This whole Russian Bots narrative is really tiring. It has been ten fucking years of this shit. It is a pervasive story because it is an incredibly useful propaganda tactic in deflecting blame from anybody in power who can actually be held accountable.
As Liberalism deteriorates under the weight of its contradictions (namely, trying to reconcile Capitalism with Democracy), all of our sins can be conveniently shunted to an external enemy. We can keep telling ourselves the lie that our system is fundamentally just, only we keep getting bamboozled by a foreign enemy.
Rather than confront the antisocial unity of the Republicans, Democrats, corporate media, finance capitalism, and rent-seeking monopolies, we are conditioned instead to circle our wagons around them. We are supposed to believe that this unholy alliance is actually democracy manifest, and that it is actually very fragile. That it is dangling by a thread, and how sorely we'll miss it when it's gone.
This facile mode of media analysis completely lacks any power analysis. We are to believe that the world's most valuable social media properties are powerless in the face of common cyber-criminals. As a countermeasure, we not only accept, but welcome increased surveillance and censorship, to the most privacy invading companies in the world, to make sure the people spreading the wrong politics can be swiftly eliminated from the body politic.
This is awfully convenient for the powers-that-be. Also, pay no mind to the fact that these platforms are an overflowing dumpster of reactionary sludge, despite all of this increased surveillance. It has literally never been worse.
This isn't the work of a foreign bot farm. This is the deliberate design of capitalist social media platforms. Bots - to the extent they factor into the equation - are only a drop in the bucket. A bug's corpse on the windshield of a home-grown propaganda machine which is driving straight towards fascism.
