Facebook will now ban anti-vaccination ads. Yahoo Finance's Melody Hahm shares the details.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: Facebook is doing yet another ban, and this is one that critics have been calling for, for a long time. It has to do with anti-vaccination information. What exactly is Facebook doing?

MELODY HAHM: Yeah, to get specific here, Julie, Facebook is banning ads that discourage people from getting vaccines. Sentiment around anti-vaxxing is still allowed on the platform for now.

According to some of the leading advertising executives there, they said, we'll still allow ads that advocate for or against legislation of government policies around vaccines, including the COVID-19 vaccine. This will be implemented across Facebook and Instagram over the coming days. This, of course, part of a greater effort to really crack down ahead of the November 3 election, which is creeping up quite quickly.

I do want to point out that some of the biggest offenders of false information on Facebook have been some of our world leaders, including President Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro. Many of their posts had to be removed because they claimed some sort of miraculous elixir would be a cure for the coronavirus vaccine.

And separately, today, YouTube also announcing that they will be cracking down on misinformation regarding COVID-19 vaccines. In particular, they're banning videos that claim coronavirus vaccines can cause further health problems, especially because this is still early stages, right? We don't have a full sort of portfolio of information on the vaccines, especially as many of the trials even here in the United States have been halted.

So, again, this is a piecemeal approach. I'm curious to see how this continues to evolve as a vaccine does come closer into play and becomes more ubiquitous to the masses.

And then one last thing here, when you look at Twitter, Twitter has not actually implemented a ban at all. If anything, they're just flagging individual tweets and just adding a little blurb, saying, please discern and be cynical, as Rick was alluding to earlier.

So still, the ball is in the consumer's court. Ball is in the viewer's court. And you have to be wise. You have to discern a lot of this information.