Related papers: How Decentralization Affects User Agency on Social…
Blockchain technology has emerged as a transformative paradigm for decentralized and secure data management across diverse application domains, including healthcare, supply chain management, and the Internet of Things. Its core features,…
Online trackers personalize ads campaigns, exponentially increasing their efficacy compared to traditional channels. The downside of this is that thousands of mostly unknown systems own our profiles and violate our privacy without our…
Nowadays we are faced with an increasing popularity of social software including wikis, blogs, micro-blogs and online social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. Unfortunately, the mostly used social services are centralized and personal…
Individuals are turning to increasingly anthropomorphic, general-purpose chatbots for AI companionship, rather than roleplay-specific platforms. However, not much is known about how individuals perceive and conduct their relationships with…
In this paper we report findings from a study of social network site use in a UK Government department. We have investigated this from a managerial, organisational perspective. We found at the study site that there are already several…
Microblogging platforms constitute a popular means of real-time communication and information sharing. They involve such a large volume of user-generated content that their users suffer from an information deluge. To address it, numerous…
Recent studies suggest that social media usage -- while linked to an increased diversity of information and perspectives for users -- has exacerbated user polarization on many issues. A popular theory for this phenomenon centers on the…
In the attention economy, understanding how individuals manage limited attention is critical. We introduce a simple model describing the decay of a user's engagement when facing multiple inputs. We analytically show that individual…
Online platforms have completely transformed American social life. They have democratized publication, overthrown old gatekeepers, and given ordinary Americans a fresh voice in politics. But the system is beginning to falter. Control over…
Generative AI has transformed human-computer interaction by enabling natural language interfaces and the emergence of autonomous agents capable of acting on users' behalf. While early applications have improved individual productivity,…
Centralization enhances the efficiency of Artificial Intelligence (AI) but also introduces critical challenges, including single points of failure, inherent biases, data privacy risks, and scalability limitations. To address these issues,…
In the face of rapidly advancing AI technology, individuals will increasingly rely on AI agents to navigate life's growing complexities, raising critical concerns about maintaining both human agency and autonomy. This paper addresses a…
Social media has shaken the foundations of our society, unlikely as it may seem. Many of the popular tools used to moderate harmful digital content, however, have received widespread criticism from both the academic community and the public…
Online platforms like Reddit, Wikipedia, and Facebook are integral to modern life, enabling content creation and sharing through posts, comments, and discussions. Despite their virtual and often anonymous nature, these platforms need rules…
We propose an agent-based framework for personalized filtering of categorized harassing communication in online social networks. Unlike global moderation systems that apply uniform filtering rules, our approach models user-specific…
The old mantra of decentralizing the Internet is coming again with fanfare, this time around the blockchain technology hype. We have already seen a technology supposed to change the nature of the Internet: peer-to-peer. The reality is that…
Foundation models including large language models (LLMs) are increasingly attracting interest worldwide for their distinguished capabilities and potential to perform a wide variety of tasks. Nevertheless, people are concerned about whether…
Extensive recent media focus has been directed towards the dark side of intelligent systems, how algorithms can influence society negatively. Often, transparency is proposed as a solution or step in the right direction. Unfortunately,…
During major political events, social media platforms encounter increased systemic risks. However, it is still unclear if and how they adjust their moderation practices in response. The Digital Services Act Transparency Database…
Massive amounts of multimedia data (i.e., text, audio, video, graphics and animation) are being generated everyday. Conventionally, multimedia data are managed by the platforms maintained by multimedia service providers, which are generally…