Facebook, which is under fire in several countries for issues such as data privacy, fake news, and hate speech, sold advertisements on its platform comparing Covid-19 and vaccines to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust and earned more than $750,000.
According to CNN, the ads were sold and run by a number of Facebook pages, including “Ride the Red Wave”, which promoted clothing with messages such as “I’m originally from America but I currently reside in 1941 Germany,” and “make hanging traitors great again,” The former was removed from Facebook for violating its vaccine misinformation policies. According to the report, the page, which has fewer than 10,000 followers, spent more than $280,000 on advertisements.
Another page, “Next Level Goods,” advertised a “proudly unpoisoned” t-shirt next to an image of a syringe. While the page paid $2,500 for that anti-vaccine ad, the report stated that it has spent more than $500,000 on ads on the platform.
According to a Facebook spokesperson, the ads comparing the US Covid-19 response and vaccines to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, as well as the ad suggesting the vaccine was poison, violated Facebook’s vaccine misinformation policies.
