They've found that Russian influence only reached a small number of users and that mainstream media had a much larger influence.
Abstract:
There is widespread concern that foreign actors are using social media to interfere in elections worldwide. Yet data have been unavailable to investigate links between exposure to foreign influence campaigns and political behavior. Using longitudinal survey data from US respondents linked to their Twitter feeds, we quantify the relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and attitudes and voting behavior in the 2016 US election. We demonstrate, first, that exposure to Russian disinformation accounts was heavily concentrated: only 1% of users accounted for 70% of exposures. Second, exposure was concentrated among users who strongly identified as Republicans. Third, exposure to the Russian influence campaign was eclipsed by content from domestic news media and politicians. Finally, we find no evidence of a meaningful relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior. The results have implications for understanding the limits of election interference campaigns on social media.
My problem is that even this article still takes the claim "there was a well-funded Russian disinformation campaign" at face value.
https://hexbear.net/post/244417/comment/3137238
That's fair, but it is still a good piece of evidence to dispel the weird myth liberals have built up.
Honestly it feels like if the intelligence communities of other big countries know what they're doing, they're doing CIA-style bot spam wherever and whenever just to stay competitive
But to assert that they have a specific goal rather than general obfuscation and propaganda without any evidence is fucking stupid
:LIB:s try to understand the difference between Russian state-sanctioned intelligence op and privately-owned social media bot farm challenge level: impossible