No offense but the fact that someone on HN could get to this conclusion is rather shocking to me. Western Europe has plenty of russian corruption and I'm afraid the ongoing war has unearthed only a fraction of it.
Pretty sure plenty of German politicians were similarly cozy with Russia before.
A pretty basic assumption about Google and Facebook is that the US 3 letter agencies use the data in coups. Speaking as an Australian, the next time we have a Whitlam-style dismissal I assume Google will be covertly involved. Yandex not so much. Similar logic would hold in the Americas, Asia, and most of Western Europe. It'd be fascinating to know what role US social media companies were playing in the 2014 Ukraine revolution too as a comparison to somewhere that is very much a place where Russia would want to weaponise Yandexq.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/a-rus...
