Senate reports detail Russia's 'sweeping' campaign to aid Trump

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Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Russia used them all to help Trump, reports show

An all-out social media push by Russia to elect Donald Trump tricked 30 million people into sharing posts and aimed to convince blacks and Latinos not to vote. That's according to Senate-issued reports that found a "sweeping and sustained" effort to boost Trump's candidacy at key moments — think debates, conventions and Election Day — using Facebook, Instagram and more.

Who did the reports? Oxford University fielded one, along with social analysis firm Graphika. A second report came from New Knowledge, a cybersecurity firm. Both debuted Monday.

How did it aim to help Trump? The Oxford report found Russian efforts targeted blacks, Latinos and LGBT people to get voters "to boycott the election, abstain from voting for (Hillary) Clinton, or to spread cynicism about participating in the election in general." Meanwhile, conservatives "were actively encouraged to get behind Trump’s campaign."

Oh, Russians also tried to hack voting systems and stole Clinton campaign emails, the second report found.

How big was this? "Unprecedented," New Knowledge said, reaching 140 million-plus people across all platforms. More than 30 million people shared "computational propaganda" on Facebook and Instagram from 2015 to 2017. Russia's Internet Research Agency, the "troll farm" indicted in February by special counsel Robert Mueller, employed hundreds in the "round-the-clock" campaign.

"Most troublingly," Sen. Richard Burr, Republican chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said of the new data, "it shows that these activities have not stopped."

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