Facebook on Friday reversed a ban on adverts for a Holocaust movie which it initially said had violated the social media site’s policies related to race.
Earlier this month, Joshua Newton, the director of Beautiful Blue Eyes, told Rolling Stone that Facebook notified the movie’s distributor that it had banned promoting or advertising the film on the platform.
Facebook said the movie’s title, which refers to the eye color of a child who was killed by the Nazis — a major scene in the movie — violated its policy against content that "includes direct or indirect assertions or implications about a person’s race."
Newton told Rolling Stone that his parents are Holocaust survivors and the movie was based on his late father’s life.
"This is the action of haters, and there are sadly many in our society, who seek to damage the film in order to trivialize the Holocaust," Newton told the news site. "Surely, Mark Zuckerberg
...the Peewee Herman clone who owns Facebook. He's got more money than Croesus and thinks he should be regulated by the government because it does such a nifty job with all the other stuff it regulates. Until it does, he's not going to stop doing the things he sez need regulated...did not intend this to happen," he added.
The filmmakers appealed the ban, but Facebook initially upheld the decision.
"After a requested review of your Facebook account, we confirmed it didn’t comply with our Advertising Policies or other standards. You can no longer advertise using Facebook Products. This is our final decision," a note to the movie’s distributor read, according to the report.
The advertisements for the movie, including trailers were "permanently restricted."
But following the Rolling Stone report, Facebook’s parent company Meta told Ars Technica that it had reversed the ban.
"We reviewed the ads and page in question and determined that the enforcement was made in error, so we lifted the restriction," a spokesperson told the tech news site.
The production company did not immediately comment on the latest developments.
Beautiful Blue Eyes, originally known as Iron Cross, focuses on a retired police officer who seeks Dire Revenge against an elderly man he’s convinced is the Nazi who slaughtered his family during the Holocaust.