Facebook’s VIP program allows politicians and celebrities to break its rules, report says

Facebook has used a little-known VIP program for years that has allowed millions of high-profile users to bypass its rules, according to a new report in The Wall Street Journal.

According to the report, the program, called “XCheck” or “cross-checking” was created to prevent “public relations fires,” the public backlash that occurs when Facebook makes a mistake affecting a user’s account. high level. The cross-check program meant that if any of those accounts broke their rules, the violation was sent to a separate team so that it could be reviewed by Facebook employees, rather than its non-employee moderators who typically review content that breaks the rules.

Facebook previously disclosed the existence, which was also reported by other outlets. Corn The Wall Street Journal The report found that “most of the content reported by the XCheck system has not been subject to further review.” This effectively allowed celebrities, politicians, and other high profile users to break the rules without consequences.

In an incident described in the report, Brazilian soccer star Neymar posted nude photos of a woman who had accused him of sexual assault. Any such post is a violation of Facebook’s non-consensual nudity rule, and violators are generally banned from the platform. But the cross-checking system “kept Facebook moderators from removing the video,” and the post was viewed nearly 60 million times before it was finally removed. His account suffered no other consequences.

Last year alone, the cross-checking system saw more than 16 billion times non-compliant content before it was removed, according to internal Facebook documents cited by The Wall Street Journal. The report also states that Facebook “misled” its supervisory board, which pushed the company on its crosscheck system when it considered how the company should handle the “indefinite suspension” of Donald Trump. The company told the board at the time that the system affected “only a small number” of its decisions and that it was “not possible” to share more data.

“The Supervisory Board has repeatedly expressed concern about the lack of transparency in Facebook’s content moderation processes, particularly with regard to the company’s inconsistent handling of large accounts,” said the Supervisory board in a shared press release . “The board has repeatedly recommended that Facebook be much more transparent in general, including when it comes to its handling of large accounts, while ensuring that its policies treat all users fairly. “

Facebook said The Wall Street Journal that its reports were based on “outdated information” and that the company was working to improve the cross-checking system. “At the end of the day, central to this story is Facebook’s own analysis that we need to improve the program,” said Andy Stone, Facebook spokesperson. in a report. “We know that our application is not perfect and that there are tradeoffs between speed and precision.”

The revelations could prompt further investigations into Facebook’s content moderation policies. Some information relating to the cross-check was “passed to the Securities and Exchange Commission and Congress by someone seeking federal whistleblower protection,” according to Wall Street Daythe.