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Facebook, Twitter, Google and others may have unknowingly played roles. There’s little doubt now that state-sponsored Russian operatives worked diligently to try and interfere... Are Tech Giants To Blame For Russian Election Scandal?

Facebook, Twitter, Google and others may have unknowingly played roles.

There’s little doubt now that state-sponsored Russian operatives worked diligently to try and interfere in last fall’s US Presidential election – a notion that has both federal investigators and armchair social media experts weighing in day and night. However, more recent information shows that these operatives and agents within the US campaign system didn’t work alone; they had significant but possibly unintentional help from major US tech corporations.

Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other companies are now being forced to admit to their role in furthering Trump’s cause through the use of paid advertisements. These ads were not always for specific candidates, but rather expressing an opinion that was hot-button issue for one party or the other. The clear indication–which some like Facebook say they’re just now realizing might have been a problem–was the use of rubles to pay for many of the American campaign ads.

Should tech giants have known about Russian election meddling:

Hands up if you like social media.

Look for the clues

Not to stretch the point too far, but it’s probably a good indication that paying for a campaign ad in a foreign currency is generally a sign that something is amiss. Facebook, however, claims that they simply didn’t notice the problem at the time, and maybe should have paid closer attention. Of course, this is after Mark Zuckerberg first dismissed the concerns as frivolous.

Long history

Unfortunately, all the endless national attention devoted to this issue is nothing more than political comeuppance, as the US has a long, proud, century-old history of interfering in other countries’ elections. Some social media ads and a few million troll accounts don’t really compare to helping stage military coups and executing political leaders whose views were not in line your own (as suggested in the HuffPost article). However humorous the “turnabout is fair play” course of events may seem to some, the end result is still a questionable election campaign that led to the current administration.