Social media giant Facebook, which is in the eye of the storm in several countries over issues such as data privacy, fake news and hate speech, sold advertisements comparing Covid-19 and vaccines to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust on its platform and earned over $750,000 (Rs 5.6 crore).
A report by CNN said the ads were being sold and run by a number of Facebook pages like "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 of which was taken down by Facebook over violating its vaccine misinformation policies. The page, which has fewer than 10,000 followers, spent over $280,000 (Rs 2.1 crore) for the advertisements, the report said.
Another page, "Next Level Goods", promoted a t-shirt "proudly unpoisoned" next to an image of a syringe. While the page spent $2,500 for that particular anti-vaccine ad, the report said it has spent over $500,000 (Rs 3.75 crore) on ads on the platform.
A spokesperson for the company told the publication that the ads comparing the US Covid-19 response and vaccines to Nazi Germany and Holocaust, and the ad suggesting the vaccine was poison went against Facebook's vaccine misinformation policies.
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(Published 03 December 2021, 08:20 IST)
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