GP didn't state that it was the sole reason for tipping the election.

Clinton dropping the ball, Comey etc. are events I can live with even if I didn't like the result. But a foreign adversary exploiting network effects to manipulate online discourse and propagate misinformation on a large scale – the influence that had will always be an unsettling "what if" in my mind.

I guess, maybe I misinterpreted what “tipped by algorithmic interference” means. Regardless, I just don’t think the world’s going to end if somebody’s uncle in Florida reads dozens of false headlines. A small number of people consume a lot of misinformation. I agree with Yann on LLMs, and I don’t think his work on Facebook invalidates that.

There has been foreign promoted disinformation since at least the Cold War. Newspapers and Hollywood have propagated conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination that can be traced to soviet disinformation.

There is so much noise online that I really doubt this made any difference

The difference is that thanks to Google and Facebook you can now do it on an industrial scale. It's like comparing an iPhone to two tin cans connected with a string.

The Hungarian government is also using ads to brainwash people very effectively here. You can't watch a YouTube video without seeing some kind of propaganda.

Not to mention the real power of targeting: there's even less need for a coherent narrative, you can tailor it to each niche group (or even potentially each individual, at this point). And other's don't even know what your message is. If a lie could previously travel around the world before the truth had got its boots on, a lie can now travel around the world before the truth even knows there's a race.

It's much complicated than that.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-real-story-of-2016/

That’s the first in a series of articles. The next article in the series states:

> the regression … can explain the Electoral College drop-off Clinton experienced relative to Obama based on some simple demographic variables and the 2012 vote alone.

It was a very close election. There are any number of things, that, had they been different, Clinton would have won. Trying to ascribe a single cause is fallacious.