%0 Journal Article %A Jasser, Greta %A McSwiney, Jordan %A Pertwee, Ed %A Zannettou, Savvas %+ External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society %T 'Welcome to #GabFam': Far-right virtual community on Gab : %G eng %U http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0008-ED46-F %R 10.1177/14614448211024546 %7 2021 %D 2021 %J New Media & Society %I Sage Publ. %C London %@ false

%0 Journal Article %A Mittos, Alexandros %A Zannettou, Savvas %A Blackburn, Jeremy %A De Cristofaro, Emiliano %+ External Organizations Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society External Organizations External Organizations %T Analyzing Genetic Testing Discourse on the Web Through the Lens of Twitter, Reddit, and 4chan : %G eng %U http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0007-72E1-A %R 10.1145/3404994 %7 2020 %D 2020 %J ACM Transactions on the Web %V 14 %N 4 %Z sequence number: 17 %I ACM %C New York, NY

%0 Conference Proceedings %A Hoseini, Mohamad %A Melo, Philipe %A Júnior, Manoel %A Benevenuto, Fabrício %A Chandrasekaran, Balakrishnan %A Feldmann, Anja %A Zannettou, Savvas %+ Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society %T Demystifying the Messaging Platforms' Ecosystem Through the Lens of Twitter : %G eng %U http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0007-8542-8 %R 10.1145/3419394.3423651 %D 2020 %B 20th ACM Internet Measurement Conference %Z date of event: 2020-10-27 - 2020-10-29 %C Virtual Event, USA %B IMC '20 %P 345 - 359 %I ACM %@ 9-781-4503-8138-3

%0 Conference Proceedings %A Mittos, Alexandros %A Zannettou, Savvas %A Blackburn, Jeremy %A De Cristofaro, Emiliano %+ External Organizations Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society External Organizations External Organizations %T "And We Will Fight for Our Race!" A Measurement Study of Genetic Testing Conversations on Reddit and 4chan : %G eng %U http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0007-859A-5 %U https://ojs.aaai.org//index.php/ICWSM/article/view/7314 %D 2020 %B 14th International Conference on Web and Social Media %Z date of event: 2020-06-08 - 2020-06-11 %C Atlanta, GA, USA (Virtual Event) %B Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Web and Social Media %P 452 - 463 %I AAAI %@ 978-1-57735-823-7

%0 Conference Proceedings %A Papadamou, Kostantinos %A Papasavva, Antonis %A Zannettou, Savvas %A Blackburn, Jeremy %A Kourtellis, Nicolas %A Leontiadis, Ilias %A Stringhini, Gianluca %A Sirivianos, Michael %+ External Organizations External Organizations Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations %T Disturbed YouTube for Kids: Characterizing and Detecting Inappropriate Videos Targeting Young Children : %G eng %U http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0007-85A4-9 %U https://ojs.aaai.org//index.php/ICWSM/article/view/7320 %D 2020 %B 14th International Conference on Web and Social Media %Z date of event: 2020-06-08 - 2020-06-11 %C Atlanta, GA, USA (Virtual Event) %B Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Web and Social Media %P 522 - 533 %I AAAI %@ 978-1-57735-823-7

%0 Conference Proceedings %A Zannettou, Savvas %A Caulfield, Tristan %A Bradlyn, Barry %A Cristofaro, Emiliano De %A Stringhini, Gianluca %A Blackburn, Jeremy %+ Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations %T Characterizing the Use of Images in State-Sponsored Information Warfare Operations by Russian Trolls on Twitter : %G eng %U http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0007-85C1-8 %U https://ojs.aaai.org//index.php/ICWSM/article/view/7342 %D 2020 %B 14th International Conference on Web and Social Media %Z date of event: 2020-06-08 - 2020-06-11 %C Atlanta, GA, USA (Virtual Event) %B Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Web and Social Media %P 774 - 785 %I AAAI %@ 978-1-57735-823-7

%0 Conference Proceedings %A Zannettou, Savvas %A Finkelstein, Joel %A Bradlyn, Barry %A Blackburn, Jeremy %+ Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations %T A Quantitative Approach to Understanding Online Antisemitism : %G eng %U http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0007-878F-0 %U https://ojs.aaai.org//index.php/ICWSM/article/view/7343 %D 2020 %B 14th International Conference on Web and Social Media %Z date of event: 2020-06-08 - 2020-06-11 %C Atlanta, GA, USA (Virtual Event) %B Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Web and Social Media %P 786 - 797 %I AAAI %@ 978-1-57735-823-7

