Is Social Media enabling Russia to inflame civil war in the US?

Question

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CenJe6RrLEEI feel like the rising tensions in the United States can largely be explained by the dynamics present in the above video. Social media (youtube) providing a platform for Russia to misinform and inflame the right and mis-characterize the left as a unified terrorist organization that they need to respond to and protect the country from. This dynamic likely had a lot to do with Trump gaining office in the first place.

core-questions · Accepted Answer

If you really think that the reason for internal conflict in the USA is all down to external influences, I have to question whether you're actually familiar with the arguments of both sides in question. The concerns run much deeper than you might think on the surface, and both sides have very legitimate gripes.
Allowing things to be forced into a false dichotomy rather than the many, many nuanced positions that reality actually holds is probably more likely to be a source of strife and conflict. US social media companies are doing more to fan these flames than anyone else by actively deplatforming and censoring anyone who runs afoul of their social policies. What do you think all these people are going to do? Without any engagement on their concerns, will they just dry up and disappear? I strongly doubt it.
To ease the tensions, our first job is to stop viewing our neighbours as enemies. We want 90% the same things as anyone else: stability, safety, prosperity. We have different ideas of how to get there, but we share one thing: people telling us to hate each other based on strawman conceptions about what each other actually believes.

polka_haunts_us · Answer

I think the US is perfectly capable of inflaming itself regardless of what Russia does.
The core issue in the US is that there is very little crossover between the two parties anymore. There were pro-union Republicans in congress until the 90s, being anti-abortion used to be a position in the Democratic party that didn't get you primaried out of your seat. Now it's team A believes 1, 2, 3, and team B believes !1, !2, !3 and there is no room to come together, compromise, or moderate.
I don't know what the solution is, and Russia is certainly doing whatever they want to fan the flames, but I'd rather not use them to wallpaper over the very real issues in our national dialogue.

lucasgonze · Answer

This is inappropriately political for HN.

app4soft · Answer

Russia itself do that on their governmental TV & media.

gt565k · Answer

Doesn't change the fact that half of America is racist as fuck, and would rather vote for psychopathic egomaniac and narcissist than for the other guy because "Dems are communists" or other propaganda pushed by FoxNews and the right media.
Look no further than your own backyard. FoxNews strikes the flames on the far right, and liberal media strokes the fans on the far left. The country has never been more politically polarized.
The moderate electorate has no choice but to go with a single issue from the far left or far right that mostly matters to them.
The amount of disinformation on social media doesn't help, but it's not the only source of disinformation. Trump was right to call news Fake News, in the sense that media doesn't report facts anymore. The majority of their programming is "Opinion" based with extremist hosts, especially on the right.