You're kidding yourself if you think that electioneering and lobbying are a new thing. Look at Saudi role in promoting Wahhabism, religious fundimentalists worsening AIDs epidemics and promoting homophobia by pushing bullshit on the third world for one alone let alone actual CIA or KGB influence. Before people were falling for literal fake news they were falling for Satanic Ritual Panic because the truth wasn't what they were concerned about but how it made them feel.
Tech was never the issue here - people were. The drive to scapegoat the upstarts should be regarded with great suspicion. While there may be questionable ethics involved with companies it looks to be a classic attempt to scapegoat the troublesome for matters that are peripheral at best and any action they could have taken would have dissatisfied people like how both the left and right are convinced Facebook is biased against them because they don't reflect the world as they wish to see it.
Tech was never the issue here - people were. The drive to scapegoat the upstarts should be regarded with great suspicion. While there may be questionable ethics involved with companies it looks to be a classic attempt to scapegoat the troublesome for matters that are peripheral at best and any action they could have taken would have dissatisfied people like how both the left and right are convinced Facebook is biased against them because they don't reflect the world as they wish to see it.