We know this is a thing from the Mueller report. The Russians had their hands in everything from LGBT and black advocacy groups to the Tea Party movement.
Indeed. Amplify the most divisive messages. Anyone planning advocacy for anything nowadays has to figure out how to deal with the worst messengers for their cause getting the biggest platforms.
They actually simultaneously were promoting the Bernie Sanders campaign. Seems likely these candidates were chosen as the ostensibly most divisive and disruptive elements in American politics.
I think we're also witnessing influence a meta level deeper, where accelerationists' stochastic terrorism ideologically seeks social rift and chaos, directly. Individual acts won't be explainable by a grand conspiracy, but rather I presume these communities are fed and pushed to birth random acts of terror with ambiguous or misleading messaging.
Quite frankly, I think too many cooks are benefiting from outrage and disarray. Look at the Charlie Kirk case, where "respectable" reports of "transgender ideology" inscribed on bullet casings spread immediately, although that's been a complete fabrication, which was later redacted. How vile a thing to do, for any supposedly journalistic platform. That's not bots, it's people who are to blame. I don't even think, it's much instructed, but rather sociopathic individuals/groups seeing opportunity for a minuscule gain, even if it's destroying the social fabric in the process.