What happens in the gingerbread house , stays in the gingerbread house <| sep |> The flood of ' fake news ' this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton , helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy , say independent researchers who tracked the operation , the Washington Post reports . Russia ' s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery including thousands of botnets , teams of paid human ' trolls , ' and networks of websites and socialmedia accounts echoed and amplified rightwing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers . The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nucleararmed Russia . I long ago lost count of the many troll comments I removed about how Hillary wants to start World War III with Russia . I ' m sure other moderators here had the same experience .