Their strategy was simple: infiltrate groups on both the left and the right to heighten rhetoric, and use bots to intensify our discord. These Russian bots are bottom feeders meant to prey on American hate. It hardly matters whether we fight about systemic misogyny or racism or a football player or a congressional memo -- a foreign power wants us hurt, baffled, confused, ready to insult and be insulted. It is befuddling to imagine a foreign country systematically undermining a US presidential election over social media. And it is frankly creepy to have been hijacked by the algorithm, a series of mathematical formulae most of us don't even understand.

Source: CNN February 20, 2018 21:33 UTC