Enabling further research of information operations on Twitter

Yes, they'd deny comment, avoid the question, give a completely unrelated answer, etc. But they avoided actual lying.

What was especially rare was lying to gain something, as opposed to, for example, getting out of a scandal. There are people now gearing up to give me contrarian examples of politician X telling that story how they were shot at in Belgrade, etc. But the simple fact that we remember these episodes proves their extraordinary nature.

So I'd say the main problem with your comment, among many others, is this cynical view that everything is as terrible as it can be, anyway. If that were true, we'd have lost already and the US would be indistinguishable from, say, Yemen.

Once you agree that there is something like a political culture, or at least there could be, your other claim seems to be that the internet just doesn't matter. Because people shouldn't use it for information, or because it just is a space seperate from "the real world" in your mind.

But just as nobody is ever influenced by advertising and yet the practice continues, everyone thinks it's a stupid idea to get your news from Twitter but it just happens to be one of many channels that has an impact on people's opinions.