%0 Conference Proceedings %A Baumgartner, Jason %A Zannettou, Savvas %A Keegan, Brian %A Squire, Megan %A Blackburn, Jeremy %+ External Organizations Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations %T The Pushshift Reddit Dataset : %G eng %U http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0007-8792-B %U https://ojs.aaai.org//index.php/ICWSM/article/view/7347 %D 2020 %B 14th International Conference on Web and Social Media %Z date of event: 2020-06-08 - 2020-06-11 %C Atlanta, GA, USA (Virtual Event) %B Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Web and Social Media %P 830 - 839 %I AAAI %@ 978-1-57735-823-7

%0 Conference Proceedings %A Zannettou, Savvas %A Elsherief, Mai %A Belding, Elizabeth %A Nilizadeh, Shirin %A Stringhini, Gianluca %+ Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations %T Measuring and Characterizing Hate Speech on News Websites : %G eng %U http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0007-87AF-C %R 10.1145/3394231.3397902 %D 2020 %B 12th ACM Conference on Web Science %Z date of event: 2020-07-06 - 2020-07-10 %C Southampton, UK (Online) %B WebSci '20 %P 125 - 134 %I ACM %@ 9781450379892

%0 Conference Proceedings %A Papasavva, Antonis %A Zannettou, Savvas %A De Cristofaro, Emiliano %A Stringhini, Gianluca %A Blackburn, Jeremy %+ External Organizations Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations %T Raiders of the Lost Kek: 3.5 Years of Augmented 4chan Posts from the Politically Incorrect Board : %G eng %U http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0007-87A0-B %U https://ojs.aaai.org//index.php/ICWSM/article/view/7354 %D 2020 %B 14th International Conference on Web and Social Media %Z date of event: 2020-06-08 - 2020-06-11 %C Atlanta, GA, USA (Virtual Event) %B Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Web and Social Media %P 885 - 894 %I AAAI %@ 978-1-57735-823-7

%0 Conference Proceedings %A Baumgartner, Jason %A Zannettou, Savvas %A Squire, Megan %A Blackburn, Jeremy %+ External Organizations Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society External Organizations External Organizations %T The Pushshift Telegram Dataset : %G eng %U http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0007-879A-3 %U https://ojs.aaai.org//index.php/ICWSM/article/view/7348 %D 2020 %B 14th International Conference on Web and Social Media %Z date of event: 2020-06-08 - 2020-06-11 %C Atlanta, GA, USA (Virtual Event) %B Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Web and Social Media %P 840 - 847 %I AAAI %@ 978-1-57735-823-7

%0 Report %A Horta Ribeiro, Manoel %A Blackburn, Jeremy %A Bradlyn, Barry %A De Cristofaro, Emiliano %A Stringhini, Gianluca %A Long, Summer %A Greenberg, Stephanie %A Zannettou, Savvas %+ External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society %T The Evolution of the Manosphere Across the Web : %G eng %U http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0007-89A7-2 %U https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.07600 %D 2020 %X In this paper, we present a large-scale characterization of the Manosphere, a conglomerate of Web-based misogynist movements roughly focused on "men's issues," which has seen significant growth over the past years. We do so by gathering and analyzing 28.8M posts from 6 forums and 51 subreddits. Overall, we paint a comprehensive picture of the evolution of the Manosphere on the Web, showing the links between its different communities over the years. We find that milder and older communities, such as Pick Up Artists and Men's Rights Activists, are giving way to more extremist ones like Incels and Men Going Their Own Way, with a substantial migration of active users. Moreover, our analysis suggests that these newer communities are more toxic and misogynistic than the former. %K Computer Science, Computers and Society, cs.CY

%0 Report %A Papadamou, Kostantinos %A Zannettou, Savvas %A Blackburn, Jeremy %A De Cristofaro, Emiliano %A Stringhini, Gianluca %A Sirivianos, Michael %+ External Organizations Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations %T Understanding the Incel Community on YouTube : %G eng %U http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0007-89B3-4 %U https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.08293 %D 2020 %X YouTube is by far the largest host of user-generated video content worldwide. Alas, the platform also hosts inappropriate, toxic, and/or hateful content. One community that has come into the spotlight for sharing and publishing hateful content are the so-called Involuntary Celibates (Incels), a loosely defined movement ostensibly focusing on men's issues, who have often been linked to misogynistic views. In this paper, we set out to analyze the Incel community on YouTube by focusing on the evolution of this community over the last decade and understanding whether YouTube's recommendation algorithm steers users towards Incel-related videos. We collect videos shared on Incel-related communities within Reddit, and perform a data-driven characterization of the content posted on YouTube. Among other things, we find that the Incel community on YouTube is getting traction and that during the last decade the number of Incel-related videos and comments rose substantially. Also, we quantify the probability that a user will encounter an Incel-related video by virtue of YouTube's recommendation algorithm. Within five hops when starting from a non-Incel-related video, this probability is 1 in 5, which is alarmingly high as such content is likely to share toxic and misogynistic views. %K Computer Science, Computers and Society, cs.CY

