An independent body that monitors content decisions on Facebook and Instagram has called for more transparency around how the social media giant reviews high-profile users.

The move comes after the Wall Street Journal published a report that claimed Facebook exempts high-profile users from some or all of its rules.

The Oversight Board said that the newspaper’s disclosure had drawn renewed attention to the company’s “seemingly inconsistent” ‘cross-check system.’

In light of these developments, the organisation is investigating the degree to which Facebook has been fully forthcoming in its responses in relation to cross-check, including the practice of whitelisting.

The Board has reached out to Facebook to request they provide further clarity about the information previously shared with it.

“At the Oversight Board, we have been asking questions about cross-check for some time,” wrote the organisation’s co-chairs on Tuesday. “In our decision concerning former US President Donald Trump’s accounts, we warned that a lack of clear public information on cross-check and Facebook’s ‘newsworthiness exception’ could contribute to perceptions that Facebook is unduly influenced by political and commercial considerations.”

To address this, the Oversight Board asked the social media network to explain how its review system works and urged the company to share the criteria for adding pages and accounts to cross-check as well as to report on relative error rates of decisions made through the system compared with its ordinary enforcement procedures.

According to the Board, Facebook provided an explanation of cross-check but did not elaborate criteria for adding pages and accounts to the system and declined to provide reporting on error rates.

It now expects to receive a briefing from the platform in the next few days and said it will be reporting what it hears from this as part of its first release of quarterly transparency reports, published next month. The reports will provide an analysis of the Board’s decisions related to the cross-check system and Facebook’s responses on the topic.

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