Though internet platforms became major American news providers, they were not regulated as such in the United States. Two Facebook products, News Feed and Trending Topics, purveyed countless fictions. The people who were in charge of Facebook and Twitter took the complacent position offered by the American politics of inevitability: the free market would lead to truth, so nothing should be done. This attitude created a problem for the numerous American users of the internet, who, having lost access to local press (or preferring news that seems free of charge), read the internet as though it were a newspaper. In this way, the American internet became an attack surface for the Russian secret services, who were able to do what they liked inside the American psychosphere for eighteen months without anyone reacting. Much of what Russia did was to take advantage of what it found. Hyperpartisan stories on Fox News or outbursts on Breitbart gained viewership thanks to retransmission by Russian bots. Russian support helped fringe right-wing sites such as Next News Network gain notoriety and influence. Its videos were viewed about 56 million times in October 2016.
— The Road to Unfreedom (Timothy Snyder), Loc. 3560–8