Related papers: A First Look at Scams on YouTube
YouTube, with millions of content creators, has become the preferred destination for watching videos online. Through the Partner program, YouTube allows content creators to monetize their popular videos. Of significant importance for…
Phone scams remain a difficult problem to tackle due to the combination of protocol limitations, legal enforcement challenges and advances in technology enabling attackers to hide their identities and reduce costs. Scammers use social…
Faced with the challenge of attracting user attention and revenue, social media websites have turned to video advertisements (video-ads). While in traditional media the video-ad market is mostly based on an interaction between content…
Telegram is one of the most used instant messaging apps worldwide. Some of its success lies in providing high privacy protection and social network features like the channels -- virtual rooms in which only the admins can post and broadcast…
Video-sharing social media platforms, such as TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, implement content moderation policies aimed at reducing exposure to harmful videos among minor users. As video has become the dominant and most immersive form of…
Short video platforms, such as YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok, are used by billions of users. These platforms expose users to harmful content, ranging from clickbait or physical harms to hate or misinformation. Yet, we lack a comprehensive…
Short video platforms, such as YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok, are used by billions of users globally. These platforms expose users to harmful content, ranging from clickbait or physical harms to misinformation or online hate. Yet, detecting…
Video watching had emerged as one of the most frequent media activities on the Internet. Yet, little is known about how users watch online video. Using two distinct YouTube datasets, a set of random YouTube videos crawled from the Web and a…
Online video services, messaging systems, games and social media services are tremendously popular among young people and children in many countries. Most of the digital services offered on the internet are advertising funded, which makes…
How can web services that depend on user generated content discern fake social engagement activities by spammers from legitimate ones? In this paper, we focus on the social site of YouTube and the problem of identifying bad actors posting…
Conspiracy theories have flourished on social media, raising concerns that such content is fueling the spread of disinformation, supporting extremist ideologies, and in some cases, leading to violence. Under increased scrutiny and pressure…
Recent years have witnessed a significant increase in the online sharing of medical information, with videos representing a large fraction of such online sources. Previous studies have however shown that more than half of the health-related…
YouTube plays a key role in entertaining and informing people around the globe. However, studying the platform is difficult due to the lack of randomly sampled data and of systematic ways to query the platform's colossal catalog. In this…
The role played by YouTube's recommendation algorithm in unwittingly promoting misinformation and conspiracy theories is not entirely understood. Yet, this can have dire real-world consequences, especially when pseudoscientific content is…
YouTube is a popular video platform for sharing creative content and ideas, targeting different demographics. Adults, older children, and young children are all avid viewers of YouTube videos. Meanwhile, countless young-kid-oriented…
YouTube has evolved into a powerful platform where creators monetize their influence through affiliate marketing, raising concerns about transparency and ethics, especially when creators fail to disclose their affiliate relationships.…
YouTube has revolutionized the way people discover and consume video. Although YouTube facilitates easy access to hundreds of well-produced and trustworthy videos, abhorrent, misinformative, and mistargeted content is also common. The…
With the widespread use of social media, organizations, and individuals use these platforms to raise funds and support causes. Unfortunately, this has led to the rise of scammers in soliciting fraudulent donations. In this study, we conduct…
Millions of people use platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other mass media. Due to the accessibility of these platforms, they are often used to establish a narrative, conduct propaganda, and disseminate misinformation. This…
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…