Facebook takes its 'responsibility seriously for people to get the right information': Sheryl Sandberg on coronavirus crisis

Facebook's Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg joins Yahoo Finance's Influencers with Andy Serwer to discuss Facebook's responsibility to post accurate information during the coronavirus pandemic. Yahoo Finance's On The Move panel to discuss.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance. We are watching the market sell off. They are off session lows. One of the stocks trading down right now, Facebook, and our Editor in Chief Andy Serwer sat down with COO Sheryl Sandberg. They spoke about Facebook's responsibility to make sure what's being posted is accurate.

SHERYL SANDBERG: So we know what we need to do. We need to take our responsibility seriously for people to get the right information on Facebook. We want to keep providing our products across our platforms where people can connect, and then we want to support our partners. We want to support small business, support news organizations around the world, and we're going to keep doing that.

I think we also have to realize how quickly the situation is evolving. If you had asked me six weeks ago or even four weeks ago, would we all be home? I don't know if I would have said yes, but here we are, right? I don't know when I would've said yes. But we don't know what will happen next, and that means we need to be really nimble. We need to be focused on keeping our services up and making sure people get the right information.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Akiko Fujita, what do you think? Is it lip service, or is she legitimate here?

AKIKO FUJITA: Adam, you know, it's interesting. I was thinking the other day that Facebook is starting to feel a lot like the early days, whether that was 2010 or 2011, where people are actually using the platform to connect in a way-- and the cynic in me says this is a company that sees a huge opportunity to turn their image around in this moment of crisis.

Now to their credit, they've certainly done a lot of things to help people out. They had this community help feature that they rolled out yesterday allowing people to sort of connect with their neighbors and share information and help the elderly out, and they've also got this grant going for local news organizations that they announced earlier this week.

But, you know, I'm not sure that really sort of puts aside all the controversies that came with Facebook prior to this. On the issue of misinformation, certainly the company has acted very quickly as it relates to the coronavirus, but they haven't done the same for, you know, sort of political campaigns. So it's going to be interesting to see how they use this as an opportunity on the other end. You know, are they going to act quicker? are they going to see their image restored? and is this kind of an opportunity for them right now?

ADAM SHAPIRO: All right. I just want to remind everybody that you can see the full interview with Sheryl Sandberg, the COO at Facebook, on Andy Serwer's "Influencers." It'll be here on yahoofinance.com at 5:00 PM tomorrow.