Suggestions On The Controversial VIP Program Received Mixed Responses From Facebook's Parent Company

Most of the oversight board's proposals are accepted by Meta Platforms, although certain provisions are rejected.

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Facebook META 5.55%increase; green up pointing triangle parent Meta Platforms Inc. said it would work to implement many of an outside advisory group's recommendations to reform a VIP user system called "cross check," but rejected crucial clauses meant to increase transparency and prevent political favoritism.

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The announcements were made by Meta on Friday in a formal response to the 32 recommendations contained in a report about cross check from its oversight board, an outside body that the company had given authority to make decisions that would be legally binding on particular content-moderation disputes and to make recommendations on more general issues.

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Cross check has been defined as a quality-control attempt to avoid moderation errors on content of increased public interest by Meta, which also controls apps like Instagram. It effectively shields high-profile accounts from the business' typical enforcement procedures while awaiting further review—a common, if rarely acknowledged, social media platform practice that could result in preferential treatment.

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According to internal company studies of the initiative, which were published in the Trade Algo, it was subject to lax oversight and bias. In one instance, for instance, Facebook's senior management stepped in to protect a world-famous soccer star from the usual punishment for publishing indecent photographs.

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The business had permitted some famous people to "break our standards without any consequences," according to an internal study of Facebook's VIP-user protections published in 2019. The review also issued a warning that "we are not truly doing what we say we do publicly."

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Following the Journal's investigation, Meta admitted to providing the oversight board with inaccurate information regarding its VIP-user protections in the past. As a result, Meta approached the board for suggestions on how to enhance the program, which resulted in the December report.

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26 of the report's 32 suggestions will be entirely or partially implemented, according to Meta's response, however frequently the business just promised to continuing to work on problematic areas. One of the specific concessions it made was to regularly report on the cross-check program's transparency and to restrict the circulation of material from well-known people who might have broken platform rules until their posts had been decided.

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Meta disregarded the board's recommendations in other areas, such as when it asked that the program be exempt from the company's government-relations staff's input. The board had previously cautioned against taking this action in order to prevent political favoritism. Meta disagreed, saying that its public-policy staff should be consulted for "tough decisions."

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The corporation responded on Friday with the following statement: "We acknowledge that business concerns will always be inherent to our overall business operations, but in the arena of content moderation we have guardrails and systems in place. "To comprehend the local context, a global public policy perspective is essential."

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A board request for Meta to publicly disclose whose users have been awarded status under cross check, as well as the particular standards used to choose which users receive further protection, were both turned down.

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The business stated in a public notice that the cross check promises "would result in considerable changes to how we manage this system" along with Meta's response to the board.