%0 Report %A Schild, Leonard %A Ling, Chen %A Blackburn, Jeremy %A Stringhini, Gianluca %A Zhang, Yang %A Zannettou, Savvas %+ External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society %T "Go eat a bat, Chang!": An Early Look on the Emergence of Sinophobic Behavior on Web Communities in the Face of COVID-19 : %G eng %U http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0007-89C5-0 %U https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.04046 %D 2020 %X The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has changed our lives in unprecedented ways. In the face of the projected catastrophic consequences, many countries have enacted social distancing measures in an attempt to limit the spread of the virus. Under these conditions, the Web has become an indispensable medium for information acquisition, communication, and entertainment. At the same time, unfortunately, the Web is being exploited for the dissemination of potentially harmful and disturbing content, such as the spread of conspiracy theories and hateful speech towards specific ethnic groups, in particular towards Chinese people since COVID-19 is believed to have originated from China. In this paper, we make a first attempt to study the emergence of Sinophobic behavior on the Web during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. We collect two large-scale datasets from Twitter and 4chan's Politically Incorrect board (/pol/) over a time period of approximately five months and analyze them to investigate whether there is a rise or important differences with regard to the dissemination of Sinophobic content. We find that COVID-19 indeed drives the rise of Sinophobia on the Web and that the dissemination of Sinophobic content is a cross-platform phenomenon: it exists on fringe Web communities like \dspol, and to a lesser extent on mainstream ones like Twitter. Also, using word embeddings over time, we characterize the evolution and emergence of new Sinophobic slurs on both Twitter and /pol/. Finally, we find interesting differences in the context in which words related to Chinese people are used on the Web before and after the COVID-19 outbreak: on Twitter we observe a shift towards blaming China for the situation, while on /pol/ we find a shift towards using more (and new) Sinophobic slurs. %K cs.SI,Computer Science, Computers and Society, cs.CY

%0 Report %A Papasavva, Antonis %A Blackburn, Jeremy %A Stringhini, Gianluca %A Zannettou, Savvas %A De Cristofaro, Emiliano %+ External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society External Organizations %T "Is it a Qoincidence?": A First Step Towards Understanding and Characterizing the QAnon Movement on Voat.co : %G eng %U http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0007-89D2-1 %U https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.04885 %D 2020 %X Online fringe communities offer fertile grounds for users to seek and share paranoid ideas fueling suspicion of mainstream news, and outright conspiracy theories. Among these, the QAnon conspiracy theory has emerged in 2017 on 4chan, broadly supporting the idea that powerful politicians, aristocrats, and celebrities are closely engaged in a global pedophile ring. At the same time, governments are thought to be controlled by "puppet masters," as democratically elected officials serve as a fake showroom of democracy. In this paper, we provide an empirical exploratory analysis of the QAnon community on Voat.co, a Reddit-esque news aggregator, which has recently captured the interest of the press for its toxicity and for providing a platform to QAnon followers. More precisely, we analyze a large dataset from /v/GreatAwakening, the most popular QAnon-related subverse (the Voat equivalent of a subreddit) to characterize activity and user engagement. To further understand the discourse around QAnon, we study the most popular named entities mentioned in the posts, along with the most prominent topics of discussion, which focus on US politics, Donald Trump, and world events. We also use word2vec models to identify narratives around QAnon-specific keywords, and our graph visualization shows that some of QAnon-related ones are closely related to those from the Pizzagate conspiracy theory and "drops" by "Q." Finally, we analyze content toxicity, finding that discussions on /v/GreatAwakening are less toxic than in the broad Voat community. %K Computer Science, Computers and Society, cs.CY

%0 Report %A Papadamou, Kostantinos %A Zannettou, Savvas %A Blackburn, Jeremy %A De Cristofaro, Emiliano %A Stringhini, Gianluca %A Sirivianos, Michael %+ External Organizations Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations %T "It is just a flu": Assessing the Effect of Watch History on YouTube's Pseudoscientific Video Recommendations : %G eng %U http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0007-89E5-C %U https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.11638 %D 2020 %X YouTube has revolutionized the way people discover and consume videos, becoming one of the primary news sources for Internet users. Since content on YouTube is generated by its users, the platform is particularly vulnerable to misinformative and conspiratorial videos. Even worse, the role played by YouTube's recommendation algorithm in unwittingly promoting questionable content is not well understood, and could potentially make the problem even worse. This can have dire real-world consequences, especially when pseudoscientific content is promoted to users at critical times, e.g., during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper, we set out to characterize and detect pseudoscientific misinformation on YouTube. We collect 6.6K videos related to COVID-19, the flat earth theory, the anti-vaccination, and anti-mask movements; using crowdsourcing, we annotate them as pseudoscience, legitimate science, or irrelevant. We then train a deep learning classifier to detect pseudoscientific videos with an accuracy of 76.1%. Next, we quantify user exposure to this content on various parts of the platform (i.e., a user's homepage, recommended videos while watching a specific video, or search results) and how this exposure changes based on the user's watch history. We find that YouTube's recommendation algorithm is more aggressive in suggesting pseudoscientific content when users are searching for specific topics, while these recommendations are less common on a user's homepage or when actively watching pseudoscientific videos. Finally, we shed light on how a user's watch history substantially affects the type of recommended videos. %K Computer Science, Computers and Society, cs.CY,cs.SI

