In 2017, Facebook, Twitter, and Google found that Russian hackers had bought ads and used fake news on their platforms to influence the American presidential elections of 2016. In order to prevent such manipulation in the future, they overhauled their policies. But now authoritarian regimes use exactly these rules as a weapon to crack down on people’s freedom, as the case of Egypt shows. “The policies for such companies cannot be developed based on the desires and needs of only the American public”, a human rights activist says.