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Search and recommendation systems are ubiquitous and irreplaceable tools in our daily lives. Despite their critical role in selecting and ranking the most relevant information, they typically do not consider the veracity of information…
The fact that internet companies may record our personal data and track our online behavior for commercial or political purpose has emphasized aspects related to online privacy. This has also led to the development of search engines that…
Misinformation promotes distrust in science, undermines public health, and may drive civil unrest. Vaccine misinformation, in particular, has stalled efforts to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting social media platforms' attempts to…
Algorithmic recommendations mediate interactions between millions of customers and products (in turn, their producers and sellers) on large e-commerce marketplaces like Amazon. In recent years, the producers and sellers have raised concerns…
Background: Tools used to appraise the credibility of health information are time-consuming to apply and require context-specific expertise, limiting their use for quickly identifying and mitigating the spread of misinformation as it…
Users rely on search engines for information in critical contexts, such as public health emergencies. Understanding how users evaluate the trustworthiness of search results is therefore essential. Research has identified rank and the…
Recommendation algorithms have been pointed out as one of the major culprits of misinformation spreading in the digital sphere. However, it is still unclear how these algorithms really propagate misinformation, e.g., it has not been shown…
The Covid-19 pandemic has sparked renewed attention on the prevalence of misinformation online, whether intentional or not, underscoring the potential risks posed to individuals' quality of life associated with the dissemination of…
The negative effects of misinformation filter bubbles in adaptive systems have been known to researchers for some time. Several studies investigated, most prominently on YouTube, how fast a user can get into a misinformation filter bubble…
With the 2022 US midterm elections approaching, conspiratorial claims about the 2020 presidential elections continue to threaten users' trust in the electoral process. To regulate election misinformation, YouTube introduced policies to…
In this paper, we present results of an auditing study performed over YouTube aimed at investigating how fast a user can get into a misinformation filter bubble, but also what it takes to "burst the bubble", i.e., revert the bubble…
While most social media companies have attempted to address the challenge of COVID-19 misinformation, the success of those policies is difficult to assess, especially when focusing on individual platforms. This study explores the…
In this paper, we analyzed the perceived accuracy of COVID-19 vaccine information spoken back by Amazon Alexa. Unlike social media, Amazon Alexa doesn't apply soft moderation to unverified content, allowing for use of third-party malicious…
In e-commerce, ranking the search results based on users' preference is the most important task. Commercial e-commerce platforms, such as, Amazon, Alibaba, eBay, Walmart, etc. perform extensive and relentless research to perfect their…
Vaccination rates are decreasing in many areas of the world, and outbreaks of preventable diseases tend to follow in areas with particular low rates. Much research has been devoted to improving our understanding of the motivations behind…
COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy has increased concerns about vaccine uptake required to overcome the pandemic and protect public health. A critical factor associated with anti-vaccine attitudes is the information shared on social media. In this…
YouTube has today become the primary news source for many users, which raises concerns about the role its recommendation algorithm can play in the spread of misinformation and political polarization. Prior work in this area has mainly…
Billions of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered, but many remain hesitant. Misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines and other vaccines, propagating on social media, is believed to drive hesitancy towards vaccination. The ability to…
Digital platforms use recommendations to facilitate exchanges between platform actors, such as trade between buyers and sellers. Aiming to protect consumers and guarantee fair competition on platforms, legislators increasingly require that…
The growing volume of online content prompts the need for adopting algorithmic systems of information curation. These systems range from web search engines to recommender systems and are integral for helping users stay informed about…