Related papers: Self-moderation in the decentralized era: decoding…
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…
The pitfalls of centralized social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter/X, have led to concerns about control, transparency, and accountability. Decentralized social networks have emerged as a result with the goal of empowering users.…
Bluesky is a nascent Twitter-like and decentralized social media network with novel features and unprecedented data access. This paper provides a characterization of its interaction network, studying the political leaning, polarization,…
Online abuse is becoming an increasingly prevalent issue in modern-day society, with 41 percent of Americans having experienced online harassment in some capacity in 2021. People who identify as women, in particular, can be subjected to a…
Bluesky is a new social network built upon the AT Protocol, a decentralized foundation for public social media. It was launched in private beta in February 2023, and has grown to over 10 million registered users by October 2024. In this…
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…
Online political discourse is increasingly shaped not by a few dominant platforms but by a fragmented ecosystem of social media spaces, each with its own user base, target audience, and algorithmic mediation of discussion. Such…
Decentralized social media platforms like Bluesky Social (Bluesky) have made it possible to publicly disclose some user behaviors with millisecond-level precision. Embracing Bluesky's principles of open-source and open-data, we present the…
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 moderate content for each user by incorporating the outputs of both platform-wide content moderation systems and, in some cases, user-configured personal moderation preferences. However, it is unclear (1) how end…
Decentralized social media protocols enable users in independent, user-hosted servers (i.e., instances) to interact with each other while they self-govern. This community-based model of social media governance opens up new opportunities for…
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:…
Bluesky is a Twitter-like decentralized social media platform that has recently grown in popularity. After an invite-only period, it opened to the public worldwide on February 6th, 2024. In this paper, we provide a longitudinal analysis of…
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…
Understanding and predicting user behavior on social media platforms is crucial for content recommendation and platform design. While existing approaches focus primarily on common actions like retweeting and liking, the prediction of rare…
Bluesky is a decentralized, Twitter-like social media platform that has rapidly gained popularity. Following an invite-only phase, it officially opened to the public on February 6th, 2024, leading to a significant expansion of its user…
Accurately estimating how users respond to moderation interventions is paramount for developing effective and user-centred moderation strategies. However, this requires a clear understanding of which user characteristics are associated with…
As internet access expands, so does exposure to harmful content, increasing the need for effective moderation. Research has demonstrated that large language models (LLMs) can be effectively utilized for social media moderation tasks,…
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…
Online social media platforms use automated moderation systems to remove or reduce the visibility of rule-breaking content. While previous work has documented the importance of manual content moderation, the effects of automated content…