US elections: Tech firms couldn't stop misinformation, voter intimidation

The impacts of these efforts by the technology firms have been muted, in part due to the prevalence of social bots that spread low-credibility information virally across these platforms.

Neither disinformation nor voter intimidation is anything new. But tools developed by leading tech companies including Twitter, Facebook and Google now allow these tactics to scale up dramatically.

As a scholar of cybersecurity and election security, I have argued that these firms must do more to rein in disinformation, digital repression and voter suppression on their platforms, including by treating these issues as a matter of corporate social responsibility.

Earlier this fall, Twitter announced new measures to tackle disinformation,