Facebook has pulled an ad by the “Women for Trump” campaign off of its platform for supposedly falling foul of rules preventing the targeting of “personal attributes.”
The Women for Trump coalition started running the below graphic as part of a Facebook campaign on August 16, appealing to “strong women” who they wanted to attract as potential supporters.
“The Women for Trump Coalition needs the support of strong women like you!” pic.twitter.com/vR2QzNAFq5
— God ✝️ Country🇺🇸 Freedom🇺🇸 Deplorable 🤪 (@therealme2756) August 21, 2019
However, it caught the eye of Judd Legum, the founder and editor of the leftist media outlet ThinkProgress. He was also the Research Director for Hillary Clinton’s failed 2008 Presidential campaign.
He wrote on his Popular Information blog that the ad is “clearly prohibited, but Facebook allowed it to run.” This was obviously upsetting to Legum, so he ran to Facebook to try and get them to shut the innocuous ad down. Not surprisingly, it was soon pulled.
“We’ve notified the campaign that the ads violate policy. They can’t continue to run unless fixed,” a Facebook spokesperson told them.
The specific content policy that the Women for Trump ad fell foul of rules that prohibit the targeting of personal attributes. According to Facebook, ads must not include “direct or indirect assertions or implications about a person’s… gender identity.”
As conservative commentator Natalie Winters pointed out, this means that the ad was banned for referring to women! Winters went on to describe Facebook’s policy as “ludicrous” and noted that it is simply being “used to suppress conservative content.”
We at National File certainly agree. How can Facebook even allow advertisements to be targeted at men or women in the first place, if those very same advertisements cannot refer to that very same target audience?
Matt Margolis of PJ Media argued that “if you can create an audience for women, it stands to reason that you can create an ad that’s designed to get clicks from women”:
Can anyone explain what is so offensive about a campaign trying to build up a coalition of female voters? Barack Obama had an official “Women For Obama” campaign initiative in 2012. I guess things have become so politically correct now that such things can’t be done anymore?
In today’s politically correct climate, targeting women for being women might offend people who identify as women… or something. Or perhaps Facebook is just coming up with any excuse it can to prevent Trump from running ads.
The Women For Trump campaign said on Twitter that the decision by Facebook to take down their ad was “outrageous”:
Election engineering already.😳
This is outrageous and #bigtech needs to be held accountable.
Never fear. They can’t hold us back and they certainly won’t stop the women who ♥️ our President @realDonaldTrump. We will conquer and overcome ladies!https://t.co/0Ums1JlAYX
— Women for Trump (@WomenforTrump) August 21, 2019
Donald Trump Jr agreed, describing the situation as “BS”:
The BS from Big Tech continues. #StopTheBias
Facebook Bans ‘Women For Trump’ Ads. https://t.co/41DwyX1a3n
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) August 20, 2019
Facebook has been recently upping the ante in removing ads that potentially violate its policies. They told Gizmodo that the system remains automated, with humans training the AI, “and in some cases, review specific ads”:
We know that machines and human reviewers make mistakes, which is why the ad review system and enforcement aren’t perfect and we won’t catch every ad.
Earlier this week, Facebook practically admitted that they are censoring conservatives on their platform in a report, which stated that while they know the concerns of conservatives, they will not address them.