Russian trolls tried to distract voters with music tweets in 2016

And presumably the "Western" intelligence agencies are doing something. We have evidence of it happening in South Koreaa around 2010, and it's hard to imagine other agencies didn't learn from it's success.

but, how are "quality tweets" not that different from "junk tweets"

So, your question is orthogonal - it is impossible to answer.

Intent and strategy:

> By constructing a timeline of the IRA messages, they found left-leaning IRA trolls posted large volumes of entertainment content in their artificial liberal community and shifted away from political content late in the campaign. Simultaneously, conservative trolls were targeting their community with increases in political content. The effort would have encouraged the right to vote and the left to ignore politics.

Always difficult to draw direct causality though.

Propaganda is real, it does work, and it is a problem. I struggle to explain why anyone would brush it off, other than it happens to align with their own goals. An electorate that is perpetually thinking and voting with activated amygdalas is not a good thing.

Secondly, HN is full of posts about the ineffectiveness of ad campaigns, advertising in general and even targeted ads at influencing people heavily. These are campaigns often orchestrated by multibillion dollar corporations that hire PhDs of all kinds to tailor their messages. Yet on the other hand -and especially since the media "misinformation" fiasco of resentment over Trump's victory against the elite's better judgement of what's best for the masses own decision making- suddenly any minor foreign group can somehow magically brainwash millions of Americans and others into making all sorts of decisions.

I don't at all doubt that foriegn actors use social networks to spread memes and attempts at viral lies. I've seen plenty of examples of this in action. Its influence level however is being absurdly exaggerated and in very hypocritical, very self serving and ideologically charged ways. All the more laughable is the idea that any of this is something new or outside the area of what supposedly respectable major media organizations would do. Does anyone remember anything about how news sources operated before the advent of the internet? Does anyone recall the innumerable times major publications toed grotesque government lie machines for the sake of specific interests?