Democracies Can’t Blame Putin for Their Disinformation Problem | Foreign Policy

With a looming election and an ongoing pandemic, concerns about Russian disinformation are never far from U.S. policymakers’ minds. So it was no surprise when former U.S. President Barack Obama shared an article on the subject last week, exhorting Americans to become more aware of foreign informational threats.

The problem is that the article, which focused on Russian COVID-19 disinformation efforts, had been roundly criticized by experts. They pointed out its factual inaccuracies, its amplification of obscure troll accounts, and its unwillingness to consider the domestic sources of disinformation that have plagued the United States since long before the pandemic.

[…]