Russia accuses Google, Facebook of election interference

A new country says Google and Facebook may have interfered in its elections — just maybe not the one you'd expect.

Officials in Russia have said that Google and Facebook published election-related ads in violation of the country's laws, Reuters reported.

Yes, you read that correctly: Russia is accusing the two tech giants of election interference.

At issue are laws that prohibit political ads "during elections on Sunday and on the preceding day," according to Reuters. Russia's Roskomnadzor, the government body that oversees the country's media laws, has said Facebook and Google both ran ads during Sunday elections.

"These actions can be considered as interference in the sovereign affairs of Russia and obstructing the holding of democratic elections in the Russian Federation," according to a translated version of a message that appeared on Roskomnadzor's website.

Google and Facebook didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Facebook, of course, has spent the last couple years rooting out Russia-backed propaganda and other "coordinated inauthentic behavior" on its platform following the country's use of the social network during the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. Since then, Facebook has uncovered several other networks of accounts — from Russia and elsewhere — that have attempted to manipulate social media users .

UPDATE: Sept. 9, 2019, 10:03 a.m. PDT In a statement, a Google spokesperson said,"We support responsible political advertising, and expect all political ads and destinations to comply with local legal requirements, including campaign and election laws and mandated election “silence periods," for any geographic areas they target."