I think the lesson from 2016 is that it’s easier and cheaper to use social media advertising and posting to manipulate than actually penetrating digital voting infrastructure.
Not only were no votes changed by anything Russia did, it is highly dubious that any opinions were changed by what Russia did.
Trolls on the Internet are not, in fact, the most persuasive advertising force by orders of magnitude that the world has ever seen.
A person who might be open to ideas, closed off pulling the lever for someone based on out right lies. Someone who might have stayed home or voted for someone else.
I think that's a real possibility.
Russian operations stretched far beyond a social media campaign.
Where does it show the votes that were changed?
If you want to punch straw men, go find yourself a farm.
It's clear that concrete actions were manipulated by the Russian campaign, and that false ideas spread by it gained currency. It is pretty clear that it affected opinion, belief, and action, even if not in a way which changed partisan preferences.
> Trolls on the Internet are not, in fact, the most persuasive advertising force by orders of magnitude that the world has ever seen.
Probably not; lots of low budget groups leveraging current events are quite efficient compared to major campaigns, and that's without carefully crafting propaganda without concern for truth and with freedom to misrepresent origin; Russia’s operation may be much more cost effective than major campaigns especially if you consider just the known as spend and not other supporting costs, but that's not unusual.