The page and an associated event inspired widespread criticism of the company after  militia member, and white terrorist  Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, thought it was a wizard wheeze to shoot and killed two protesters.

The Kenosha Guard page was flagged to Facebook at least 455 times after its creation, but Facebook ignored them.

In a company wide meeting on Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the site remained on the platform because of "an operational mistake".

According to an internal report viewed by BuzzFeed News, it had been cleared by four moderators, who felt that a call to bring weapons to a demonstration was not an incitement to violence. The page and event were eventually removed from the platform on Wednesday — several hours after people started dying.

After BuzzFeed News published its story about Facebook's internal report, Mark Zuckerberg made the same comments in a public forum.

The page clearly violated Facebook's rules against violent militias, Zuckerberg acknowledged in a video posted Friday to his Facebook profile, and that "a bunch of people" had even reported the page prior to the killing of two protesters, Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber.

Just last week, Facebook announced it would crack down on militia organisations that advocated for violence or spoke about the potential for violence. But in its first week of implementation, the policy's lack of enforcement led to the spread of violent messages on the platform linked to the events in Kenosha, where protests erupted after the police shooting of Jacob Blake.