There is no evidence that Russian influence changed the outcome of the election. A few thousand dollars worth of Facebook ads, mostly written in broken English, is unlikely to have caused a massive swing in voter turnout or opinions. It seems clear from the Mueller report that Russians attempted to engage in election interference. There is zero evidence that it had any effect on even a single vote.

If you turn on CNN for a second or two today, you'll hear them use the phrase "no widespread voter fraud occurred". In other words, there is evidence that some fraud occurred, as it does in every election. Just not enough to have swayed the results. The same can be said about any Russian interference.

So the two things are equivalent, because both happened to some degree, and it is extremely unlikely that either had any effect on the outcome.

To me the DNC leak stood out as more damaging than Facebook ads / twitter bots.

That being said, if anyone has an unbiased academic paper that looked in-depth at Russia's Twitter/Facebook shenanigans, please cite. I'd like to read it.

While the leak was illegal, in the case of elections, personally I am all for anything that brings voters a better understanding of the candidates. Misinformation is untrue, and people can generally see right through it; email leaks are true. Given the polarization at the time, I don’t think that the email leaks had an impact on the outcome, but voters did become more informed, and that likely swayed some votes. Educated voters are a good thing in my opinion.

While you're maybe not wrong about it not changing the election outcome, I just wanted to say that it was more than a few Facebook ads. Russia was the likely source of the DNC email leak. Also, it was a lot of sock puppeting and co-opting large groups on Facebook and also Twitter and Reddit. Hundreds of people, masquerading as thousands, playing both sides off each other, all day long every day for months. There were groups for every demographic imaginable, swaying them, as appropriate, to stay home because Hillary doesn't care about [ethnic group], or to vote for Jill Stein because Hillary is just a neocon in disguise. Or to vote for Trump in protest. Or to vote for Trump because conservative.

It was a well funded and coordinated effort by a nation state. Not a few thousand dollars on bad english ads.

> There is no evidence that Russian influence changed the outcome of the election

The alleged Russian actions are by themselves criminal. It makes no difference whether they had any impact. An attempted theft is still a crime.

You’re missing my point. A Russian influence operation to support the Trump campaign actually happened. This is a fact supported by evidence which bears up under examination.

There is no evidence of electoral fraud or whatever nonsense is currently being claimed. It did not happen. It is, in fact, a deliberate lie.

Someone saying stuff on CNN is not reliable information. Are you really going to compare that to the Mueller report?

In fact, what is reliable right now is how courts have been deciding these ridiculous claims. And they’ve all been universally rejected because the claims have no evidence, make no sense, and are basically asking for something that’s actually illegal.

So we are talking about two completely different things. Something that really happened, based on evidence, and something that is a bunch of lies and distortions. That is my point.

And, I’d really encourage you to learn how to better judge things. Or, to stop participating in this anti-democratic bullshit.