Now exposed, would Russian political trolling be rendered ineffective?

I think we sometimes underestimate the degree to which people believe things because they want to believe them. RT and Sputnik are known outlets for Russian propaganda, but plenty of people still shared and retweeted articles from them all throughout the election season because they were saying something that those people wanted to believe. That’s why the Russian ads were targeted rather than just splashed across every available billboard: to keep everyone in their own little reality where as much of the input as possible confirmed a single message (an effort aided by our own natural tendency to self-segregate).

I have changed my reading habits to try to avoid those items that are questionable. I am concerned however that even this move has been orchestrated by making me question whatever I see and act to blind me from the truth when presented.
The only constant I have is that I know that whatever I hear from Trump or anyone in his administration is at best twisted to fit some agenda and at worst, a lie. There is no question as to whether or not anything from them is fake news; it is.

The important thing is that social media companies are now waking up to this new reality. They can now take steps to try to prevent this kind of targeted political trolling at source. Individuals can ignore suspicious ads but the best designed political ads will not appear suspicious to their selected targets. The Russians will only get better at this kind of activity and I doubt whether it is possible to stop it completely.

The Russian targeting of people with the “want to believe”; rather than people that use critical thinking or need real proof.
Made up news is rampant in postings from people with the “I want to believe Obama in from Kenya and Hillary from Salem Massachusetts in the 1600’s”.
IQ’s don’t seem to make a difference but years of school completed seem to make some kind of difference with advanced degrees (ah shoot maybe not—-> Dr Ben Carson) being more likely to avoid propaganda.

Barnum already proved that there is never a shortage of gullible people.

Not unless the ads are labelled as such.

No, there are plenty of people who only watch Fox News, and no nothing about the trolling Russian ads. Those people still, after all the evidence to the contrary, refer to Hillary Clinton as “Killary.”

There are people that are so far up in their own arses that they can’t see daylight. They don’t want to know thw truth, and they wouldn’t believe it, even if they were confronted with it.

We’re in ‘Meruca. You don’t need to deal with facts. Especially if you have a lot of guns to save you from the guvment.

It will change nothing.