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Perhaps it would not be so easy to lionize the past if we had access to the real-time unfiltered thoughts of our heroes. But that really gets to the heart of it all, doesn’t it?

Social media ruins everything.

The U.S. Congress seems to be cluing into this very fact. Over the past few weeks, Congress has been grilling lawyers from Facebook and Twitter, scrutinizing the extent to which Russia may have tried to sow social discord, or manipulate the U.S. election with targeted bot and disinformation campaigns that spread unfettered across these platforms. More recently, the hearings have turned their attention to questions of whether Russia is trying to manipulate U.S. energy markets and undermine domestic oil and gas production through these means.

Photo by Jacquelyn Martin / AP Photo

Whether Russia succeeded in helping Trump get elected will long remain an open debate; but there is now little question that the country certainly tried. Its American operations were of a piece with similar campaigns in Ukraine, Germany and France.

Congress is now debating the Honest Ads Act, which would subject ads on social media to the same kinds of transparency requirements now demanded of advertising on traditional mainstream media outlets.

During congressional hearings, the U.S. government released a trove of Russian-backed ads that appeared throughout the election cycle: everything from associating Hillary Clinton with Satan to posts that mimicked the rhetoric coming out of the Black Lives Matter movement or Bernie Sanders supporters. Fake news, much of it, but all of it meant, essentially, to broadly undermine public trust in public institutions, including media and the government.