Last year, Twitter announced it would be banning all political advertising on its platform, stating the company believes “political message reach should be earned, not bought.” Despite growing pressure to do the same, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended the company’s policy to run ads from politicians and claimed he didn’t want the platform to stifle political speech. Fast-forward to this week and Zuckerberg has done a 180 on his stance – all thanks to President of the United States, Donald Trump and his use of a Nazi symbol on Facebook.
Speaking of Trump, hear about his tone-deaf photo op amidst BLM protests below:
According to The Guardian, Facebook has removed a number of ads posted to the social media platform by Trump’s re-election campaign because they featured a “symbol used by the Nazis.”
The ads, which have since been removed from Facebook, feature an image of an upside down red triangle with a black border and the caption, “Dangerous MOBS of far-left groups are running through our streets and causing absolute mayhem.”
“They are DESTROYING our cities and rioting – it’s absolute madness…Please add your name IMMEDIATELY to stand with your President and his decision to declare ANTIFA a Terrorist Organisation.”
Apparently, the red triangle was once used by the Nazis as a ‘badge’ to identify political prisoners in concentration camps during the Holocaust.
In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson said, “we removed these posts and ads for violating our policy against organised hate. Our policy prohibits using a banned hate group’s symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol.”
It’s really no surprise Facebook finally decided to take a stand against Trump’s ‘hateful’ political ads. Civil rights leaders, politicians and even the company’s own employees have been calling for Zuckerberg to crack down on the President’s abuse and manipulation of the platform for some time now.
There’s also the fact that this is not the first time the social media platform has been forced to put a muzzle on Trump’s posts. In 2018, Facebook removed a racist ad posted by the President’s re-election campaign that encouraged Americans to vote for Republicans to stop immigrants from entering the country.
The question is: will Facebook follow-through with their policy against organised hate and continue blocking harmful political ads? Was Trump’s Nazi ad the final straw, or just another hands-off response to the complaints?
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