Meta Oversight Board Criticizes ‘Cross Check’ Program That Protects VIP Users

Earlier this year Facebook parent Meta quietly formed a team to deal with an uncomfortable reality: the most popular posts on its platform were trash. WSJ tech reporter Jeff Horwitz joins host Zoe Thomas to discuss the war room Meta convened to deal with the problem and why fixing it was so critical to the platform's future plans.

Meta Platforms, Inc. has long given unfair deference to VIP users of its Facebook and Instagram services under a program called “cross check” and has misled the public about the program, the company’s oversight board concluded in a report issued last month.

The report offers the most detailed review to date of cross check, which Meta has billed as a quality-control effort to prevent moderation errors on content of heightened public interest. The oversight board took up the issue more than a year ago in the wake of a Wall Street Journal article based on internal documents that showed that cross check was plagued by favoritism, mismanagement and understaffing. MORE