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The
arrangement, called cross-check, adds a layer of enforcement
review for millions of Facebook and Instagram accounts belonging
to celebrities, politicians and other influential users,
allowing them extra leeway to post content that violates the
company's policies.
Cross-check "prioritizes users of commercial value to Meta and
as structured does not meet Meta's human rights responsibilities
and company values," Oversight Board director Thomas Hughes said
in a statement announcing the decision.
The board had been reviewing the cross-check program since last
year, when whistleblower Frances Haugen exposed the extent of
the system by leaking internal company documents to the Wall
Street Journal.
Those documents revealed that the program was both larger and
more forgiving of influential users than Meta had previously
told the Oversight Board, which is funded by the company through
a trust and operates independently.
Without controls on eligibility or governance, cross-check
sprawled to include nearly anyone with a substantial online
following, although even with millions of members it represents
a tiny slice of Meta's 3.7 billion total users.
In 2019, the system blocked the company's moderators from
removing nude photos of a woman posted by Brazilian soccer star
Neymar, even though the post violated Meta's rules against
"nonconsensual intimate imagery," according to the WSJ report.
The board at the time of the report rebuked Meta for not being
"fully forthcoming" in its disclosures about cross-check.
In the opinion it issued on Tuesday, the board said it agreed
that Meta needed mechanisms to address enforcement mistakes,
given the extraordinary volume of user-generated content the
company moderates each day.
However, it added, Meta "has a responsibility to address these
larger problems in ways that benefit all users and not just a
select few."
It made 32 recommendations that it said would structure the
program more equitably, including transparency requirements,
audits of the system's impact and a more systematic approach to
eligibility.
State actors, it said, should continue to be eligible for
inclusion in the program, but based only on publicly available
criteria, with no other special preferences.
The Oversight Board's policy recommendations are not binding,
but Meta is required to respond to them, normally within 60
days.
A spokeswoman for the Oversight Board said the company had asked
for and received an extension in this case, so it would have 90
days to respond.
(Reporting by Katie Paul; Editing by Bradley Perrett)
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