The 2020 presidential election and COVID-19 pandemic exposed the enormous power of social media platforms to shape public opinion. While many people see social media only as a means of maintaining personal connections or entertainment, other users receive daily news, political opinion and medical advice from individual posts and videos on sites like Facebook and YouTube.

In a nation divided by strong worldviews, this diversity of opinion is exposed in social media. However, as private entities the social media sites all moderate the content posted to increase user engagement and to filter out content their target users may find offensive. As such, they control the content that will appear to users.