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Facebook had a problem on its hands. People were making posts that got caught in the company's automated moderation system or were taken down by its human moderators. The problem wasn't that the moderators, human or otherwise, were wrong to take down the posts. No, the problem was that the people behind the posts were famous or noteworthy, and the company didn't want a PR mess on its hands.
So Facebook came up with a program called XCheck, or cross check, which in many instances became a de facto whitelist. Over the years, XCheck has allowed celebrities, politicians, athletes, activists, journalists, and even the owners of "animal influencers" like "Doug the Pug" to post whatever they want, with few to no consequences for violating the company's rules.
"For a select few members of our community, we are not enforcing our policies and standards," reads an internal Facebook report published as part of a Wall Street Journal investigation. "Unlike the rest of our community, these people can violate our standards without any consequences."
"Few" must be a relative term at Facebook, as at least 5.8 million people were enrolled in the program as of last year, many of them with significant followings. That means a large number of influential people are allowed to post largely unchecked on Facebook and Instagram.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @01:55AM (2 children)
Spelling matters. Liqbutts. And calling someone a liqbutt is not on the level of planning violence against the liqbutt. I realize the distinction may whoosh right over your head, but the law prohibits violence, it does not prohibit speech that you don't like.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @04:32AM (1 child)
Oh, you want to be able to use homophobic slurs, but you believe that slurs do not constitute hate speech. However, you are against hate speech against the liqbutts.
Well that's at least progress, for an inferior being like a cis+het male.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Saturday September 18 2021, @06:32AM
The entire idea of "hate speech"--that doesn't explicitly involve incitement of violence--being illegal is rather dumb. Which is why it isn't a thing in the U.S.
"Inexplicably vestiges of sanity remain"
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"