ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: Facebook Parent’s Oversight Board Criticizes ‘Cross Check’ Program That Protects VIP Users.

The report offers the most detailed review to date of cross check, which Meta has billed as a quality-control effort to prevent moderation errors on content of heightened public interest. The oversight board took up the issue more than a year ago in the wake of a Wall Street Journal article based on internal documents that showed that cross check was plagued by favoritism, mismanagement and understaffing.

The board’s report doesn’t take issue with the value of a secondary review system for moderating posts from high-profile or sensitive accounts. But the board said the program in practice has put Meta’s business interests over the program’s stated goals of protecting public discourse, and it noted that the highest levels of protection are generally reserved for accounts that might stir up trouble for Meta’s senior leadership.
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The Journal article last year found that under the cross check program, also known as “XCheck,” some VIP users were “whitelisted,” meaning they were exempted from some or all penalties for violating platform rules. Other accounts were given “remediation windows” in which they could remove violating posts without penalty or received watered-down punishments for misconduct.

Some Facebook users are more equal than others.