Related papers: Misleading Repurposing on Twitter
Online social networks like Twitter actively monitor their platform to identify accounts that go against their rules. Twitter enforces account level moderation, i.e. suspension of a Twitter account in severe cases of platform abuse. A point…
Users on Twitter are commonly identified by their profile names. These names are used when directly addressing users on Twitter, are part of their profile page URLs, and can become a trademark for popular accounts, with people referring to…
Data extracted from social networks like Twitter are increasingly being used to build applications and services that mine and summarize public reactions to events, such as traffic monitoring platforms, identification of epidemic outbreaks,…
The issue of quantifying and characterizing various forms of social media manipulation and abuse has been at the forefront of the computational social science research community for over a decade. In this paper, I provide a…
$\textit{Fake followers}$ are those Twitter accounts specifically created to inflate the number of followers of a target account. Fake followers are dangerous for the social platform and beyond, since they may alter concepts like popularity…
Follow back accounts inflate their follower counts by engaging in reciprocal followings. Such accounts manipulate the public and the algorithms by appearing more popular than they really are. Despite their potential harm, no studies have…
Online social media are key platforms for the public to discuss political issues. As a result, researchers have used data from these platforms to analyze public opinions and forecast election results. Recent studies reveal the existence of…
Research into influence campaigns on Twitter has mostly relied on identifying malicious activities from tweets obtained via public APIs. These APIs provide access to public tweets that have not been deleted. However, bad actors can delete…
Automated social media accounts, known as bots, are increasingly recognized as key tools for manipulative online activities. These activities can stem from coordination among several accounts and these automated campaigns can manipulate…
Online misinformation has been a serious threat to public health and society. Social media users are known to reply to misinformation posts with counter-misinformation messages, which have been shown to be effective in curbing the spread of…
Online content creators spend significant time and effort building their user base through a long, often arduous process that requires finding the right "niche" to cater to. So, what incentive is there for an established content creator…
Thanks to platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, people can know facts and events that otherwise would have been silenced. However, social media significantly contribute also to fast spreading biased and false news while targeting specific…
Recent advances in the field of generative artificial intelligence (AI) have blurred the lines between authentic and machine-generated content, making it almost impossible for humans to distinguish between such media. One notable…
With social media datasets being increasingly shared by researchers, it also presents the caveat that those datasets are not always completely replicable. Having to adhere to requirements of platforms like Twitter, researchers cannot…
Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered recommender systems play a crucial role in determining the content that users are exposed to on social media platforms. However, the behavioural patterns of these systems are often opaque, complicating…
Social networks offer a ready channel for fake and misleading news to spread and exert influence. This paper examines the performance of different reputation algorithms when applied to a large and statistically significant portion of the…
People use microblogging platforms like Twitter to involve with other users for a wide range of interests and practices. Twitter profiles run by different types of users such as humans, bots, spammers, businesses and professionals. This…
Social media users often hold several accounts in their effort to multiply the spread of their thoughts, ideas, and viewpoints. In the particular case of objectionable content, users tend to create multiple accounts to bypass the combating…
When evaluating the cause of one's popularity on Twitter, one thing is considered to be the main driver: Many tweets. There is debate about the kind of tweet one should publish, but little beyond tweets. Of particular interest is the…
Online Social Media represent a pervasive source of information able to reach a huge audience. Sadly, recent studies show how online social bots (automated, often malicious accounts, populating social networks and mimicking genuine users)…