Facebook revamps controversial content moderation process for VIPs

Online dating can be scary enough. But having to navigate *** world where there are so many scammers out there makes it even more difficult. Nancy. Douglas has been through *** lot. Douglas was once married to *** vice president at Alcoa. She was happy and financially secure but he died in *** plane crash. Her second marriage didn't work out either for nancy, love didn't seem to be in the cards. So most recently Douglas was single. That is until *** man named keith Bartell messaged her on facebook out of the blue. He was younger and handsome. He told her she was beautiful, explained that he worked for *** gold mining company. If you were on *** dating site and you say that your recently widowed or recently divorced, that's going to send *** message to the scammer that you are in an emotionally vulnerable position. What starts on facebook quickly progresses to text messages and from their phone calls, calls that knock nancy off her feet, he's talking in this dutch, sexy accent that any woman would probably go out of her mind, keith calls nancy darling and sends bouquet after bouquet of flowers. But nancy's kids are skeptical so they call the mining company to confirm his employment. The voice on the other line said yes keith Bartell works here. It's all checking out and Nancy's in love. She talks with Keith three times *** day and even text in the middle of the night. This goes on for four months Keith promised to move to Hampton and buy her *** mansion in *** red range rover. He said he'd already picked out *** diamond ring and they'd get married. We we want to be wealthy, we want the american dream. We all long for love. When we have experienced *** loss, it can be *** brutal loss and it's something that we will nurse and hold on to me wanting so much to have *** loving partner like I had with my first husband. It was fabulous me wanting that. To the point where I didn't see the clear red flags. One day keith asks his darling for *** loan. After four months of talking every day, nancy sent him money through Western Union keith tells nancy he needs to buy new mining equipment. He says he has the money but it's tied up in assets and investments. There's *** heavy reliance on wire transfers for these internet scams is number one. When you go to *** Western Union and you take out significant amount of money and you're wiring it, you're owning it. So if I say I'm sending to john doe in Thailand you are now accepting financial responsibility for it. So that's number one. And also it's quick and easy to do it, it went on for *** year nancy sending nearly $10,000 to him through Western Union to south Africa nancy is blissfully in love, unaware that all that money she's been sending her beloved will never be repaid it all came crashing down one day at the PNC bank on route eight when keith said he put $28,000 in her account. Nancy showed up after keith asked her to make *** withdrawal. *** banker told her it was all an elaborate fraud nancy was crushed but has decided to share her story to warn other women about romance scams, convenient to meet people from all over online, but it's also been extremely convenient for scammers. People from overseas can easily get access to these online dating profiles facebook and can target vulnerable victims that women Aged 50 from 75 are the prime targets of these scams. They will come on and say you are the most beautiful woman or man I have ever seen in my life, I can't believe you've just had so much happen to you during this time, how can I help you? It's so easy to fall for. Like usually I'm not this naive but I was totally sucked in by this people think that the more computer literate we get and the more we are used to social media as *** form of communication, it will cut down on internet scams, I think it's only going to progress them because remember the internet changes so quickly, so do scam artists now for the million dollar question if the person nancy fell in love with wasn't keith martell, who was it? We decided to do some digging, Pittsburgh's action news for producer Mary Davies took *** photo from the scammers facebook page and ran *** reverse image search on google, which brought up this newspaper article with *** matching photo listing him as *** politician. She then ran *** reverse image search on this photo from the scammers page of *** mountain, which as it turns out is in New Zealand. Next she typed new Zealand politician into google and there you have it. The photos on the profile of the so called keith Bartell are all of this man named Nathan guy, *** minister of parliament in New Zealand. Clearly someone had stolen his photos to run the scheme, they have to cry create this character and so often they'll pick an image and they want an image that looks trustworthy where there's enough public images that they can find in various settings that shows reliability but that people wouldn't be very familiar with. So this means somewhere in South Africa, someone is using the name of *** real mining corporation employee in the photos of this real new Zealand politician to fake love with people all over the world. Any justice for nancy, it's very common nowadays for internet scammers to not really get apprehended or prosecuted due to the nature of the crime, there are real victims and sometimes the victims suffer more psychologically and emotionally with PTSD because sometimes the assailant is unknown to them and that means they're always looking over their shoulder or they're double checking their bank accounts online, dating, makes *** lot of things convenient, but it also makes things very complicated.

