Trump campaign ran “alarmist” ads on “antifa”, reports said
San Francisco:
Facebook removed ads from President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign on Thursday that contained a symbol used in Nazi Germany for political prisoners.
The main social network, which has ignited its hands-free approach to political discourse in recent months, said in a statement that the campaign messages violated a policy against “organized hatred” and had been deleted accordingly.
“We do not allow symbols that represent hateful organizations or ideologies unless they are put in context or condemned,” Facebook security chief Nathaniel Gleicher said at a hearing. before the committee of the House of Representatives.
“This is what we saw in this case with this announcement, and wherever this symbol is used, we would take the same action.”
Facebook’s decision against targeted advertising when it claimed that far-left groups are dangerous comes amid heated debate between social platforms and political leaders over what content can be allowed or banned.
In a tweet from a “Trump War Room”, the campaign claimed that the symbol of the upside-down red triangle in question was “widely used” in reference to the leftist militant group Antifa.
Watch group Media Matters responded with a tweet saying it certainly wasn’t.
Since the beginning of the month, the Trump campaign has been broadcasting “alarmist” advertisements about what it says is an extreme left group called “antifa,” according to Media Matters.
The upside down red triangle was apparently a new addition to the ad.
“Despite the violation of Facebook’s terms of use, the ads were approved by Facebook in the first place,” said Media Matters president Angelo Carusone.
Facebook firmly rejected calls to fact-checking politicians, including a call from Joe Biden, a Democratic hopeful at the White House, to quell what he called rampant White House misinformation.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said the platform would move away from moderation in political discourse but apply its rules banning damaging content.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
