Facebook removes Trump campaign ads for ‘violating our policy against organised hate’

Facebook has removed the Trump administration’s campaign ads, saying they used a “hate group's symbol” and violated its policy.

Social media giant Facebook has moved against the Trump administration, taking down campaign ads for breaching its “policy on organised hate”.

The ads from Team Trump attacked what the Trump campaign called “dangerous mobs of far-left groups”. It featured an upside down triangle, and called for people to “send a united message” and “stand with President Trump against ANTIFA”.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, the inverted 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 organised hate,” Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said in a statement to CNN Business. “Our policy prohibits using a banned hate group's symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol.”

Mr Stone confirmed to CNN the hate group Facebook was referring to was the Nazi party.

This computer screen capture shows the now removed Trump campaign ad. Picture: Facebook/AFP

The ads called on Trump supporters to back the President’s previous calls to designate “Antifa” a terrorist organisation.

Bend The Arc: Jewish Action, said the symbol was used in concentration camps to mark and identify certain political prisoners.

The President of the United States is campaigning for reelection using a Nazi concentration camp symbol.

Nazis used the red triangle to mark political prisoners and people who rescued Jews.

Trump & the RNC are using it to smear millions of protestors.

Their masks are off. pic.twitter.com/UzmzDaRBup

— Bend the Arc: Jewish Action (@jewishaction) June 18, 2020

The Trump campaign has since responded to criticism of the ad claiming the inverted red triangle is a “symbol widely used by Antifa”, linking media to Redbubble sites selling “Antifa water bottles” and other sites selling mason jars with red triangle decals.

The ADL reports some Antifa may have worn the red triangle, but described it as not being very common.

The ads, which began running on Wednesday, gathered as many as 950,000 impressions from Mr Trump’s Facebook page, according to the Washington Post.

The same ad, run from Vice President Mike Pence’s page, gathered 500,000 impressions before being taken down on Thursday.

Last month, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg was widely criticised for not removing a controversial post by the President which said “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”.

The director of communications of the Trump campaign, Tim Murtagh, said: “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.”