Russian intelligence efforts to manipulate the news the American public was seeing in an effort to sway public opinion toward the Putin government's preferred candidate(s) are, at this point, hopefully well-known. The Russian government has been running the same operations throughout Europe: propaganda campaigns are both dirt-cheap, compared to military measures, and have a long history of effectiveness.
As our understanding of the extent of their operations in America continues to evolve, it has become clear that the Russian operation started long before the 2016 elections themselves. Even before the 2014 midterm elections Russia's now-infamous troll farm, the "Internet Research Center," was setting up an array of fake news accounts that looked uncannily like real, local news outlets. The purpose was to build followers and trust by posing as the news outlet just down the block from you; the accounts cribbed real local headlines from real outlets.
In reality, they were each fictitious entities created in St. Petersburg, Russia.
NPR has reviewed information connected with the investigation and found 48 such accounts. They have names such as @ElPasoTopNews, @MilwaukeeVoice, @CamdenCityNews and @Seattle_Post. [...]
"They set them up for a reason. And if at any given moment they wanted to operationalize this network of what seemed to be local American news handles, they can significantly influence the narrative on a breaking news story," [social media analyst Bret Schafer] told NPR. "But now instead of just showing up online and flooding it with news sites, they have these accounts with two years of credible history."
The accounts were shuttered by Twitter before they could be transitioned to whatever other purpose they were eventually intended for, but it's not hard to guess the Russian strategy. After building up tens of thousands of local followers on each account, those accounts could then be used, subtly, to alter public perception of the news stories they shared with their readers. A little editorializing here, a story about how, say, a certain disfavored candidate was going to harm local interests there; because the information was coming from a supposedly "local" source, local followers would give it more credence than flashier, shoutier versions of the same material.
The consumer lesson here is, unfortunately, the same as always: You can't always trust what you see online, and that trusted voice on the other end of the Twitter stream may not be the person you think they are. Just because a news outlet claims to be the voice of, say, El Paso, does not make it so; a Twitter or Facebook account that claims to be the efforts of a "longtime national security expert" or "a local reporter with 25 years of experience" could just as easily be run by an Eastern European teen looking to capitalize on whatever ad revenue his pretended-at persona might net him. Profile pictures are frequently stolen from other sources, and personal biographies can be lifted or manufactured outright. And there's no reliable way to tell, other than to trust only the sources already vetted by sources you already trust, in sort of a trust-and-credibility “blockchain” you are obliged to handcraft yourself.
Which is a tough slog, to be sure, but that is how the internet works. And it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better—if it ever does.