A Facebook ad purchased by a Russian troll farm and posted during the presidential election showed a black woman "dry firing" a rifle, an apparent attempt to stoke racial tensions in white communities and encourage African American violence, The Washington Post reported.
About 3,000 ads were purchased during the election by a group known as the Internet Research Agency, which U.S. intelligence says is a "state-funded organization that blogs on tweets on behalf of the Kremlin."
The ads focused on racial issues, the LGBT movement, gun rights, and illegal immigrants. Facebook has turned over the material to members of Congress, as they are investigating the matter.
The report comes days after CNN reported one of the ads focused on the Black Lives Matter movement and was targeted to users in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore.
The woman in the ad with the rifle pulled the trigger of the weapon without a bullet in the chamber, according to the Post.
"These ads are racist propaganda, pure and simple," Malkia Cyril, a Black Lives Matter activist in Oakland, Calif., told the newspaper. "Whether they appear to be in support or in opposition to black civil rights is irrelevant. Their aim is to subvert democracy for everyone by using anti-black stereotypes — an idea as old as America."
Facebook is under increasing pressure from Washington to address Russian meddling in the election, and early Monday said it plans to add 1,000 new moderators to manually review ads and purchases. The social media site also said it is making it harder for advertisers and groups to run election-related ads in the future.
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