Related papers: Did the Musk Takeover Boost Contentious Actors on …
On October 27th, 2022, Elon Musk purchased Twitter, becoming its new CEO and firing many top executives in the process. Musk listed fewer restrictions on content moderation and removal of spam bots among his goals for the platform. Given…
Elon Musk has long been known to significantly impact Wall Street through his controversial statements and actions, particularly through his own use of social media. An innovator and visionary entrepreneur, Musk is often considered a poster…
We provided quantitative data supporting significant changes between the time Twitter acceptance the offer on April 25 and the time the agreement was finalized on October 27. Republican politicians saw significant increases in their…
We investigate how users perceive social media account verification, how those perceptions compare to platform practices, and what happens when a gap emerges. We use recent changes in Twitter's verification process as a natural experiment,…
At the end of October 2022, Elon Musk concluded his acquisition of Twitter. In the weeks and months before that, several questions were publicly discussed that were not only of interest to the platform's future buyers, but also of high…
We investigate the impact of free speech and the relaxation of moderation on online social media platforms using Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter as a case study. By curating a dataset of over 10 million tweets, our study employs a novel…
The acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk has spurred controversy and uncertainty among Twitter users. The move raised as many praises as concerns, particularly regarding Musk's views on free speech. As a result, a large number of Twitter…
Social media have been fundamental in the daily lives of millions of people, but they have raised concerns about content moderation policies, the management of personal data, and their commercial exploitation. The acquisition of Twitter…
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…
Over the past few years, there is a heated debate and serious public concerns regarding online content moderation, censorship, and the principle of free speech on the Web. To ease these concerns, social media platforms like Twitter and…
In the hypertrophic and uncharted information world, recommender systems are gatekeepers of knowledge. The evolution of these algorithms is usually an opaque process, but in February 2023, the recommender system of X, formerly Twitter, was…
Algorithmic effects on social media platforms have come under recent scrutiny, with several studies reporting that right-leaning accounts tend to receive more exposure. In this paper, we expand upon this body of work using data collected…
Cryptocurrency has attracted significant attention. Considering the number of individuals investing in bitcoin, their motivations are comparatively less clear than traditional investment decisions. As of December 2020, the market has…
The past decade has witnessed a marked increase in the use of social media by politicians, most notably exemplified by the 45th President of the United States (POTUS), Donald Trump. On Twitter, POTUS messages consistently attract high…
Social network and publishing platforms, such as Twitter, support the concept of verification. Verified accounts are deemed worthy of platform-wide public interest and are separately authenticated by the platform itself. There have been…
The migration of Twitter users to Mastodon following Elon Musk's acquisition presents a unique opportunity to study collective behavior and gain insights into the drivers of coordinated behavior in online media. We analyzed the social…
State and geopolitical censorship on Twitter, now X, has been turning into a routine, raising concerns about the boundaries between criminal content and freedom of speech. One such censorship practice, withholding content in a particular…
We explore how the polarization around controversial topics evolves on Twitter - over a long period of time (2011 to 2016), and also as a response to major external events that lead to increased related activity. We find that increased…
We study the evolution of long-lived controversial debates as manifested on Twitter from 2011 to 2016. Specifically, we explore how the structure of interactions and content of discussion varies with the level of collective attention, as…
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,…