Who’s meddling?

Did the Russians meddle (dictionary definition: to intervene annoyingly) in the US presidential race? Look at the proffered evidence. We are told that Russians bought $100,000 of Facebook advertising from June 2015 to May 2017. But this is paltry. Facebook advertising revenue just for the second quarter of 2017 was a whopping $9.16 billion. Note that total campaign expenditure for federal elective offices was $6.8bn. We are also told that Russian-backed content on Facebook reached as many as 126 million Americans during and after the 2016 election. But Facebook noted that Russian-backed content during this period represented only about four-thousandths of 1 per cent (0.004%) of its News Feed items. In other words, Russian activity on Facebook was statistically insignificant.

Then there is the hack (or leak) of the Democratic National Committee’s e-mails. Far from undermining American democracy, it shone a light on the committee’s surreptitious sabotaging of Bernie Sanders’ nomination campaign, prompting the resignation of its top officers.