Philando Castile’s Death Exploited by Russian Trolls

Russian trolls exploited the death of Philando Castile, an unarmed black man shot by police in 2016, according to a CNN report. Soon after his death, the man’s mother, Mica Grimm, and a close-knit community of activists noticed an event advertised on Facebook to honor Castile—but they couldn’t figure out who was behind the campaign. They soon confronted the organizer of the Facebook page where the event was being advertised, which was called “Don’t Shoot,” and took control of it after growing suspicious about the people behind the page. It was later discovered that the people running the campaign were Russians posing as Black Lives Matter activists. “They're basically taking advantage of what we're trying to do as a country to move forward and using it as a way to manipulate us into civil war,” Grimm said. “I'm not sure. I mean, that's kind of extreme, but they're definitely trying to use America's race relations against itself.”