The CIA used to be very good at this in Eastern Europe and is currently warming up in Iran. Arab Spring was a better model. Crimea/Ukraine were clumsy. Now Putin is fine tuning a hybrid strategy of planned chaos in France and, yes it is coming to America. venturebeat.com/2018/12/10/fac…
Social media manipulation allows Russian to frack public frustration. It is 3am and your city is on fire, will Zuckerberg answer the phone? thetimes.co.uk/article/russia…
There is another backlash against nerdcos and special interest groups who promote "Russian interference" as a myth and in effect promote reverse psyops. Problem is bots, viral manipulation and fake accounts are pretty easy to identify. dashboard.securingdemocracy.org
Understanding and battling bots is fun and reveals how corrupt our media and political landscape has become. Linking to naive grass roots action and then firing it up with instigators for the media (look for bright colors, burning stuff and nice posters) completes the do-loop.
I don't know why Twitter and Facebook dont' simply remove bots or fake people. Or even discourage those with fake followers. Perhaps their monetization models are based on deceit? botometer.iuni.iu.edu/#!/ 
Facebook now generates 90% of their income from mobile ads. Something that only came into existence in 2012. 2011 Arab Spring was directly related to the rapid movement of social unrest into social media. Ads can track, channel and manipulate that anger. theatlantic.com/technology/arc…
When Trolls and Mercenaries collide. polygraph.info/a/fact-check-r…
