and continues? How would you describe it?

CAROLYN EVERSON: Well, we're right ahead of earnings. So I can't comment on our current performance. But what I can do is maybe give you a bit of a historical look backwards, which is there is no question that 2020, there was an accelerant of digital transformation, as we talked about, an accelerant of certain categories of businesses that really were able to take advantage and gain market share, categories like e-commerce and gaming and retail, especially those that went through the transformation.

And there were other categories that have really struggled, categories like travel. And everyone's eagerly waiting to see, based on vaccination rates and people's willingness to travel, how that category is going to come up. But I would say if you look at historicals in 2020 and you see the macro trends of advertisers utilizing digital tools, it was obviously a very important year for that shift and one that I feel that we played a really valuable role in helping businesses continue to grow.