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Modern social media platforms, such as TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube, rely on recommendation systems to personalize content for users based on user interactions with endless streams of content, such as "For You" pages. However, these…
Modern algorithmic recommendation systems seek to engage users through behavioral content-interest matching. While many platforms recommend content based on engagement metrics, others like TikTok deliver interest-based content, resulting in…
This paper investigates the effectiveness of TikTok's enforcement mechanisms for limiting the exposure of harmful content to youth accounts. We collect over 7000 videos, classify them as harmful vs not-harmful, and then simulate…
TikTok has emerged as a major source of information and social interaction for youth, raising urgent questions about how substance use discourse manifests and circulates on the platform. This paper presents the first comprehensive analysis…
Video-sharing social media platforms, such as TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, implement content moderation policies aimed at reducing exposure to harmful videos among minor users. As video has become the dominant and most immersive form of…
Social media platforms actively moderate content glorifying harmful behaviors like eating disorders, which include anorexia and bulimia. However, users have adapted to evade moderation by using coded hashtags. Our study investigates the…
Digital technologies and social algorithms are revolutionizing the media landscape, altering how we select and consume health information. Extending the selectivity paradigm with research on social media engagement, the convergence…
Opaque algorithms disseminate and mediate the content that users consume on online social media platforms. This algorithmic mediation serves users with contents of their liking, on the other hand, it may cause several inadvertent risks to…
Short-format videos have exploded on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Despite this, the research community lacks large-scale empirical studies into how people engage with short-format videos and the role of recommendation…
During the COVID-19 pandemic, health-related misinformation and harmful content shared online had a significant adverse effect on society. To mitigate this adverse effect, mainstream social media platforms employed soft moderation…
Intelligent algorithms increasingly shape the content we encounter and engage with online. TikTok's For You feed exemplifies extreme algorithm-driven curation, tailoring the stream of video content almost exclusively based on users'…
Social media algorithms are thought to amplify variation in user beliefs, thus contributing to radicalization. However, quantitative evidence on how algorithms and user preferences jointly shape harmful online engagement is limited. I…
In recent years, online communities have formed around suicide and self-harm prevention. While these communities offer support in moment of crisis, they can also normalize harmful behavior, discourage professional treatment, and instigate…
The short-form video-sharing service TikTok has become an important platform in the social media landscape, with much of its popularity owed to its algorithmically-driven "For You Page" (FYP). This feature serves as the "home screen" for…
Suicide remains a leading cause of death in Western countries. As social media becomes central to daily life, digital footprints offer valuable insight into suicidal behavior. Focusing on individuals who attempted suicide while uploading…
While prior work has investigated the benefits of online health communities and general purpose social media used for health-related purposes, little work examines the use of TikTok, an emerging social media platform with a substantial user…
Short-form video platforms integrate text, visuals, and audio into complex communicative acts, yet existing research analyzes these modalities in isolation, lacking scalable frameworks to interpret their joint contributions. This study…
Anxiety disorder is one of the world's most prevalent mental health conditions, arising from complex interactions of biological and environmental factors and severely interfering one's ability to lead normal life activities. Current methods…
The prevalence of short form video platforms, combined with the ineffectiveness of age verification mechanisms, raises concerns about the potential harms facing children and teenagers in an algorithm-moderated online environment. We…
Social media platforms have become an integral part of everyday life, serving as a primary source of news and information for many users. These platforms increasingly rely on personalised recommendation systems that shape what users see and…