The move is surprising because Facebook has so far refused to censor posts from politicians under the orders of Mark Zuckerburg.  But it does seem that the new adverts were pushing it.

The ads featured an inverted red triangle, which was used by Nazis to identify political opponents including communists, social democrats and liberals at concentration camps.
Facebook said in a statement. "Our policy prohibits using a banned hate group's symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol.

The symbol was included in 88 ads run by pages for President Trump, Vice President Pence and "Team Trump" alongside text warning readers of "Dangerous MOBS of far-left groups" and asking them to sign a petition against antifa, a loose group of radical activists that use direct action to fight against fascism. Just the ads on Trump's page were many 950,000 times before being taken down.

The Trump campaign is defending using the image, claiming that was a "common Antifa symbol" although the US press has been quick to point out it really isn’t. The most common symbol used by left wing protestors is a black and red flag or three arrows inside a circle. Besides there is no actual Antifa organisation and identification of the “group” is only made by far-right wing groups who need an enemy.

Tim Murtaugh, director of communications for the Trump campaign said the image is also not included in the Anti-Defamation League's database of symbols of hate."

The ADL pointed out that its database is not a database of historical Nazi symbols, but of symbols commonly used by modern extremists in the US.

Facebook's removal of Trump's ads could escalate tensions between the White House and Silicon Valley.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was criticised last month for not taking action on a Trump post that said "looting" leads to "shooting," amid racial unrest across the country. Twitter flagged the same Trump post on its platform as glorifying violence.

So far though there has been no sign that Zuckerberg has changed his stance on censoring inflammatory posts or outright lies if they come from politicians.