Not only, they allege, did Russia hack the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) emails, collaborate with WikiLeaks to release unfavorable emails, and influence the FBI to drop its bombshell about reopening the investigation into Clinton just days before the vote, but it is also the source of untold numbers of false tweets and fake news stories that were systematically infused into social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter to maneuver voters away from the democratic candidate.
Estimates vary on just how many tweets and fake stories were released but some say it could be in the hundreds of thousands which emanated either from Russia's army of shift-working trolls or the government controlled news outlets like Russia Today or Sputnik. A group called PropOrNot, which includes researchers with military, technology and foreign policy backgrounds, identified some 200 websites and social media outlets that were routinely publishing tweets and fake stories that they traced back to Russia. They estimate the audience of those sites to be around 15 million and the number of views to be in excess of 213 million. While no one knows exactly just how many eyeballs were attracted, one thing is certain - no outside force will be doing the same on Russian territory.
Over the past few years the Kremlin as systematically reduced the access to free media and external influences in all its forms. It started about eight years ago with the Kremlin ensuring that its oligarchs took over previously independent media outlets like, for example, Kommersant, a business newspaper formerly owned by Boris Berezovsky, a Kremlin friend-turned-foe of President Vladimir Putin who criticized the leader until his death in 2013.
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