Facebook uses a program called XCheck with which it catalogs celebrities who are not subject to the same moderation policies.
Millions of ‘VIP users’ could have different moderation policies on Facebook
One of the most controversial issues in social networks, while Donald Trump was in power, was how to moderate his tweets as President of the United States. Many celebrities are also presently dealing with this issue, and it has been reported that they split hundreds of thousands of users when it comes to editing their postings.
The Wall Street Journal has revealed that Facebook has been positively discriminating against celebrities, politicians, and influencers. Some accounts and corporations are exempted from the moderation restrictions imposed upon the rest of the community.
Mark Zuckerberg’s social network has been using a previously unknown program called XCheck that applies “Quality control” to its moderation to avoid the “Public relations fires” that can be caused by these personalities suffering from the same behavioral rules.
In the event that any of these people’s content violates the rules, XCheck stops the moderation or penalty actions. But this does not apply to a few hundred users or companies. WSJ reports that the system protects “millions of VIP users”.
This is a scenario that may cause some debate, as it might allow children to share bad information or even “posts containing incitement to violence or harassment.”
Facebook they have responded to questions about this program and state that “There are not two systems of justice; it is an attempt to safeguard against errors” through a system that offers a second layer of review to some accounts. In addition, they have commented on the problem of moderating so much content each day, especially on important accounts.
A potential lack of uniformity in the criteria may be especially harmful, especially since it is unknown how those who pass through this moderation purgatory are labeled with the XCheck program and which characteristics are given the highest consideration to select them. In any case, one more controversy to add to Facebook’s long history of controversial issues.
