Facebook shields VIPs from some of its rules: report

Facebook exempts certain celebrities, politicians and other high-profile users from some its own rules for posts as part of a program launched as a quality-control mechanism, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.The program, referred to as "cross check" or "XCheck," shields millions of elite users from rules that Facebook claims to apply equally at the social network, according to a report citing internal documents. XCheck grew to include at least 5.8 million users in 2020, the report indicated.Facebook said in a post about cross-checking three years ago that it does not protect the profile, page or content from being removed but "is simply done to make sure our decision is correct."

Facebook spokesman Andy Stone in a series of tweets defended the program, but noted the social media giant is aware its enforcement of rules is "not perfect"."There aren't two systems of justice; it's an attempted safeguard against mistakes," Stone tweeted in response to the Journal report."We know our enforcement is not perfect and there are tradeoffs between speed and accuracy." The WSJ report, citing the review, gave the example of a post by international football star Neymar, who put up nude photos of a woman who had accused him of rape.

The news report also characterised Facebook’s routine content moderation as dispensing “rough justice” – “the automated systems summarily delete or bury content suspected of rule violations without a human review. At other times, material flagged by those systems or by users is assessed by content moderators employed by outside companies”, it said.