Washington State Patrol ads appear on controversial Breitbart website

Recruiting ads for the Washington State Patrol have been showing up on the conservative site Breitbart, and the police agency says they’re not happy about it.

A Reddit user first pointed out the ads to the state patrol Monday. The state patrol responded, saying the ads are placed using an algorithm based on people’s interests.

That means if someone likes law enforcement and conservative news on Facebook, the algorithm would think they are related and start posting the ads in similar places.

After looking into the issue, a spokesman for the patrol said some of the content on Breitbart is not what they want to be associated with, the Tacoma News Tribune reports.

The state patrol is now asking the Seattle-based ad firm they use to stop Breitbart from running their ads, according to the Tribune.

Breitbart is a far-right leaning news and opinion site. It’s founding members include Steve Bannon, who served as White House chief strategist from January through mid-August, before resigning. Bannon had pushed President Trump to follow through on campaign promises and was the man behind some of the most controversial efforts, including the travel ban and decision to pull out of the Paris Climate agreement.

The Conservative site also employed Milo Yiannopoulos as a senior editor, before Yiannopoulos resigned over his “poor choice of words” caught on camera. Yiannopoulos has been associated with the alt-right movement and has been criticized for comments he has made about Black Lives Matter protesters, Muslims, and feminists and transgender people. He was banned from Twitter after what The Washington Post described as a “wave of racist abuse” that targeted Leslie Jones, a black comedian known for her role in “Ghostbusters” and who stars on Saturday Night Live.

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