Centralized Online Social Networks Research Articles

Characterizing growth in decentralized socio-economic networks through triadic closure-related network motifs

The emergence of the Web3 paradigm has led to more and more systems built on blockchain technology and relying on cryptocurrency tokens – both fungible and non-fungible – to sustain themselves and generate profit. The growth and success of these platforms are strongly dependent on the growth and evolution of the trade relationships among users. In this context, it is of paramount importance to understand the mechanism behind the evolution and growth dynamics of these economic ties: however, in these systems the trade relationships are strictly intertwined with social dynamics, posing significant challenges in the analysis. One of the most important mechanisms behind the evolution of social networks is the triadic closure principle: given the strict link between social and economic spheres, the mechanism emerges as a potential candidate among mechanisms in literature. Therefore in this work, we extend the existing methodology for triadic closure studies and adapt it to directed networks. We performed an analysis centered around 3-node subgraphs known as “triads” and statistically significant triads referred to as “triadic motifs”, both from a static and temporal perspective. The methodology was applied to various decentralized socio-economic networks with distinct levels of social components. These networks include currency transfers from the blockchain-based online social media platform Steemit, trade relationships among NFT sellers and buyers on the Ethereum blockchain, and a blockchain-based currency designed for humanitarian aid called Sarafu. Our measurements show how triadic closure is relevant during the evolution of these platforms and, for a few aspects, more impactful than centralized online social networks, where triadic closure is also incentivized by recommendation systems. Moreover, we are able to highlight both similarities and differences across networks with different levels of social components, both from a static and temporal standpoint. Overall our work presents strong evidence that triadic closure is an important evolutionary mechanism in decentralized socio-economic networks. Our findings provide a stepping stone in the study of decentralized socio-economic networks. Understanding the evolution of other decentralized networks, not following the same Web3 paradigm or with different social components will provide valuable insight into the understanding of dynamics in decentralized systems and potentially improve their design process.

Image DePO: Towards Gradual Decentralization of Online Social Networks using Decentralized Privacy Overlays

Centralized online social networks --- e.g., Facebook, Twitter and TikTok --- help drive social connection on the Internet, but have nigh unfettered access to monitor and monetize the personal data of their users. This centralization can especially undermine the use of the social internet by minority populations, who disproportionately bear the costs of institutional surveillance. We introduce a new class of privacy-enhancing technology --- decentralized privacy overlays (DePOs) --- that helps cOSN users regain some control over their personal data by allowing them to selectively share secret content on cOSNs through decentralized content distribution networks. As a first step, we present an implementation and user evaluation of Image DePO, a proof-of-concept design probe that allows users to upload and share secret photos on Facebook through the Interplanetary File System peer-to-peer protocol. We qualitatively evaluated Image DePO in a controlled, test environment with 19 queer and Black, Indigenous, (and) Person of Color (BIPOC) participants. We found that while Image DePO could help address the institutional threats with which our participants expressed concern, interpersonal threats were the more salient concern in their decisions to share content. Accordingly, we argue that in order to see widespread use, DePOs must align protection against abstract institutional threats with protection against the more salient interpersonal threats users consider when making specific sharing decisions.

Towards a Decentralized OSN for a Privacy-preserving e-health System

Abstract e-health could be defined as the cost-effective and secure use of information and communication technologies in support of health systems, including healthcare related services and monitoring at both the local site and at a distance. Challenges still need to be resolved to build reliable, secure, and efficient e-health platforms with great flexibility. Recently, social networks have seen a growing importance in different applications and could play a prominent role in healthcare. Online Social Networks (OSN) offer new possibilities such as easy access to medical data anytime from anywhere. Due to the sensitivity of health data exchanged over such networks, a special attention need to be paid to security and privacy aspects of these data. The use of existing centralized OSNs raises the big brother problem. Moreover, the centralized architectures of OSNs are not scalable and have a single point of failure. In this work, we suggest a layered architecture while promoting the usage of decentralized design to ensure the scalability and the privacy of an OSN-based e-health system.

SOUP

With increasing frequency, users raise concerns about data privacy and protection in centralized Online Social Networks (OSNs), in which providers have the unprecedented privilege to access and exploit every user's private data at will. To mitigate these concerns, researchers have suggested to decentralize OSNs and thereby enable users to control and manage access to their data themselves. However, previously proposed decentralization approaches suffer from several drawbacks. To tackle their deficiencies, we introduce the Self-Organized Universe of People (SOUP). In this demonstration, we present a prototype of SOUP and share our experiences from a real-world deployment.