How Russian content ended up on Pinterest

>> San Francisco-based Pinterest is the latest in a growing list of Silicon Valley companies that hosted or were exploited directly by the Russian disinformation campaign. The acknowledgement by Pinterest also highlights an essential truth of the internet that helped bolster the Russian agenda -- once content appears on a site or social network, it can be shared across the web by ordinary Americans in unpredictable ways and reach a far broader audience than its initial readership.

So basically the Russians adhered to the same philosophy as everyone in tech, no? Is it feasible that there servers siphoned social media data to create profiles on regular, everyday Americans? I could be waaayyy off-base but my ad-tech friends have spooked me into believing something like this is fairly easy to accomplish for American corporations who probably don't have the Russia-like resources.