Facebook said on Friday that it would remove ads from pages that contain controversial content, as it tries to protect advertisers from appearing next to offensive material beyond their control.

In a message posted on its Web site, the company wrote: “Our goal is to both preserve the freedoms of sharing on Facebook but also protect people and brands from certain types of content.”

“We know that marketers work hard to promote their brands, and we take their objectives seriously. While we already have rigorous review and removal policies for content against our terms, we recognize we need to do more to prevent situations where ads are displayed alongside controversial Pages and Groups. So we are taking action.”

Facebook said it would begin the manual review for pages containing sensitive content next week with a team of hundreds of employees in offices around the world.