Russian-linked automated Twitter accounts, or bots, retweeted Donald Trump almost half a million times in the final weeks before the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, Twitter told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The 50,000 automated accounts the company determined had ties to Russia sent more than 2 million election-related tweets between September 1 and November 15, 2016. [...]

The 50,000 accounts retweeted Wikileaks almost 200,000 times during the ten-week period, Twitter (TWTR)said.

When hacked emails from the personal accounts of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta were first released by Wikileaks in October 2016, it prompted the hashtag #PodestaEmails. The automated accounts were responsible for nearly 5% of all tweets containing the hashtag, Twitter found.

Automated Twitter accounts that retweet or tweet the same thing en masse can create talking points that appear to have more support than they actually do.