Russian Trolls Reportedly Reached 126 Million Americans During 2016 Election

It seems like the more the Russian election meddling unveils, the more troublesome the details become. According to recent reports, Russian agents might have influenced around 126 million Americans during the 2016 election. That’s 40 percent of the U.S. population and a full ten times the number of users exposed to Russian ads.

The details were obtained by The Verge as reportedly written on a prepared testimony by Facebook to Congress. The numbers indicate that in the months before the 2016 election, around half the Facebook users in the U.S. were exposed to the trolls. The social network is apparently going to deliver the statement in front of U.S. representatives on Tuesday.

“The foreign interference we saw is reprehensible and outrageous and opened a new battleground for our company, our industry and our society,” the prepared statement reads. “That foreign actors, hiding behind fake accounts, abused our platform and other internet services to try to sow division and discord — and to try to undermine our election process — is an assault on democracy, and it violates all of our values.”

Aside from Facebook, it would seem that the Russian agents were also able to infiltrate Instagram, with the company deleting over 170 accounts tied to these trolls. These accounts apparently posted 120,000 contents in total.

Twitter is also reporting much higher numbers of Russian accounts on its platform than previously reported, USA Today reports. Earlier, it was 201, but now it’s 36,756.

It would seem that every time these social media companies look into exactly how far they were infiltrated by Kremlin spies, the figures get bigger. The goal of these Russian trolls is unmistakable, as well. All the posts, comments, shares, likes, re-Tweets, and ads were intended to make sure that Americans chose Donald Trump as their president and divide the U.S. like never before.