Facebook maintains an extensive system that gives exemptions to almost 5.8 million high-profile people from compliance with its rules on the social network

According to the report of WSJ, Facebook has a system that does not force a select group of powerful influencers to comply with its policies related to content moderation on the platform. The platform has been accused of having 2 systems of justice, one is for high-profile people including famous politicians, celebs, sportspersons, social activists, and digital influencers, and the other system of justice applies to the rest of the common users on the platform. The WSJ report further says that in the year 2020, almost 5.8 million high-profile users were the part of XCheck program and the platform did not inform them about the exceptional treatment. The posts of these famous accounts are exempted from the moderation process.

This program does not impose restrictions on its members and even permits them to upload anything including violent content or whatever they want on the platform. Recently, the platform permitted the famous footballer Neymar to upload naked pictures of a girl that blamed him for sexual assault. This is not the first time; some users of the platform are treated separately. Facebook has been accused many times of breaking its own rules, for instance, the ‘Cross Check’ or ‘XCheck’ program also sheltered the former president of the US, Doug the Pug, and some other public figures.

People flagged the violated posts for XCheck so that that the moderators of the platform review such posts, and in that way the platform will be able to enforce its rules in a better way. As per the document obtained by the WSJ, unfortunately, only 10 percent of those desecrated posts were reviewed by the moderators.

However, the platform totally rejected the claim of having two systems of justice for its users and said that this program is no secret at all and there is always a possibility for improvements while imposing its rules. The representative of the platform said that the platform itself is evaluating the problem with its ‘XCheck’ program and is trying to make necessary changes. However, he refused to share the changes that are being considered in this program. The policy communication manager of the platform replied to the claim of the WSJ that the program has been revealed previously.

As we said in 2018: “‘Cross-check’ simply means that some content from certain Pages or Profiles is given a second layer of review to make sure we’ve applied our policies correctly.” There aren’t two systems of justice; it’s an attempted safeguard against mistakes.

— Andy Stone (@andymstone) September 13, 2021

He further linked the previous blog post back in the year 2018, where the platform said that the ‘cross check’ program will work as the 2nd layer of review for elite-class people. Facebook has comprehensive and extensive policies for content moderation, but those policies require the will of the platform to impose. The WSJ said that now it depends on American policymakers, how they react to the content of the revealed document.



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