WASHINGTON — Facebook on Thursday said it removed some ads being run by President Donald Trump's re-election campaign because it had violated the platform's policies on hate.
The ads highlighted what the Trump campaign called "Dangerous MOBS of far-left groups" and featured an image of a red upside triangle. That symbol was used by the Nazis during the Holocaust to identify political prisoners in concentration camps, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the ads were removed for violating the company's policy against organized hate.
"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 spokesperson said in a statement.
The Trump campaign responded to criticism of the ads earlier in the day, claiming the symbol was "widely used by Antifa" and not in the Anti-Defamation League's Hate Symbols database.
Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted that the Nazis used red triangles to identify their political victims in concentration camps. "Using it to attack political opponents is highly offensive," Greenblatt said.
The ads were posted by the president's official account, the vice president's official account and the official Trump campaign, Facebook's Ad Library shows. Other versions of the campaign ad, with the same text but a different image, have not been removed.
As Facebook faces criticism for its policy of allowing politicians to post false information, including about voting, the company is launching an effort to boost U.S. voter turnout.
Facebook's employees recently publicly criticized CEO Mark Zuckerberg for deciding to leave up posts by President Donald Trump that suggested police-brutality protesters in Minneapolis could be shot.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