%0 Report %A Horta Ribeiro, Manoel %A Jhaver, Shagun %A Zannettou, Savvas %A Blackburn, Jeremy %A De Cristofaro, Emiliano %A Stringhini, Gianluca %A West, Robert %+ External Organizations External Organizations Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations %T Does Platform Migration Compromise Content Moderation? Evidence from r/The_Donald and r/Incels : %G eng %U http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0007-89E0-1 %U https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.10397 %D 2020 %X When toxic online communities on mainstream platforms face moderation measures, such as bans, they may migrate to other platforms with laxer policies or set up their own dedicated website. Previous work suggests that, within mainstream platforms, community-level moderation is effective in mitigating the harm caused by the moderated communities. It is, however, unclear whether these results also hold when considering the broader Web ecosystem. Do toxic communities continue to grow in terms of user base and activity on their new platforms? Do their members become more toxic and ideologically radicalized? In this paper, we report the results of a large-scale observational study of how problematic online communities progress following community-level moderation measures. We analyze data from r/The_Donald} and r/Incels, two communities that were banned from Reddit and subsequently migrated to their own standalone websites. Our results suggest that, in both cases, moderation measures significantly decreased posting activity on the new platform, reducing the number of posts, active users, and newcomers. In spite of that, users in one of the studied communities (r/The_Donald) showed increases in signals associated with toxicity and radicalization, which justifies concerns that the reduction in activity may come at the expense of a more toxic and radical community. Overall, our results paint a nuanced portrait of the consequences of community-level moderation and can inform their design and deployment. %K Computer Science, Computers and Society, cs.CY

%0 Report %A Wang, Yuping %A Tahmasbi, Fatemeh %A Blackburn, Jeremy %A Bradlyn, Barry %A De Cristofaro, Emiliano %A Magerman, David %A Zannettou, Savvas %A Stringhini, Gianluca %+ Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society %T Understanding the Use of Fauxtography on Social Media : %G eng %U http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0007-89D9-A %U https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.11792 %D 2020 %X Despite the influence that image-based communication has on online discourse, the role played by images in disinformation is still not well understood. In this paper, we present the first large-scale study of fauxtography, analyzing the use of manipulated or misleading images in news discussion on online communities. First, we develop a computational pipeline geared to detect fauxtography, and identify over 61k instances of fauxtography discussed on Twitter, 4chan, and Reddit. Then, we study how posting fauxtography affects engagement of posts on social media, finding that posts containing it receive more interactions in the form of re-shares, likes, and comments. Finally, we show that fauxtography images are often turned into memes by Web communities. Our findings show that effective mitigation against disinformation need to take images into account, and highlight a number of challenges in dealing with image-based disinformation. %K Computer Science, Computers and Society, cs.CY

%0 Report %A Zannettou, Savvas %A Caulfield, Tristan %A Bradlyn, Barry %A De Cristofaro, Emiliano %A Stringhini, Gianluca %A Blackburn, Jeremy %+ Internet Architecture, MPI for Informatics, Max Planck Society External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations External Organizations %T Characterizing the Use of Images in State-Sponsored Information Warfare Operations by Russian Trolls on Twitter : %G eng %U http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0005-767F-9 %U http://arxiv.org/abs/1901.05997 %D 2019 %X State-sponsored organizations are increasingly linked to efforts aimed to exploit social media for information warfare and manipulating public opinion. Typically, their activities rely on a number of social network accounts they control, aka trolls, that post and interact with other users disguised as "regular" users. These accounts often use images and memes, along with textual content, in order to increase the engagement and the credibility of their posts. In this paper, we present the first study of images shared by state-sponsored accounts by analyzing a ground truth dataset of 1.8M images posted to Twitter by accounts controlled by the Russian Internet Research Agency. First, we analyze the content of the images as well as their posting activity. Then, using Hawkes Processes, we quantify their influence on popular Web communities like Twitter, Reddit, 4chan's Politically Incorrect board (/pol/), and Gab, with respect to the dissemination of images. We find that the extensive image posting activity of Russian trolls coincides with real-world events (e.g., the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville), and shed light on their targets as well as the content disseminated via images. Finally, we show that the trolls were more effective in disseminating politics-related imagery than other images. %K cs.SI,Computer Science, Computers and Society, cs.CY