As we head into the final day before the 2020 election, disinformation on social media continues to make headlines as a means to sway public opinion and to discourage people from voting. For example, swing states have been targeted with evolving disinformation tactics in an attempt to influence what happens in the voting booth, while Black and Latino voters have been flooded with messages aimed to depress turnout by fueling cynicism and distrust in the political process.
Clearly, we’ve made little meaningful progress since the last U.S. presidential election. As the 2016 campaigns were heating up, the major social media sites were barraged with Russian-operated posts in favor of Donald Trump, and an estimated 126 million Americans, roughly one-third of the nation’s population, received automated Russian-backed content on Facebook.