When the media talks about the US elections (or the Brexit referendum) being hacked, they are being sensationalist. If you look into it, no-one is actually saying that Russia hacked the actual polling stations, or votes.

What they mean is that Russian propagandists infiltrated social media, news sites and comments etc, to influence the result. I think this is objectively true (at least for the US election). It has been proven that many fake accounts were actively influencing peoples' behaviour in these supposedly democratic decisions.

Not only that, but some accounts were promoting division and hate for the opposite side, to cause rifts between voters acting in a 2 party system (or in the case of Brexit, a yes/no binary vote). This increases contempt and instability in a country.

I actually think that leaving the EU was a fucking dumb thing to do, especially for Britain (which doesn't have much to offer in the way of exports and economic power, other than the financial hub of London) but that's off topic.

The thing to learn from this really, is that people should not just "upvote" and "like" every fucking comment they see on facebook or reddit, and base their votes on those sources, without actually researching a little into the subject. It's our own fucking fault, and we should all be very careful about where we get our information, and be very wary of the "filter bubble".