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Facebook 'Likes' Are a Powerful Tool For Authoritarian Rulers, Court Petition Says (qz.com)
A Cambodian opposition leader has filed a petition in a California court against Facebook, demanding the company disclose its transactions with his country's authoritarian prime minister, whom he accuses of falsely inflating his popularity through purchased "likes" and spreading fake news. From a report: The petition, filed Feb. 8, brings the ongoing debate over Facebook's power to undermine democracies into a legal setting. The petitioner, Sam Rainsy, says that Hun Sen, the prime minister, "has used the network to threaten violence against political opponents and dissidents, disseminate false information, and manipulate his (and the regime's) supposed popularity, thus seeking to foster an illusion of popular legitimacy." Rainsy alleges that Hun had used "click farms" to artificially boost his popularity, effectively buying "likes." The petition says that Hun had achieved astonishing Facebook fame in a very short time, raising questions about whether this popularity was legitimate.
Except what this article is about and the main thing Russia is accused of is not buying ads, but buying manufactured presence on social media sites, which is not simply failing to disclose the source of a political ad buy (which, yes, is illegal), but, in fact, fraud, although I suspect fraud laws are poorly written to handle things like buying likes and impersonating someone on social media, so it may or may not be technically illegal for local political parties to do depending on the locality and the courts.