Facebook is taking down census ads that redirect to President Donald Trump’s campaign website following push back from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
On Thursday, Facebook emailed a statement about the ads in the wake of Pelosi’s press conference. In addition to being scrutinized by Pelosi, Facebook also received an emailed complaint from Vanita Gupta—president of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
The social network confirmed its intent to remove the ads “prevent confusion around the official U.S. Census.”
Facebook said in the statement that the ads violated their census policy, “There are policies in place to prevent confusion around the official U.S. census and this is an example of those being enforced.”
Reports have indicated that over 1,000 ads were circulating on Facebook for Trump’s campaign.
Facebook’s decision to remove Trump’s ads follows Pelosi’s speech on Thursday. As previously reported on IJR, the House speaker criticized the ads and the social network for allowing the ads to circulate.
According to The New York Times, the ad read, “President Trump needs you to take the Official 2020 Congressional District Census today. We need to hear from you before the most important election in American history,” the ad said. The campaign asked followers to ‘respond NOW’ to help our campaign messaging strategy, with an appeal to text ‘TRUMP to 8022.”
#MarkZuckerberg—you said Facebook would ban lies about the census. But now you’re running +1000 Trump ads tricking people about the census!
— Sacha Baron Cohen (@SachaBaronCohen) March 5, 2020
Mark, did you lie about not allowing lies?
FB is not “bringing people together,” it’s ripping democracy apart!https://t.co/idCYES4GUB
While the ads were labeled U.S. Census, Pelosi argued the weren’t official ads.
“We’re very concerned about what Facebook has done. Facebook has something with the authority of the President of the United States, faking its way into looking like something to do with the Census. It is not,” Pelosi said on Thursday.
She continued, “And when we – they were asked, they said it was consistent with their policy, even though it was a false transmission. It wasn’t an official Census.”