Facebook slow to delete far right posts

Facebook has admitted that its content moderators are not allowed immediately to remove some popular and commercially lucrative pages — even if they breach the social network’s rules.

Tommy Robinson, the former leader of the farright English Defence League, whose pages have 900,000followers,isoneof those exempted from the rule that moderators take down a page if it has repeated violations of Facebook’s codes.

Content moderators are instructed to refer potential violations to “subject experts” under a procedure known as Crosscheck, previously called Shielded Review.

Celebrities, government departments and news organisations are among those who also receive special treatment.

An undercover reporter for Channel 4’s Dispatches asked a moderator whether there was any point checking complaints about violations on Robinson’s page and was told: “Don’t worry too much about deleting their stuff because those pages are like shielded so like if you delete a video or whatever, you haven’t deleted Tommy Robison’s video.

“It just goes straight to the Shielded Review.”

Inside Facebook: Secrets of the Social Network, Channel 4, 9pm Tuesday.