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Facebook allows organisations to target adverts at people who declare an interest in topics such as “how to burn Jews” and “Hitler did nothing wrong”.

The investigative news organisation ProPublica y that it was able to use Facebook’s ad-buying service to direct adverts to almost 2300 people who expressed an interest in anti-Semitic topics. Other categories included “Jew hater” and “why Jews ruin the world.” Facebook’s self-service ad-buying system describe all of these categories as “fields of study”.

ProPublica journalists paid Facebook $30 to place three adverts in the newsfeeds of users who had expressed an interest in the above. All three ads were approved within 15 minutes, although Facebook later removed the categories after ProPublica contacted the social media giant for comment.

The anti-Semitic ad categories seem to have been generated because Facebook users had listed those themes as either an interest, an employer or a “field of study” in their profiles. Facebook’s ad-placing algorithms automatically turn users’ self-declared interests into advertising categories.

The anti-Semitic groups had very small audiences, indicating that only a handful of Facebook users had declared an interested in those topics. There were so few potential viewers that Facebook automatically suggested that ProPublica add related interest groups, including “German Schutzstaffel”, more commonly known as the Nazi SS; and “Nazi Party”. These two groups had a combined audience of almost 6000 users.

Facebook has also come under fire for allowing fake accounts to place adverts that may have sought to influence the US presidential election. Last week, Facebook admitted that ‘inauthentic’ accounts, thought to be operated out of Russia, had placed $100,000 worth of ads between June 2015 and May 2017. These adverts “appeared to focus on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum – touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights”, wrote Facebook .

Facebook has since shut down these fake accounts, but not before they were able to post around 3000 adverts. These findings add weight to the ongoing investigation into whether Russia actively tried to sway the result of the 2016 presidential election.

Responding to a request from 51���� for a comment on this story, Facebook . “As people fill in their education or employer on their profile, we have found a small percentage of people who have entered offensive responses, in violation of our policies,” it wrote.

“To help ensure that targeting is not used for discriminatory purposes, we are removing these self-reported targeting fields until we have the right processes in place to help prevent this issue.”