Facebook said Thursday it had removed ads attacking antifa and "far left groups" led by President Donald Trump's re-election campaign for violating its "anti-hate" rules. The advertisements included an inverted red triangle, a symbol used by the Nazis to identify political prisoners in concentration camps.
"We have deleted these messages and advertisements for violating our policy against organized hatred," a Facebook spokesperson said on Thursday. "Our policy prohibits using the symbol of a prohibited hate group to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol."
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The removal of Trump's re-election campaign announcement is a rare move by Facebook, which has come under fire for its approach primarily without the intervention of political speech. The company isn't sending politicians' messages and announcements to third-party fact checkers, but it's not the first time Facebook has removed a Trump ad. Facebook is also facing more pressure to fight hate speech. Civil rights groups call on advertisers to boycott the social network in July.
The ads, which were spotted earlier by Media Matters and The Washington Post, began running Wednesday and were posted on the Facebook pages of Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, the Trump team, and others pages. Before being deleted on Thursday, the ads had accumulated more than 800,000 impressions on the president's Facebook page alone, according to data from the company's advertising library.
In total, the Trump campaign ran 88 ads featuring the reverse red triangle on Facebook, according to the Post. Advertisements used the symbol next to text warning that "dangerous MOBS from far left groups are running through our streets causing absolute chaos", and asking people to "stand with your president and his decision to declare the 'ANTIFA a terrorist organization ".
Antifa, short for antifascists, is a comprehensive description of militant groups on the far left who confront white supremacists and neo-Nazis at rallies and other events. Trump tweeted in May that the United States would designate antifa as a terrorist organization.
The Trump campaign defended its ads on Thursday, claiming that the inverted red triangle is a commonly used symbol by antifa.
"The inverted red triangle is a symbol used by Antifa, so it was included in an ad on Antifa," said Tim Murtaugh, director of communications for the Trump campaign, in a statement sent by email. "We would like to note that Facebook still has an inverted red triangle emoji in use, which looks exactly the same, so it's curious that they are only targeting this ad." He added that the inverted red triangle is not included in the Anti-Defamation League hate symbols database.
The Conservatives accused social media of censoring their speech, which the companies denied. Trump recently signed an executive order that would reduce the legal protections given to internet platforms by federal law for user-published content, but the order is already the subject of a lawsuit.
Nathaniel Gleicher, who oversees cybersecurity policy at Facebooksaid at a virtual hearing before the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday that the company does not allow symbols representing hateful organizations or ideologies unless users provide more context or condemn its use. Facebook will automatically fire posts that use the Nazi symbol, he said, but their systems may be missing content. It is not known how many Facebook posts have been pulled so far to include the inverted red triangle.
Facebook has already removed ads from Trump's re-election campaign. This year, the social network has removed advertisements from the Trump campaign enticing supporters to respond to a survey called "2020 Congressional District Official Census." The company withdrew the ads due to fears that it would create confusion about the 2020 U.S. census.
In 2018, Facebook removed another ad from Trump campaign for violating its rules against "sensational content". This announcement features Luis Bracamontes, an undocumented immigrant who was convicted of the murder of two California Sheriff's assistants in 2014. He attempted to falsely link Bracamontes' crimes to the migrant caravan traveling from Mexico towards the American border.
Facebook, however, has moved away from removing or verifying Trump ads that contain false information. Facebook last year rejected a request for Joe Biden Presidential Campaign to remove an ad that said Biden had promised Ukraine $ 1 billion if officials in that country fired the prosecutor investigating an affiliate of Biden's son. There is no evidence to support this claim, which has been refuted by fact-finding groups and media reports.
Biden's campaign launched a countryside this month, calling on the company to check the ads two weeks before they are allowed on its platform. In response, Facebook lobbied elected officials to establish new rules for campaign announcements and said it would comply with them.
