Policy

'Not acceptable': Facebook Oversight Board will review cross-check system

The board is taking Facebook up on a request to review its system for vetting posts by high-profile users, which drew scrutiny after recent reporting in the Wall Street Journal.

The Facebook app icon displayed on a smartphone

Facebook's Oversight Board shared its first transparency reports.

Photo by Brett Jordan/Unsplash

Facebook's Oversight Board said Thursday that the company's failure to be transparent about the two-track system it uses to vet posts by high-profile users — known internally as "cross-check" — was "not acceptable." The board agreed to take Facebook up on its request to review the policy and issue guidance on how Facebook should deal with content violations by prominent users.

The board condemned Facebook's lack of transparency and announced this decision as part of its first quarterly transparency reports, which cover the period from October 2020 to the end of June 2021. During that time, the board was reviewing Facebook's decision to ban former President Donald Trump from the platform.

"When Facebook referred the case related to former US President Trump to the board, it did not mention the cross-check system," the board wrote in its report. "Given that the referral included a specific policy question about account-level enforcement for political leaders, many of whom the board believes were covered by crosscheck, this omission is not acceptable."

Facebook's cross-check system drew scrutiny after a Wall Street Journal exposé based on whistleblower Frances Haugen's disclosures illustrated how the company was giving some of its most famous users more leeway on content violations. The board will now assess Facebook's criteria for who makes it into that system, as well as how to ensure it is fair, objective and transparent.

"Facebook has also agreed that, from now on, it commits to provide information about the wider context which may be relevant to the board's case decisions," the report read. "This should give a fuller understanding of the work Facebook has already done on a given topic."

The board shared additional data on its work so far, which reveals limitations to the board's international reach abroad and a hyper-focus on the outcome of the Trump case in the board's early days. Of the roughly half-million appeals the board received between October and the end of June, just under 46% came from the U.S. and Canada, with another 21.8% of appeals coming from Europe. These stats mirror, in some ways, concerns about Facebook's own fixation on North American and European countries.

"We do not believe this represents the actual distribution of Facebook content issues around the globe," the board wrote. "If anything, we have reason to believe that users in Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East experience more, not fewer, problems with Facebook than parts of the world with more appeals."

The board said it's working to expand its reach in other parts of the world and encouraged "users and civil society organizations" to bring their concerns to the board.

The report also shows that the overwhelming majority of comments the board received were related to its decision (or lack thereof) regarding Trump's account. The board received 9,842 public comments overall, a whopping 9,666 of which were related to Trump. At the time, the board pushed the decision back on to Facebook, which decided to continue Trump's suspension until at least 2023.

Fintech

Judge Zia Faruqui is trying to teach you crypto, one ‘SNL’ reference at a time

His decisions on major cryptocurrency cases have quoted "The Big Lebowski," "SNL," and "Dr. Strangelove." That’s because he wants you — yes, you — to read them.

The ways Zia Faruqui (right) has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster.

Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

“Cryptocurrency and related software analytics tools are ‘The wave of the future, Dude. One hundred percent electronic.’”

That’s not a quote from "The Big Lebowski" — at least, not directly. It’s a quote from a Washington, D.C., district court memorandum opinion on the role cryptocurrency analytics tools can play in government investigations. The author is Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui.

Keep ReadingShow less
Veronica Irwin

Veronica Irwin (@vronirwin) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol covering fintech. Previously she was at the San Francisco Examiner, covering tech from a hyper-local angle. Before that, her byline was featured in SF Weekly, The Nation, Techworker, Ms. Magazine and The Frisc.

The financial technology transformation is driving competition, creating consumer choice, and shaping the future of finance. Hear from seven fintech leaders who are reshaping the future of finance, and join the inaugural Financial Technology Association Fintech Summit to learn more.

Keep ReadingShow less
FTA
The Financial Technology Association (FTA) represents industry leaders shaping the future of finance. We champion the power of technology-centered financial services and advocate for the modernization of financial regulation to support inclusion and responsible innovation.
Enterprise

AWS CEO: The cloud isn’t just about technology

As AWS preps for its annual re:Invent conference, Adam Selipsky talks product strategy, support for hybrid environments, and the value of the cloud in uncertain economic times.

Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

AWS is gearing up for re:Invent, its annual cloud computing conference where announcements this year are expected to focus on its end-to-end data strategy and delivering new industry-specific services.

It will be the second re:Invent with CEO Adam Selipsky as leader of the industry’s largest cloud provider after his return last year to AWS from data visualization company Tableau Software.

Keep ReadingShow less
Donna Goodison

Donna Goodison (@dgoodison) is Protocol's senior reporter focusing on enterprise infrastructure technology, from the 'Big 3' cloud computing providers to data centers. She previously covered the public cloud at CRN after 15 years as a business reporter for the Boston Herald. Based in Massachusetts, she also has worked as a Boston Globe freelancer, business reporter at the Boston Business Journal and real estate reporter at Banker & Tradesman after toiling at weekly newspapers.

Image: Protocol

We launched Protocol in February 2020 to cover the evolving power center of tech. It is with deep sadness that just under three years later, we are winding down the publication.

As of today, we will not publish any more stories. All of our newsletters, apart from our flagship, Source Code, will no longer be sent. Source Code will be published and sent for the next few weeks, but it will also close down in December.

Keep ReadingShow less
Bennett Richardson

Bennett Richardson ( @bennettrich) is the president of Protocol. Prior to joining Protocol in 2019, Bennett was executive director of global strategic partnerships at POLITICO, where he led strategic growth efforts including POLITICO's European expansion in Brussels and POLITICO's creative agency POLITICO Focus during his six years with the company. Prior to POLITICO, Bennett was co-founder and CMO of Hinge, the mobile dating company recently acquired by Match Group. Bennett began his career in digital and social brand marketing working with major brands across tech, energy, and health care at leading marketing and communications agencies including Edelman and GMMB. Bennett is originally from Portland, Maine, and received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University.

Enterprise

Why large enterprises struggle to find suitable platforms for MLops

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, and as larger enterprises go from deploying hundreds of models to thousands and even millions of models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

Photo: artpartner-images via Getty Images

On any given day, Lily AI runs hundreds of machine learning models using computer vision and natural language processing that are customized for its retail and ecommerce clients to make website product recommendations, forecast demand, and plan merchandising. But this spring when the company was in the market for a machine learning operations platform to manage its expanding model roster, it wasn’t easy to find a suitable off-the-shelf system that could handle such a large number of models in deployment while also meeting other criteria.

Some MLops platforms are not well-suited for maintaining even more than 10 machine learning models when it comes to keeping track of data, navigating their user interfaces, or reporting capabilities, Matthew Nokleby, machine learning manager for Lily AI’s product intelligence team, told Protocol earlier this year. “The duct tape starts to show,” he said.

Keep ReadingShow less
Kate Kaye

Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.

Latest Stories
Bulletins