“Some 78% of Americans have a social network profile of some kind. The dominance of Facebook in Americans’ daily lives, and the fact that more people get their news from it than any other source, means the influence of the company in elections has never been greater. With each year that passes, the potential that an internet giant could swing an election gets greater.”

Harvard Law professor Jonathan Zittrain explained in 2010 how “Facebook could decide an election without anyone ever finding out”, after the tech giant secretly conducted a test in which they were able to allegedly increase voter turnout by 340,000 votes around the country on election day simply by showing users a photo of someone they knew saying “I voted”.