> It's not about persuading you from "russian bot farms." Which I think is a ridiculous and unnecessarily reductive viewpoint.
Not an accidental 'viewpoint'. A deliberate framing to exactly exclude what you pointed out from the discourse. Sure therer are dummies who actually believe it, but they are not serious humans.
If the supposedly evil russians or their bots are the enemy then people pay much less attention to the real problems at home.
There are people whose job it is day in day out to influence Western opinion. You can see their work under any comment about Ukraine on twitter, they're pretty easy to recognize but they flood the zone.
CNN/CIA/NBC/ABC/FBI? etc?
Why you list every news group except Fox, which dwarfs all those networks, is a self report.
It's a game all empires/sides are playing. In russia we are the boogeyman -- everyone needs one! it helps to stifle dissent.
I reacted a bit to the OP when focusing on only one side.