> I bothers me no end that influence/propaganda operations continuously get termed "hacking the election"
You realize you're on a site named "Hacker News", using the term to refer to influence operations, right?
> If we, as a nation, were actually serving our citizens and maintaining the level of education and sustaining the standard of living required for democracy to function across most of the population I do not think these Russian-style campaigns would be very effective.
And this is exactly what classic Soviet/Russian propaganda wants you to conclude: "So in practice I guess the 'Democracy' system is no better than the Soviet Communist/Putinist system after all."
thats a big leap you're making from "we need better a better engaged and more knowledgeable populace with a higher standard of living" to "we should scrap democracy and become Soviets"
You realize you're on a site named "Hacker News", using the term to refer to influence operations, right?
> If we, as a nation, were actually serving our citizens and maintaining the level of education and sustaining the standard of living required for democracy to function across most of the population I do not think these Russian-style campaigns would be very effective.
And this is exactly what classic Soviet/Russian propaganda wants you to conclude: "So in practice I guess the 'Democracy' system is no better than the Soviet Communist/Putinist system after all."