Related papers: Trust and Friction: Negotiating How Information Fl…
Decentralizing the governance of social computing systems to communities promises to empower them to make independent decisions, with nuance and in accordance with their values. Yet, communities do not govern in isolation. Many problems…
Calls to decentralize feed-based social media have been driven by concerns about the concentrated power of centralized platforms and their societal impact. In response, numerous decentralized social media protocols have emerged, each…
Adolescents heavily rely on social media to build and maintain close relationships, yet current platform designs often make self-disclosure feel risky or uncomfortable. Through a three-part study involving 19 teens aged 13-18, we identify…
Centralized social networks have experienced a transformative impact on our digital era communication, connection, and information-sharing information. However, it has also raised significant concerns regarding users' privacy and individual…
Many have criticized the centralized and unaccountable governance of prominent online social platforms, leading to renewed interest in platform governance that incorporates multiple centers of power. Decentralization of power can arise…
Providing functionalities that allow online social network users to manage in a secure and private way the publication of their information and/or resources is a relevant and far from trivial topic that has been under scrutiny from various…
Mainstream social media platforms function as "walled garden" ecosystems that restrict user agency, control, and data portability. They have demonstrated a lack of transparency that contributes to a multitude of online harms. Our research…
Blockchain technology promises to democratize finance and promote social equity through decentralization, but questions remain about whether current implementations advance or hinder these goals. Through a mixed-methods study combining…
Online social networks, such as Facebook and twitter, are a growing phenomenon in today's world, with various platforms providing capabilities for individuals to collaborate through messaging and chatting as well as sharing of content such…
Motivated by the rapid push to decentralize sharing of data, we study whether large-scale data sharing coalitions can form in a decentralized manner under differential privacy when players have heterogeneous privacy preferences. We first…
Decentralized architecture offers a robust and flexible structure for online platforms, since centralized moderation and computation can be easy to disrupt with targeted attacks. However, a platform offering a decentralized architecture…
Community-level blocklists are key to content moderation practices in decentralized social media. These blocklists enable moderators to prevent other communities, such as those acting in bad faith, from interacting with their own -- and, if…
Social media platforms offer numerous benefits and allow people to come together for various causes. Many communities, academia, government agencies, institutions, healthcare, entertainment, and businesses are on social media platforms.…
Web 3.0 focuses on the decentralization of the internet and creating a system of interconnected and independent computers for improved privacy and security. We extend the idea of the decentralization of the web to the social media space:…
Decentralized systems are a subset of distributed systems where multiple authorities control different components and no authority is fully trusted by all. This implies that any component in a decentralized system is potentially…
A typical user interacts with many digital services nowadays, providing these services with their data. As of now, the management of privacy preferences is service-centric: Users must manage their privacy preferences according to the rules…
Items shared through Social Media may affect more than one user's privacy --- e.g., photos that depict multiple users, comments that mention multiple users, events in which multiple users are invited, etc. The lack of multi-party privacy…
This paper examines the potential of the Fediverse, a federated network of social media and content platforms, to counter the centralization and dominance of commercial platforms on the social Web. We gather evidence from the technology…
Decentralized social networks like Mastodon and BlueSky are trending topics that have drawn much attention and discussion in recent years. By devolving powers from the central node to the end users, decentralized social networks aim to cure…
Social media platforms significantly influence ideological divisions by enabling users to select information that aligns with their beliefs and avoid opposing viewpoints. Analyzing approximately 47 million Facebook posts, this study…