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Internal Facebook documents revealed the existence of XCheck, a secret program that protects high-profile users from enforcement actions.
Over 5.8M users, including celebrities, politicians, and other high-profile users, received special treatment in 2020.
XCheck "whitelists" high-profile users from sanctions that would generally apply to regular users.
The sanctions are usually enforced when a user's post contains harassment, incitement to violence, or other similar violations.
In 2019, Brazilian soccer star Neymar made posts that included pictures of a nude woman that accused him of rape. Facebook would usually have deleted the posts.
However, as Neymar was on XCheck, the post was not deleted for over 24 hours and exposed to over 50M people.
A normal user would be banned under Facebook's "one strike" policy, but Neymar's account remained active.
XCheck "whitelists" high-profile users from sanctions that would generally apply to regular users.
The sanctions are usually enforced when a user's post contains harassment, incitement to violence, or other similar violations.