Let's put the blame where it belongs. The people who were misled by Russian social media material wanted to be misled. They have bought into the notion of an alternative universe made up of alternative facts, all the while relying on a technology constructed out of real facts about the natural world. Even the people who don't get that immediate sense of the bogus, that this-should-be-in-the-Onion® feeling, have computers and the ability to easily compare and assess, if they wanted to bother. The National Enquirer doesn't sell 700,000 copies because people really believe its fake headlines. They want to believe those headlines. Interestingly, the Enquirer's circ is actually down from around a million in 2007, but I'm not sure that means people are getting less credulous. It could be they're just getting their conspiratorial fake news fix from social media.