ie, is it possible that there are classifiers you may not be aware of that take this tag into account while taking down other accounts? Are there ANY safeguards to ensure the visibility or use of these tags is restricted to this one use case alone?
You and I both know the answer to that based on Privacy documents leaked earlier where engineers explicitly stated what a mess the data control and accountability systems at Facebook were[1]
[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21716382-facebook-da...
I can’t explicitly state that because I cant look at the code right now. What I can say is that I would be very surprised if it was. XCheck isn’t meant to be called explicitly by integrity detection. Detection should make its own decision and take the action on the account or content. During action enforcement XCheck is implicitly called.
But anyhow, if you’re looking for an employee to explicitly state that XCheck isn’t used this way, here’s one (https://twitter.com/guyro/status/1579835594980864001)
> The stories are simply incorrect about the cross-check program, which was built to prevent potential over-enforcement mistakes. It has nothing to do with the ability to report posts, as alleged in the article.
"Can you explicitly *state* that..."
Perhaps you should read the blog first?
The OP has pretty much said that X-Check tags are not intended to automatically take action on reports.
That is a pretty different thing from saying the people applying the tags don't expect action to be taken, but there could be entire organizations of 1000s of people where those tags serve a different purpose.
Please read the link above for context on how terrible Facebooks data control practices are, wherein this very act could be routinely occurring and OP or anyone making decisive statements would be irresponsible in doing so.
As of June 2021 no XCheck tag I knew of allowed a user to take down content at will.
Under the new Intermediaries Rules, intermediaries must *complete* the takedown process under Section 79(3) of the IT Act, within 36 hours.
Very simply put, large social media platforms, like Facebook in India, are legally required to respond and delete content when requested by government representatives.
Under such a scenario, can you confidently say that XCheck hasn't been extended with new features, like a tag that allows a user to immediately flag posts that must be compulsorily taken down when the particular user reports it? It seems a very obvious extension when you consider the political demands that are placed on Facebook / Meta from around the world, and in India in particular.
To be credible, you need to honestly answer these questions and address it in your article too, as otherwise you are basing your assumptions on incomplete information, thereby misleading yourself and others.
XCheck is a system that supports tagging specific accounts with tags that exempt that account from certain integrity enforcement. In the post I give an example of a tag that used to exempt accounts from the fake account checkpoint. Applying these tags is usually a manual process and usually carefully vetted.