Facebook-parent Meta on Friday announced a revamp of its "cross-check" moderation system after facing criticism for giving VIPs special treatment by applying different review processes for VIP posts versus those from regular users.But Meta stopped short of adopting all the recommended changes that had previously been put forward by its own Oversight Board, including a suggestion to publicly identify which high-profile accounts qualify for the program.The cross-check program came under fire in November 2021 after a report from the Wall Street Journal indicated that the system shielded some VIP users — such as politicians, celebrities, journalists and Meta business partners like advertisers — from the company's normal content moderation process, in some cases allowing them to post rule-violating content without consequences.As of 2020, the program had ballooned to include 5.8 million users, the Journal reported. Meta's Oversight Board said in the wake of the report that Facebook had failed to provide it with crucial details about the system. At the time, Meta said that criticism of the system was fair, but that cross-check was created in order to improve the accuracy of moderation on content that "could require more understanding."Meta's Oversight Board in a December policy recommendation called out the program for being set up to "satisfy business concerns" and said it risked doing harm to everyday users. The board — an entity financed by Meta but which says it operates independently — urged the company to "radically increase transparency" about the cross-check system and how it works.On Friday, Meta said it would implement in part or in full many of the more than two dozen recommendations the Oversight Board made for improving the program.Among the changes it has committed to make, Meta says it will aim to distinguish between accounts included in the enhanced review program for business versus human rights reasons, and detail those distinctions to the board and in the company's transparency center. Meta will also refine its process for temporarily removing or hiding potentially harmful content while it's pending additional review. And the company also said it would work to ensure that cross-check content reviewers have the appropriate language and regional expertise "whenever possible."The company, however, declined to implement such recommendations as publicly marking the pages of state actors and political candidates, business partners, media actors and other public figures included in the cross-check program. The company said that such public identifiers could make those accounts "potential targets for bad actors.""We are committed to maintaining transparency with the board and the public as we continue to execute on the commitments we are making," regarding the cross-check program, Meta said in a policy statement.Meta's Oversight Board did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Meta's planned policy changes.

But Meta stopped short of adopting all the recommended changes that had previously been put forward by its own Oversight Board, including a suggestion to publicly identify which high-profile accounts qualify for the program.

The cross-check program came under fire in November 2021 after a from the Wall Street Journal indicated that the system shielded some VIP users — such as politicians, celebrities, journalists and Meta business partners like advertisers — from the company's normal content moderation process, in some cases allowing them to post rule-violating content without consequences.

As of 2020, the program had ballooned to include 5.8 million users, the Journal reported. Meta's Oversight Board in the wake of the report that Facebook had failed to provide it with crucial details about the system. At the time, Meta said that criticism of the system was fair, but that cross-check was created in order to improve the accuracy of moderation on content that "could require more understanding."

Meta's in a called out the program for being set up to "satisfy business concerns" and said it risked doing harm to everyday users. The board — an entity financed by Meta but which says it operates independently — urged the company to "radically increase transparency" about the cross-check system and how it works.

On Friday, Meta said it would implement in part or in full many of the more than two dozen recommendations the Oversight Board made for improving the program.

Among the changes it has committed to make, Meta says it will aim to distinguish between accounts included in the enhanced review program for business versus human rights reasons, and detail those distinctions to the board and in the company's transparency center. Meta will also refine its process for temporarily removing or hiding potentially harmful content while it's pending additional review. And the company also said it would work to ensure that cross-check content reviewers have the appropriate language and regional expertise "whenever possible."

The company, however, declined to implement such recommendations as publicly marking the pages of state actors and political candidates, business partners, media actors and other public figures included in the cross-check program. The company said that such public identifiers could make those accounts "potential targets for bad actors."

"We are committed to maintaining transparency with the board and the public as we continue to execute on the commitments we are making," regarding the cross-check program, Meta said in a policy statement.

Meta's Oversight Board did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Meta's planned policy changes.

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