Russian support for then candidate Donald Trump began weeks after he announced his candidacy, with troll operatives pumping out supportive tweets at a 10-1 clip in the first three months of his campaign, according to analysis done by The Wall Street Journal.
The Journal's review of the timeline shows support for Trump sooner than originally thought, refuting intelligence reports that advocacy for Trump didn't begin until December of 2015.
Further, Russian trolls pumped out negative tweets about Jeb Bush, considered then to be Trump's top challenger, and Hillary Clinton at equal to greater ratios over the summer of 2015, the Journal reported.
The frequencies and ratios became more acute as the election approached, WSJ reporting that pro-Trump or anti-Hillary tweets were at a 30-1 ratio two weeks out from the election.
Twitter has said there were 2,752 accounts run by the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency troll farm, which sent out 131,000 messages in a two and a half-month period around the November election.
Further, tweets from a vastly bigger network of automated bot accounts were seen 288 million times during that same timeframe, the Journal reported.
Facebook reported that Russian propaganda and fake news was viewed by 126 million users on its platform.
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