Facebook Is Rebuked by Oversight Board Over Transparency on Treatment of Prominent Users

Facebook's oversight board said the company hadn’t been forthcoming about how it exempts high-profile users from its rules and said it is drafting recommendations for how to overhaul the system, following a Wall Street Journal investigation into the practice. The oversight board said Facebook had repeatedly failed to turn over, or provided incomplete, information about how it treats content from large numbers of prominent users. It made calls using a separate set of rules—different from those applied to regular users and known internally as “cross-check,” or “XCheck.” The board, which Facebook created to provide guidance about the company’s enforcement systems and make binding decisions about specific enforcement actions, said the company had failed to mention XCheck when it referred its decision to ban former President Donald Trump from the platform to the board in spring 2021. The company only gave limited detail when asked directly about it by the board. Facebook’s public disclosures about the program made at the board’s recommendation at the time were insufficient, the board said. “We thank the board for their ongoing work and for issuing their transparency report. We believe the board’s work has been impactful,” a Facebook spokesman said, adding that the company “will strive to be clearer in our explanations to them going forward.”