Tell Facebook: Celebrities shouldn't be exempt from the rules
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, just announced that Trump will be allowed back on its platforms any day now.
Trump was banned only two years ago for using his social media accounts to incite violence at the U.S. Capitol. By letting him back on, Meta is helping Trump's dangerous ideology spread to millions.
Facebook has a loophole program for celebrities and political figures that essentially exempts people like Trump, Joe Rogan, Ron DeSantis, and Marjorie Taylor Greene from the rules that everyone else has to follow.
Why is this important?
Facebook’s celebrity loopholes, known as "cross-check" have kept a lot of hateful content on their platforms when it clearly should have been removed. Cross-check is an entirely separate moderation system for 5.8 million "celebrities and politicians" around the world who get VIP treatment.
Here’s how it works: If a regular user posts something offensive and hateful on Facebook, artificial intelligence will work to recognize an offensive word and, ideally, quickly remove the post. If a celebrity in cross-check posts something offensive it has to be reviewed by an actual human. That means the post stays up while it waits in the queue. It's been known to take up to 222 days for that review to happen, allowing misogyny, racism, and lies about election fraud to spread on the platform. These programs are why it took an actual insurrection for Trump to get kicked off of Facebook in the first place.
The good news is we have a unique opportunity right now to push for big changes to the celebrity loopholes. Facebook's Oversight Board, a Supreme Court-style organization that Facebook created to guide its decisions on moderating content, recently raised concerns about the cross-check program. It called the company out for prioritizing profits over human rights and gave the company 90 days to respond to its recommendations. This gives us the perfect opportunity to add our voices and hold Facebook accountable.
Sign the petition: Facebook must get rid of celebrity loopholes that exempt people like Trump and DeSantis from following the rules.