Facebook criticized for treating celebrities

Apparently, the Facebook Observatory said yesterday that the social network was not all that helpful in sharing why the “important” users escape the rules of moderation content. “The fact that Facebook has provided such an ambiguous and non-detailed response to a request for more transparency is not acceptable. Facebook’s response does not provide any significant transparency on the criteria for the accounts or pages selected for inclusion in the cross-check ”. So wrote the Observatory in a statement. But let’s see in more detail what the Facebook App is accused of.

Facebook: App criticized for the treatment reserved for VIP users

The Wall Street Journal recently revealed that the Facebook App has put politicians and celebrities on a “whitelist”, effectively making them immune to any executive action. All answer Thomas Hughes, Director of the Observatory, said: “The amount of publicly available information on cross-checks is too limited. Users need to know what is done, when and why. If everything is done in an opaque and invisible way, it feeds the belief that something unpleasant is happening “.

In essence, the Council asks the platform to publicly explain its rationale for including accounts in its cross-checking program. For its part, however, Facebook reiterated that it has only included a few profiles in this list. Although Hughes has stated that it is well 6 million users. A number that is anything but small, at least according to what the Council reported. In response, the platform said it intends to revise its cross-checking program, with the intent “to be clearer in the explanations in the future”. Should we trust?