According to Facebook spokesman Andy Stone, the social media giant is aware that its rule enforcement is "not perfect."
According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook exempts certain celebrities, politicians, and other high-profile users from some of its own rules for posts as part of a quality-control programme.
According to a report citing internal documents, the "cross check" or "XCheck" programme shields millions of elite users from rules that Facebook claims to apply equally across the social network.
In a series of tweets, Facebook spokesman Andy Stone defended the programme, but acknowledged that the social media giant's rule enforcement is "not perfect."
In response to the Journal report, Stone tweeted, "There aren't two systems of justice; it's an attempted safeguard against mistakes."
"We recognise that our enforcement isn't flawless, and that there are tradeoffs between speed and accuracy."
The article cites examples of high-profile people's posts, such as one from soccer star Neymar that showed nude images of a woman who accused him of rape and was later removed by Facebook.
A double standard on content moderation would go against Facebook's assurances to an independent board set up to settle disputes over what can be posted on the leading social network. According to board spokesman John Taylor, the Oversight Board has expressed concern on multiple occasions about the lack of transparency in Facebook's content moderation processes, particularly in relation to the company's inconsistent management of high-profile accounts. According to the Journal article, some users are whitelisted and thus protected from enforcement actions, while in other cases, reviews of potentially problematic content are simply not conducted.
According to the Journal, "white-listed" accounts have shared claims that Hillary Clinton covered up "paedophile rings" and that then-President Donald Trump referred to all refugees seeking asylum as "animals."
According to the report, XCheck will have at least 5.8 million users by 2020.
In a three-year-old post about cross-checking, Facebook clarified that it "is simply done to ensure our decision is correct," noting that it "does not protect the profile, page, or content from being removed."