(a) IN GENERAL.—No funds authorized to be appropriated to the Department of State or the Broadcasting Board of Governors shall be used to influence public opinion in the United States.
Did you know that BBG, to which this act primarily pertains, is also one of the world's primary funding sources for security audits of open-source cryptography? That program is managed under the aegis of Radio Free Asia, and has put top-caliber researchers on virtually every open source cryptosystem you've ever heard of, and of course many you haven't.
Something tells me that NSA and BBG aren't closely coordinating.
Meanwhile, in Russia, which is what this article actually talks about, the country's largest social network was siezed and nationalized by the government.
Personally, and I know everyone won't agree with me on this, but I think we should all stop pretending that what the Russian government is doing is comparable to what the US and UK governments are doing. In the industrialized world, Russia and China are one kind of state controlled media, and everyone else is another. We should stop pretending that Russia and China are OK, or casting a pox on everyone else's houses. You'd rather have German media, or even US media, than Russian. Full stop.