Various rules are pinned by Facebook on its users, for example, it could be possible for an account to be banned because of disturbing posts. However, apparently, the world's largest social media is quietly relaxing the rules on its users who belong to the elite group.
Facebook reportedly maintains a top user group known as XCheck. They consist of important people such as politicians or athletes.
The existence of the group was uncovered in an investigation by the Wall Street Journal. They are immune to content moderation rules. So for example they write or display obscene or hoax content, Facebook does not filter it.
According to internal documents read by the Wall Street Journal, the number of this elite group is in the millions. They are very rarely penalized for inappropriate content, unlike most Facebook users.
For example, in 2019, soccer star Neymar posted a lewd photo of a woman, which Facebook usually took down. But the content lasted long enough to reach more than 50 million Facebook users.
'Common' Facebook users are usually immediately banned if they do the same thing, but Neymar is not like that because he is included in the list of elite users which in 2020 numbered 5.8 million users.
There was also an internal post that the company actually knew there was a lot of untrue news that was read by many users, when in fact it could have been prevented by taking it down. However, Facebook is said to be less quick to do so.
When confirmed, Facebook defended itself against the policy and claimed that this time, the XCheck program was not as lax as before. According to them, some content should be handled carefully.
"This policy was designed for an important reason, namely so that we can accurately enforce rules on content that requires more understanding," said a Facebook spokesperson.
