Sorry about that, you are right in that you didn't say this is a smoking gun. But that's what this is framed as in many places and I took your framing of "Putin's tool" as going down that same venue.

> And while your whole comment wasn’t whataboutism, the “other countries do this too” part definitely was.

I see it as pointing out double-standards, which is an actual thing and sadly happens quite often without being called out as such. Especially in geopolitics, there's a very easy to spot bias in terms of what some countries are allowed to do while other countries are scrutinized for these very same actions.

Case in point: US modernizing/expanding their nuclear arsenal vs Russia doing the same and how both of those are framed across different media on the globe. When the US modernized their nuclear arsenal station in Germany, the German government literally framed that as "Good US nukes vs evil Russian nukes", like there's any actual difference.

The same can be applied here where it's suddenly super dodgy that actors invested in social media. Why? Because these actors happened to be Russian. Now let's investigate those Russians, but only those Russians!

You can't deny that this evokes certain memories about the McCarthy era and the associated Red Scare. Again: If investing in social media is a dodgy proposition then this should apply to everybody investing, not just Russians because last time I checked it wasn't just some Russian people who had beef with the US, that particular trait is not reserved to some Russian nationals, it's far more widespread than that.