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by Ozzie_osman 694 days ago
Whatever Iran, China, and Russia have done is also a minor effort compared to the billions spent by the US on influence operations.
1 comments

Doubtful.
Depends how broadly you define it.

America literally produces movies about "Captain America", a heroic do-gooder who has superhuman strength, speed and endurance and who wears a flag as an outfit. In these movies he saves the entire planet. America spends like a hundred million dollars every year on that alone.

If by "America" you mean private companies rather than government, by private decision rather than at government direction, and paid for by private citizens voluntarily purchasing the results rather than government contract, then sure.
So methods and tools developed to combat global extremism during the War on Terror weren't used by US tech companies at the behest of an in-power political party against opposition speech?

Is that not what the senate subcommittee has been discussing for the past two years?

Correct, they weren't. It's ridiculous paranoia.
Doubtful how? They have a legal system for it and they do it in the open... They're at 4.26 billions now(*), plus whatever they spend under the table.

(*) https://www.statista.com/statistics/257337/total-lobbying-sp...

Domestic lobbying by domestic interests is vastly different than the (foreign) influence operations we were discussing. You can't look at the total spend on lobbying and claim to be making a relevant comparison.