FB pulls Trump ads which used Nazi symbol

San Francisco, June 19: Facebook on Thursday removed ads by President Donald Trump's campaign containing a symbol used by Nazi Germany, the latest move in a heated battle over inflammatory political content on social media. The leading social network, which has drawn fire over its hands-off approach to political speech in recent months, said the campaign messages with an inverted red triangle and used in Nazi camps violated a policy against “organised hate” and were taken down.

“We don't allow symbols that represent hateful organisations or hateful ideologies unless they are put up with context or condemnation,” Facebook head of security policy Nathaniel Gleicher said at a House of Representatives committee hearing.

“That’s what we saw in this case with this ad, and anywhere that that symbol is used we would take the same actions.”

Facebook’s move comes as it faced intense pressure to remove incendiary comments from the president which critics said promoted violence.

Recently Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg reiterated that the platform will steer away from moderating political speech but would enforce its rules barring content promoting physical harm. In a tweet from a “Trump War Room”, the campaign contended the upside-down red triangle symbol at issue was “widely used” in reference to left-wing activist group Antifa. Watchdog group Media Matters replied with a tweet saying that is not the case.

Since early this month, the Trump campaign has been running “fearmongering” ads about what it says is a far-left group called “antifa”, according to Media Matters.

The upside-down red triangle was apparently a new addition to the ad, according to Media Matters, which found at least 88 ads on Facebook pages with that symbol.

“Despite violating Facebook's terms of service, the ads were approved by Facebook in the first place,” said Media Matters president Angelo Carusone.

Tim Murtaugh, a Trump campaign spokesman, said 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”.

Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, said the president's campaign “needs to learn its history, as ignorance is no excuse for using Nazirelated symbols”.