For about ten months, I've followed this hyped-up story of the Russian Oligarch troll farms involvement in the 2016 election.
My observations?
1. This is absolutely NOT a Russian government operation. If it was, you would not have been so easily led back to the front door of the troll farm. It's a commercial operation, financed by one wealthy Russian billionaire. Putin might occasionally have lunch with the guy, but I don't see this as being a Russian government operation.
2. Based on everything said....less than one million dollars was spent on this whole thing. If you think about it....if you'd tried to do this same thing in the US....it would have cost you $300 million minimum.....which says a lot about them recruiting a couple of guys for a reasonable price and just giving them one single boss with simple instructions.
3. Do that many Americans even review news items off Facebook and Twitter? So far, no one can cite any evidence that five-percent or ten-percent of American society is paying attention to the troll-manufactured news bits. That's the odd thing about this whole story. It's hyped-up by CNN, the WaPo crowd, the NY Times, and MSNBC, with Sunday talk-show enthusiasts running scared. But there's simply not any real evidence that this effort by the Oligarch trolls has succeed at anything
4. Finally, what happens in the spring of 2020 during the primary period? Will the Oligarch trolls come out in force? Will they hype up Bernie Sanders? Will they hype Trump? Will they hype anything? It's a big unknown.
