As the Mueller investigation proceeds, stories about Russian meddling in the 2016 election have often been at the top of the news cycle. It is indeed a scary story. It shows how undisclosed powerful actors, guided entirely by self-interest, can use duplicitous online ads to try and sway an election.

Those making these ads can customize their audiences by using frighteningly specific tools to target certain demographics. This enables them to microtarget users, thanks in large part to Facebook’s mountain of data. Between microtargeting and Facebook’s algorithms (which are proprietary and not well understood), no two people see the same digital ads.

These sophisticated tools give foreign governments an opening to push an agenda, as we have seen. But there is much more to this story. These disclosure gaps can also be exploited by domestic actors, such as industry lobbies, billionaires and political campaigns, to spread misinformation with no disclosure.