Related papers: Manipulating Twitter Through Deletions
Over 500 million tweets are posted in Twitter each day, out of which about 11% tweets are deleted by the users posting them. This phenomenon of widespread deletion of tweets leads to a number of questions: what kind of content posted by…
Social media platforms empower us in several ways, from information dissemination to consumption. While these platforms are useful in promoting citizen journalism, public awareness etc., they have misuse potentials. Malicious users use them…
Twitter has become a major source of data for social media researchers. One important aspect of Twitter not previously considered are {\em deletions} -- removal of tweets from the stream. Deletions can be due to a multitude of reasons such…
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…
Social platforms are heavily used by individuals to share their thoughts and personal information. However, due to regret over time about posting inappropriate social content, embarrassment, or even life or relationship changes, some past…
Over-sharing poorly-worded thoughts and personal information is prevalent on online social platforms. In many of these cases, users regret posting such content. To retrospectively rectify these errors in users' sharing decisions, most…
A very large number of people use Online Social Networks daily. Such platforms thus become attractive targets for agents that seek to gain access to the attention of large audiences, and influence perceptions or opinions. Botnets,…
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…
We present the first in-depth and large-scale study of misleading repurposing, in which a malicious user changes the identity of their social media account via, among other things, changes to the profile attributes in order to use the…
Bots, simply defined as accounts controlled by automation, can be used as a weapon for online manipulation and pose a threat to the health of platforms. Researchers have studied online platforms to detect, estimate, and characterize bot…
In recent years, Twitter has seen a proliferation of automated accounts or bots that send spam, offer clickbait, compromise security using malware, and attempt to skew public opinion. Previous research estimates that around 9% to 17% of…
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…
Following the 2016 US presidential election, there has been an increased focus on politically-motivated manipulation of mass-user behavior on social media platforms. Since a large volume of political discussion occurs on these platforms,…
Social media moderation policies are often at the center of public debate, and their implementation and enactment are sometimes surrounded by a veil of mystery. Unsurprisingly, due to limited platform transparency and data access,…
Online social media enables mass-level, transparent, and democratized discussion on numerous socio-political issues. Due to such openness, these platforms often endure manipulation and misinformation - leading to negative impacts. To…
In the pursuit of bolstering user safety, social media platforms deploy active moderation strategies, including content removal and user suspension. These measures target users engaged in discussions marked by hate speech or toxicity, often…
Toxicity is endemic to online social networks including Twitter. It follows a Pareto like distribution where most of the toxicity is generated by a very small number of profiles and as such, analyzing and characterizing these toxic profiles…
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…
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…