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If the US had serious privacy protection rules there would be no data to sell to russian companies. Obviously that also means there would be no data to pass to 3 letter agencies, so probably we won't see them any time soon.

> it's about Russian government wanting to know who you are so they can target you with political misinformation

Which is something not only Russia is doing with that information, it's a very widespread practice [0] and one that many think should be considered a bigger issue itself, rather than who makes use of it.

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-29/the-germa...

I get that. But what makes people think this has not been going on -- with many other governments (plus Russia) -- since Google and Facebook ads became a thing?

I am pretty sure it was happening for a long time.