Russia illegally spent something like $100,000 on political ads. Thats basically nothing compared to aggregate political spending.

Meanwhile US channels this propaganda money through no profits.

Yup exactly the same thing is happening only with money laundered through nonprofits and political pacs. Once its there the same buy data and place ads & influence is completely legal - which makes the singled out ban on TikTok at odds with the stated purpose of it

It's not the "exact same thing" since it's legal spending. If you and your friends want to pool money together and put up billboards promoting carbon free energy solutions, congrats you've formed a political PAC.

This is distinct from a foreign entity, without registering as a foreign entity, directly participating in electioneering. While it's true that the Russian involvement in 2016 was overblown let's not pretend it's the same as legal political spending.

There are multiple organizations not registering as foreign entities who route a lot of political spending. Sometimes they are caught, but there is very little enforcement of political spending rules - and there is even more spending unchecked in the open skirting the transfers legally as far as I can tell.

You're misunderstanding.

US funds foreign political no profits in other countries thanks to the Foreign Assistance Act agencies like USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy.

That's besides the money funneled through other agencies which are more covert.

That means that countries around the world have US funded no profits effectively doing non bi-partizan political activity.

Officially those should only inform (foreign) citizens about their civic and voting rights, in reality they are more often than not tools of the US to influence and take huge biases in other countries.

And here's the underlying problem: as per American exceptionalism it's fine when US does that, but it's unacceptable when others do it in US.

It is mind blowing to me that this fact is not widely understood. A mountain was made out of a molehill. $4B was spent in 2016. $12B in 2024. Yet $100,000 somehow is believed to have made any difference whatsoever. Literally 0.0025% of the total in 2016.

*Source: https://www.emarketer.com/content/political-ad-spend-nearly-...

This is, of course, because both USA political parties run their own propaganda machines

Because it's a good scapegoat, why take responsibility for losing an election when you can easily shift the blame to someone else?

1. This was a scandal for FB, not a feature.

Cambridge Analytica had zero effect on the 2016 elections. It was the mother of all nothingburgers. I encourage all who see this comment to dig into the truth of that case.

The huge difference is that while foreign adversaries run influence networks on other social media platforms (and are opposed and combatted by those platforms) TikTok (the platform itself) is controlled by the foreign adversary (the CCP).

It was more a proof of concept. If that could be done on a small scale, why not a large one?

And elections are decided by margins, pushing them even slightly has massive, irrevocable consequences.