There aren't many in the US who are sure there'll be an election result on the night. Due to unprecedented numbers of postal votes, there could be days - possibly weeks - between the end of voting and the declared result. And in that period of uncertainty there are fears of civil unrest. Both sides could claim victory, and misinformation about the result could be rife. The worry is that anger, fake news and hate speech on social media could inflame tensions. So what is Big Tech planning to do about it? The nuclear option would be to close down their apps for a period of time. This is what we know social media companies intend to do to prevent that from happening. Twitter says after election day candidates won't be permitted to claim they've won the election before a declared result. Twitter also says candidates can't tweet or retweet content that encourages interference with the election process. What will it do if that happens? Well, Twitter says it will direct people to resources with accurate, up-to-date information about the election status. That sounds like Twitter won't take down tweets or even necessarily suppress them. But the tweets will be labelled. Crucially Twitter gives itself room to manoeuvre if things really kick off - they haven't ruled out going further. Last month, Nick Clegg told the FT's Hannah Murphy there were some "break-glass options available to us" in extreme scenarios. What are those options? Well Facebook won't say. But the Wall Street Journal has reported that some of these plans include altering news feed algorithms to suppress viral posts that propagate violence or fake news. They can also deactivate certain hashtags related to misinformation around the election result. And they will lower the bar for what they remove. These would be techniques that Facebook has used in other parts of the world like Sri Lanka and Myanmar. These are on top of what Facebook is already doing - for example labelling misinformation on voting. They have also teamed up with Reuters to supply accurate election results on the night and in the days after the election.