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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, @02:41AM
I don't know that their behavior necessarily confers corruption, in fact it could be purported that they're diligently performing the duties ascribed to them and thus paying their debt to society; it's the excision of moral culpability, the lack of skin in the game, the insulated existence, and the willing delusion, and most of all their position in the upkeep of the bureaucratic machinery that creates the air of putrescense. The reality of it is, they're oriented, morally and intellectually, to exploit the system and directed to do so. Regulation is actually really, ultimately kind of circular, the whole system of governance that acts as the undergirding for the support of undue private property is ultomately what defines all of civilizations ailments. These guys just happen to be the highly visible scapegoats at the end of the levers, and they're really just doing their jobs, and like anyone they want a quiet day at the office.