In a first direct action against US President Donald Trump, Facebook on Friday removed a Trump campaign ad featuring a symbol used by Nazis for political dissenters, saying the ad violated its policies. The ad with an upside-down red triangle symbol was posted under accounts for Donald Trump, VP Mike Pence and the Trump Campaign, reports Axios.
"Our policy prohibits using a banned hate group's symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol," a Facebook spokesman was quoted as saying. This is the first action against Trump campaign by Facebook in recent times. The social network is facing criticism for its inaction over Trump posts that glorified violence in the aftermath of the death of African-American George Floyd. Facebook took down the ad that went after antifa and leftist groups with a prominent display of an inverted red triangle in a black outline.
Trump campaign spokesperson Tim Murtaugh said in a statement: "The inverted red triangle is a symbol used by Antifa, so it was included in an ad about Antifa. 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." Several former and existing Facebook employees wrote an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg this month, criticizing his inaction over controversial posts from Trump on glorifying violence and calling him to start fact-checking world leaders and labelling harmful posts.
While Twitter put out a "public interest notice" on Trump tweet for violating the platform's policies about glorifying violence, Facebook refused to take action when the tweet was cross-posted to its platform.
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