The ads, which attacked what the Trump campaign described as "Dangerous MOBS of far-left groups," featured an upside-down triangle. The Anti-Defamation League
said Thursday the triangle "is practically identical to that used by the Nazi regime to classify political prisoners in concentration camps."
"We removed these
posts and ads for violating our policy against
organized hate. Our policy prohibits using a banned hate group's symbol to
identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the
symbol," Andy Stone, a Facebook spokesperson, told CNN Business.
The hate group to which
Facebook was referring in its statement is Nazis, the company confirmed.
The ads targeted the
far-left group antifa, calling on Trump
supporters to back the President's calls to designate the group a terrorist
organization.
Responding to criticism
of the ad earlier Thursday, the Trump campaign claimed the
red triangle was "a symbol widely used by Antifa."
The campaign pointed CNN
Business to several links to poster, sticker, and magnet websites
that sell unofficial merchandise designed by their users that contains the
symbol. The campaign did not point to any examples of antifa activists wearing
the symbol.
The ADL said Thursday
that some antifa activists have used the symbol, but it is not particularly
common.
According to Facebook's
political ad library, a set of ads featuring the offending symbol began running
on Wednesday on Trump's main Facebook page, the "Team Trump" campaign
page, and Vice-President Mike Pence's Facebook page.
The paid ad was seen
almost one million times in Facebook users' feeds on Trump's page alone,
according to data from Facebook.
In a statement, Tim
Murtaugh, director of communications for the Trump campaign, insisted the red
triangle is a "symbol used by Antifa."
Murtaugh added, "We
would note that Facebook still has an inverted red triangle emoji in use, which
looks exactly the same, so it's curious that they would target only this
ad."
"The image is also
not included in the Anti-Defamation League's database of symbols of hate,"
he said.
Responding to that
defense, the ADL pointed out that its database is not a database of historical
Nazi symbols, but of symbols commonly used by modern extremists in the US.
Facebook's removal of
Trump's ads could escalate tensions between the White House and Silicon Valley.
Facebook CEO Mark
Zuckerberg was criticized last month for
not taking action on a Trump post that said "looting" leads to
"shooting," amid racial unrest across the
country. Twitter (TWTR) flagged the same Trump post on its
platform as glorifying violence.
Powered By: CNN America
No comments:
Post a Comment