There's been a news story circulating in mainstream media this week. A Dutch study analyzed the election impact on people who had clicked on facebook ads produced by the Internet Research Agency. This study showed zero effect on the 2016 election.
However, a deeper analysis, by MoonOfAlabama, shows they were not intended to. Internet Research Agency was a commercial clickbait farm intended to produce ad revenue from commercial entities.
Only some of the $40,000 they spent on ads before the 2016 election were even political. The political ones were evenly distributed between pro-Trump and pro-Clinton. Any advertiser wants to get both audiences.
It has previously been reported in the US media like NYTimes that Russian trolls were "sewing discord." That's an admission that the ads were evenly balanced between pro-Trump and pro-Clinton. For sure you can say the same thing about CableTV, where Fox News and MSNBC channels, which both appeal to strong partisans, and their business is also selling advertisements.
Nobody's mind was changed by these ads. People click on the ads which appeal to their strong bias, which is not going to be changed as a result. (This is essentially what the Dutch study found. Only strong partisans clicked on the ads, and their voting tendencies were unchanged.)
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