Shortly after news broke about the high school massacre in Parkland, Florida, Twitter Inc. bots suspected of being of Russian origin took up the divisive debate of gun control in the U.S., according to experts.

Two companies that track disinformation found that within just an hour of the tragedy, which claimed the lives of 17 people, hundreds of tweets appeared debating gun laws. Some of the tweets used the first name of the shooter Nikolas, and others used hashtags such as #gunreformnow and #guncontrolnow.

One company, New Knowledge, which tracks disinformation on social media, told the New York Times that such bots wasted no time in posting about controversial and divisive issues.

“This is pretty typical for them, to hop on breaking news like this,” said Chief Executive Jonathon Morgan. “The bots focus on anything that is divisive for Americans. Almost systematically.”

Apparently, the objective of such posts was to further foment disagreement regarding the gun control debate, creating more discord between Second Amendment advocates and those that feel it’s time to amend the amendment.

Hamilton 68, which was also created to track disinformation campaigns, said last week that soon after the shooting there was a surge of tweets from “propaganda bots” related to Russia-linked Twitter accounts, according to Wired.

According to the Times report the propaganda doesn’t just pick Twitter as its go-to platform. Russia-backed campaigns also create public groups on Facebook Inc. and also post conspiracy-type videos on YouTube.

When focusing just on Twitter, the people designated to spot disinformation bots said they looked for unusual activity from certain accounts, watching as a deluge of posts and comments would come from an account regarding the shooting and gun control.

Since it became known that Russian-based operations have been using tech platforms to sow the seeds of division in the U.S., tech giants such as Twitter, Facebook and Google LLC have promised to crackdown on such activity.

But according to reports, it’s not only the biggest issues in the U.S. that the bots are now exploiting. Another was NFL player Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand during the national anthem. The objective is to post anything that “heightens frustration and anger,” said Karen North, a social media professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

The bots, she said, are “going to find any contentious issue, and instead of making it an opportunity for compromise and negotiation, they turn it into an unsolvable issue bubbling with frustration.”

The experts believe that anything that stokes passionate, divisiveness or even extremist views in the U.S. is prime hunting ground. According to the reports, they might adjust their opinion at any time, with some bots now bringing up the issue of the shooting in Florida as a “false flag” or covert operation. Indeed, until it was taken down, a video charging the shooting was a conspiracy of some sort became the No. 1 trending video on YouTube.

Image: Andreas Eldh via Flickr