Related papers: Big Tech's Tightening Grip on Internet Speech

Middleware, third-party software intermediaries between users and platforms, has been broached as a means to decentralize the power of social media platforms and enhance user agency. Middleware may enable a more user-centric and democratic…

Content moderation is a widely used strategy to prevent the dissemination of irregular information on social media platforms. Despite extensive research on developing automated models to support decision-making in content moderation, there…

Heightened interest from nation states to perform content censorship make it evermore critical to identify the impact of censorship efforts on the Internet. We undertake a study of Internet architecture, capturing the state of Internet…

Computer-mediated communication is driving fundamental changes in the nature of written language. We investigate these changes by statistical analysis of a dataset comprising 107 million Twitter messages (authored by 2.7 million unique user…

This article proposes a framework for content moderation based on a decentralized market where no one party, neither governments nor firms, controls the flow of information.

We are entering a new "data everywhere-anytime" era that pivots us from being tracked online to continuous tracking as we move through our everyday lives. We have smart devices in our homes, on our bodies, and around our communities that…

Collectives adapt their network structure to the challenges they face. It has been hypothesized that collectives experiencing a real or imagined threat from an outgroup tend to consolidate behind a few influential group members, and that…

Reclaimed slur usage is a common and meaningful practice online for many marginalized communities. It serves as a source of solidarity, identity, and shared experience. However, contemporary automated and AI-based moderation tools for…

Social media, such as blogs, are often seen as democratic entities that allow more voices to be heard than the conventional mass or elite media. Some also feel that social media exhibits a balancing force against the arguably slanted elite…

Since the beginning of the digital area, privacy and anonymity have been impacted drastically (both, positively and negatively), by the different technologies developed for communications purposes. The broad possibilities that the Internet…

Over the last two decades, the scale and complexity of the Internet and its associated technologies built on the World Wide Web has grown exponentially with access to Internet as a facility occupying a prime place with other amenities of…

Social media platforms have become critical spaces for discussing mental health concerns, including eating disorders. While these platforms can provide valuable support networks, they may also amplify harmful content that glorifies…

Artificial intelligence (AI) has widespread societal implications, yet social scientists are only beginning to study public attitudes toward the technology. Existing studies find that the public's trust in institutions can play a major role…

The steady flow of social-media cases toward the Supreme Court shows a nation reworking its fundamental relationship with technology. The cases raise a host of questions ranging from difficult to impossible: how to nurture a vibrant public…

For decades, proponents of the Internet have promised that it would one day provide a seamless way for everyone in the world to communicate with each other, without introducing new boundaries, gatekeepers, or power structures. What…

Social media platforms offer flagging, a technical feature that empowers users to report inappropriate posts or bad actors to reduce online harm. The deceptively simple flagging interfaces on nearly all major social media platforms disguise…

Increased sharing of untrustworthy information on social media platforms is one of the main challenges of our modern information society. Because information disseminated by political elites is known to shape citizen and media discourse, it…

The original design of the Internet was a resilient, distributed system, that maybe able to route around (and therefore recover from) massive disruption --- up to and including nuclear war. However, network routing effects and business…

Online content moderation is essential for maintaining a healthy digital environment, and reliance on AI for this task continues to grow. Consider a user comment using national stereotypes to insult a politician. This example illustrates…

Despite regulations imposed by nations and social media platforms, such as recent EU regulations targeting digital violence, abusive content persists as a significant challenge. Existing approaches primarily rely on binary solutions, such…