Tech companies are teaming up to keep US elections free from interference

Various tech companies will work together in the coming months to keep the US presidential elections in November free from foreign interference. That did happen in 2016 and now companies want to prevent that from happening.

The partnership includes Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and Reddit, it shows statement of the companies. The goal is to prevent the spread of disinformation, but according to Politico, it’s also about preventing a repeat of the scenario where another country steals information and spreads it through platforms.

One of the problems is presumably that the results will take days. The gap between election day and the results is a concern for businesses and the US government. In that hole it is possible to spread disinformation about the result in order to make the final result questionable. A result that has no public confidence undermines democracy.

The companies say that they regularly consult with each other and with government services about what is happening on their platforms. That is quite a change compared to 2016, when that did not happen and Russian government services were able to distribute information from hacks via Facebook, among other things. Russian employees of government services also bought advertisements on Facebook to influence the results.