Facebook has sold ads promoting anti-vaccine messages, comparing the US government’s response to Covid-19 to Nazi Germany, questioning the outcome of the 2020 election and even pushing political violence.

The ads have been served by merchandise companies who have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Facebook over the past few years.

Fox News personality Lara Logan sparked outrage on Monday by comparing Dr.Anthony Fauci to a notorious Nazi doctor known as the “Angel of Death” – around the same time that commercials were being advertised. posted on Facebook promoting a sweater with the words “I” I am originally from America but currently residing in Germany in 1941. “

Another ad likened the deployment of vaccines to the Holocaust – which falsely and ridiculously implies that they are part of an attempt to massacre people on a massive scale.

The announcement was carried through a Facebook page called “Ride the Red Wave”. Earlier this year, the page ran ads for a t-shirt with the words “Make Hanging Traitors Even More Great.”

Facebook has earned more than $ 280,000 from ads run by “Ride the Red Wave” since May, according to data reviewed by CNN. The page has fewer than 10,000 followers, but by paying Facebook, the people who run it can potentially reach millions of Americans.

“Next Level Goods,” another page, run by another company, has spent more than $ 500,000 on Facebook ads since 2019. The company regularly uses Facebook to advertise anti-vaccine t-shirts.

At the end of August, an advertising purchase promoted a t-shirt with the inscription “Proudly Unpoisoned” next to the image of a syringe. The company paid Facebook about $ 2,500 to reach up to 450,000 Facebook users with the vaccine ad. According to Facebook data, the ads were viewed the most by Facebook users in Texas, Florida, and California.

A spokesperson for Meta, the parent company of Facebook, said ads comparing America’s Covid-19 response to Nazi Germany, comparing vaccines to the Holocaust, and the ad suggesting the vaccine was poison would go against Facebook’s vaccine disinformation policies.

However, since these abusive ads were being served on its platform, Facebook’s detection systems apparently missed them.

CNN also asked about the ad titled “Make Hanging Traitors Great Again,” but Facebook did not say the ad violated its policies.

Publicly, Facebook has touted the supposedly positive role it plays in encouraging Americans to get vaccinated. Guy Rosen, the company’s vice president of integrity, wrote a blog post in July berating President Joe Biden for alleging platforms like Facebook were killing people. Biden then withdrew from the claim.

Laura Edelson, a NYU researcher who tracks the Facebook ad, told CNN that Facebook doesn’t manually review all the ads it sells, which is part of the reason why ads that break its rules are allowed to run on the platform.

Facebook, she said, also appears to have a lighter approach to moderating ads from seemingly commercial pages, like those selling t-shirts, compared to pages associated with political campaigns.

“You’ll find a lot more really strong rhetoric printed on a T-shirt than what you’ll see in a direct persuasion ad,” she told CNN.

The-CNN-Wire
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