Facebook pulls Trump ad over 'hate' policy breach

Facebook said on Thursday it took down posts and ads run by the re-election campaign of U.S. President Donald Trump for violating its policy against organized hate.

Gavino Garay has more.

"We don't allow symbols that represent hateful organizations or hateful ideologies unless they're put up with context or condemnation." Facebook on Thursday removed dozens of controversial Trump campaign ads that it says violated its 'organized hate' policy.

The ads showed a red inverted triangle, a symbol the Nazis used to identify political prisoners, with text asking Facebook users to sign a petition against antifa, a loosely organized anti-fascist movement.

President Trump and Attorney General William Barr have repeatedly singled out antifa as a major instigator of recent unrest during nationwide anti-racism protests, with little evidence.

Critics quickly called out the ad as anti-Semitic and highly offensive.

Appearing remotely before U.S. lawmakers on Thursday, Facebook's head of Security Policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, said the deletion of such ads is consistent with their policy to remove the symbol, either automatically or manually when flagged by users.

"You obviously want to be careful to allow someone to put up a symbol to condemn it or to discuss it, but in a situation where we don't see either of those, we don't allow it on the platform and we're going to remove it.

That's what we saw in this case with this ad.

And anywhere that that symbol was used, we would take the same actions." A spokesman for the Trump campaign, said in an email that the inverted red triangle is a symbol used by Antifa.

The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish NGO, said that while there have been some antifa who have used the red triangle, it was not a commonly used symbol by the group.

Facebook has previously removed Trump campaign ads, including ones that violated the company's policy against misinformation.