88 ads from the Trump campaign with a Nazi symbol targeting political opponents.
Media Matters ✔ @mmfa
88 is a white supremacist code for “Heil Hitler.”
This isn’t a dog whistle, it’s a bullhorn — and an attempt to incite violence against Black-led uprisings. https://twitter.com/mmfa/status/1273644108561686530 …Facebook let the Trump campaign run 88 ads with inverted red triangle — an infamous Nazi symbol https://www.mediamatters.org/facebook/facebook-let-trump-campaign-run-ads-inverted-red-triangle-infamous-nazi-symbol …
Facebook on Thursday took down Trump campaign ads against antifa that prominently featured a symbol used by Nazis to designate political prisoners, a spokesperson for the company confirmed to The Hill.
“We removed these posts and ads for violating our policy against organized hate," Facebook said in a statement. "Our policy prohibits using a banned hate group's symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol.”
Bend The Arc: Jewish Action, a progressive advocacy group, similarly condemned the use of the symbol.
"This isn’t just one post," it wrote on Twitter. "This is dozens of carefully targeted ads from the official pages of Mike Pence, Donald Trump, and Team Trump. All paid for by Trump and the Republican National Committee. All spreading lies and genocidal imagery."
Facebook has previously been criticized for its hands-off approach to political advertising, which it declines to fact check. These posts, however, were removed for violating the platform's organized hate policy.
Additionally, the first sentence of the ad has 14 words, a number that is used as shorthand for a famous white supremacist slogan and often combined with 88.
It is entirely possible that the numbers of ads and words in their first sentence are a coincidence, and the Trump campaign declined to comment.
This is not the first time that Trump and his campaign have been accused of using fascist dog whistles. Just last week, while tweeting about officials dispersing protesters, the president abbreviated the U.S. Secret Service to S.S., the common shorthand for the Nazi Party’s paramilitary Schutzstaffel.
metmike: It's pretty sad that Facebook has stepped in to regulate Trump ads because they had a symbol being used by Antifa, which Trump was targeting.
But even crazier, is the interpretation that Trump supposedly, intentionally used 14 words and ran the add 88 times because those are special numbers with a secret white supremacist code meaning/slogan, one of them means "Heil Hitler" and when he abbreviated the Secret Service with SS, he didn't really mean Secret Service he meant Nazi Party’s paramilitary Schutzstaffel.
But how is it perfectly acceptable for this person to tweet a disgusting person attack of Trump being a racist/white supremacist with ludicrous reasoning? That's not hate speech?
Twitter regulating and taking down recent questionable tweets by Trump is quite possibly them setting the stage for suspending his account ahead of the election. Their policy indicates that after they regulate or censor several tweets they will suspend that account.
Twitter has been under tremendous pressure to censor Trumps tweets and suspend his account for quite awhile.
In the current environment, especially with the election coming up, we will see if they go in that direction finally.
Updated 9:24 AM ET, Wed October 16, 2019
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/16/tech/twitter-trump-rules/index.html
London (CNN Business)Twitter will continue to take a forgiving approach to objectionable tweets by world leaders, arguing that their messages are often of public interest.
The social media platform sought to clarify its rules for politicians Tuesday after coming under pressure from Senator Kamala Harris, a Democratic presidential candidate, to suspend President Donald Trump's account.
"We want to make it clear today that the accounts of world leaders are not above our policies entirely," Twitter said in a blog post, adding that part of its mission is to allow people to "engage their leaders directly."
Twitter (TWTR) said it was sticking to a policy first laid out in June.
Under those rules, tweets by world leaders that violate the platform's policies will stay online if they have a "clear public interest value." In some cases, Twitter will place the tweet behind a note that provides context.
It said "direct interactions with fellow public figures, comments on political issues of the day, or foreign policy saber-rattling on economic or military issues are generally not in violation" of the rules.
Kamala Harris calls on Twitter CEO to suspend Donald Trump
Yet the company has drawn some red lines that apply even to world leaders. It will take action if tweets promote terrorism, include private information or intimate photos, engage in child sexual exploitation or promote self-harm.
Twitter will also act when direct threats of violence are made against an individual. However, it said that "context matters" and that interactions between public figures would likely not qualify.
"We recognize that we're operating in an increasingly complex and polarized political culture," the blog post said. "These are constantly evolving challenges and we'll keep our policies and approach under advisement."
Twitter has come under intense pressure from Democrats to crack down on Trump's tweets, and calls for action have grown louder in recent weeks after Trump used his account to attack key figures in the impeachment probe underway in the House of Representatives. The company has not yet labeled any of the president's tweets as violating its policies.