Facebook pulls ads for Trump resorts
They were reinstated after labeling mix-up.
Facebook removed more than 100 ads paid for and posted by The Trump Organization after the social networking giant mistakenly classified them as political in nature and requiring payment disclosures.
Advertisements for the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., the Trump National Doral golf course in Miami, and the Trump Turnberry Resort in Scotland were among the 117 ads removed from Facebook.
Those ads have returned to Facebook after the network was notified by Scotland’s national newspaper The Scotsman that some Trump property posts had been labeled as political.
Facebook launched an investigation, The Scotsman says, after it gave the company a list of pulled advertisements.
Last year, Facebook tightened its ad policy in an effort to prevent a recurrence of the election interference the network was hit with during the 2016 campaigns. Ads are now labeled with “paid for by” information. Facebook users can also now search a political ads archive for more information about who is paying for the posts.
Facebook told The Scotsman its ads are monitored by human reviewers and artificial intelligence and the ads removed in this case were targeted because of Trump’s name. Still in Facebook’s ad archive are ads for the Trump Store advertising Turnberry souvenirs, which were removed because they lacked a “Paid for by” label.
“An error caused these ads to be mistakenly identified as political in nature,” Facebook said in a statement to USA TODAY. The incident comes after Trump and many conservatives have criticized Facebook, Google and Twitter for those online giants’ liberal leanings.
The Trump Organization did not immediately return a request for comment.