Meta refutes reports on content moderation lapses, terms it ‘false’ and based on ‘fabricated evidence’

(Representative image: Reuters)

Facebook parent Meta has rejected allegations over its content moderation decisions, terming them as "false” based on what the company believes to be "fabricated evidence"

This statement follows a public back-and-forth in recent days between the tech giant and online publication The Wire over the veracity of the latter's report, which claimed that Meta-owned Instagram gave Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) IT cell chief Amit Malviya an uncontrolled ability to remove content from the platform.

The report claimed, citing internal documents, that this ability was granted as part of Meta's internal XCheck (Cross-Check) programme, which was disclosed in an investigation by The Wall Street Journal last year.

According to the report, posts from the satirical Instagram handle @cringearchivist were removed after Malviya reported them.

If true, it would indicate an expanded capability of the programme that currently exempts the posts made by millions of high-profile users including celebrities and politicians from the company's normal enforcement process.

However, Meta termed these claims as “false” saying that Cross-Check “has nothing to do with the ability to report posts to seek the removal of content”. According to the company, no one is exempt from its community standards, and it will continue to remove content that violates them.

“The posts in question were surfaced for review by automated systems, not user reports. The system is designed to ensure that enforcement decisions related to content posted by cross-check accounts are made accurately and with additional levels of human review,” the company said.

I wanted to set the record straight about two stories run this week by @thewire_in with untrue claims about Meta’s content moderation operations and processes. tl;dr these stories are fabrications. (1/6)

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— Guy Rosen (@guyro) October 11, 2022

Meta also stated that the leaked screenshots of its internal tools and the document that were mentioned in the article were “fabricated”

“The URL on that “report” is not in use. The naming convention is one we don’t use. There is no such report,” it said. “We did not identify a user report regarding the @cringearchivist content in September as reported.”

Meta said that a follow-up story from The Wire that was based on supposed emails from Meta's policy communication director Andy Stone was also "fake. "There are no such emails," it said.

The Wire's October 11 report included a screenshot of an email from Andy Stone to Meta employees in which he appears to be questioning how the documents mentioned above were leaked, while also stating that the company keeps a watchlist of journalists. Meta categorically denied the existence of any such "watch list."

“While it is legitimate for us to be held accountable for our content decisions, the allegations made by The Wire are false. They contain mischaracterizations of how our enforcement processes work, and rely on what we believe to be fabricated evidence in their reporting” the company said in an official blog post.

Apart from Meta's 'fabrication' charge, some folks are saying @thewire_in may have been 'played' by unknown elements out to 'discredit' us or further some outlandish conspiracy. This is ridiculous. Our stories came from multiple Meta sources—whom we know, have met & verified. 1/ — Siddharth (@svaradarajan) October 12, 2022

However, The Wire's founding editor Siddharth Varadarajan tweeted on October 12 defending both these stories and said they will release additional material that corroborates their stories.