As 2021 came to a close, a few pieces took a look back about what had been learned about data collection, privacy, and misinformation in the 2020 campaign.

An article on the 2020 political ads looking at personal information collected and misleading information featured TPL Co-Director Tadayoshi Kohno, who highlighted the election as a historic opportunity, explaining their mindset going into the election, “[t]here are going to be interesting ads, and we have the infrastructure to capture them. Let’s go get them”.

In a piece on policy options that could be considered for the US government to reign in Facebook, TPL Co-Director Ryan Calo shared that Facebook sent a cease and desist letter in October 2020 to New York University researchers, who were looking into the spread of disinformation using Facebook’s algorithm.