Online Content Providers Research Articles

The regulation of content moderation in the DSA: can we trust the due process?

The DSA relies heavily on procedural and transparency rules to regulate content moderation carried by the online content providers at the stages of rules-making, rules-applying and rules-appealing. This comprehensive regulation framework provides users with due process rights to contest with the providers and affords the latter with wide discretion. While the progress achievements made by the DSA is remarkable, this essay argues that the transparency rules in rules-making are not substantive enough for users to safeguard their fundamental rights; the wide discretion of the providers in rules-applying might result in inappropriate enforcement; the internal and external contestation in rules-appealing also might fail to offer effective remedies for users on account of their inherent bias and operation issues. Given these flaws of the due process regulation in the DSA, it further advocates that more detailed guidance shall be provided for the providers to safeguard fundamental rights of users in their rules-making and rules-applying, some voluntary standard should be placed to reduce the risk of over-and under enforcement, and a “crow-judging” redress system could better address disputes. In doing so, the DSA could have more checks and balances for the providers to achieve the goal of content moderation regulation.

Clickbait Classification Model on Online News with Semantic Similarity Calculation Between News Title and Content

Clickbait is a sensational title that makes us click internet links to an article, image, or video. Online content providers use clickbait to gain user traffic, that leads to increasing income from the placed ads in their page. To attract more and more traffic, online content providers write sensational and hyperbolic titles, and even misleading and not telling the whole story. This can give us, the internet consumer, wrong perspective, and half-truth. And nowadays, clickbait titles are worse than ever. Modern clickbait titles are not hyperbolic nor ambiguous enough, and sometimes very hard to identify. This paper aims to classify clickbait titles, to help humans identify clickbait and stop sharing more online content that contains clickbait and misleading titles. This model classifies clickbait by calculating semantic similarity between the article title and the summary of the article content. The article content is summarized by T5 (Text-to-text Transfer Transformer) model. IndoBERT is then used to calculate semantic similarity score between generated summary and the article title. The article title, content, summary, and semantic similarity score are used for clickbait classification with various algorithms. The result shows that by adding article content alongside article title in the classification process improves F1-score by 7% when classified with IndoBERT. In another future research, this model can be integrated with another application such as twitter or telegram bot to send us warning every time a user consumes online content with clickbait title. Thus, it can prevent online communities from sharing misleading information caused by clickbait

Net Neutrality and Online Innovation: An Empirical Study of the UK

Abstract How does a fast lane on the internet affect the entry of online content providers? To answer this question, I provide empirical evidence that connection speed greatly influences consumption of online video and that changes in speed therefore directly impact the entry of video content providers. I also present a framework to think about the incentives of broadband providers to offer a fast lane with access fees which has direct profits effects as well as indirect demand effects. Finally, by combining the empirical model with the theoretical framework in a counterfactual analysis, I show that a fast lane with access fees only increases entry for content providers with high fixed costs of content provision. Using a novel data set on household consumption of online content and broadband penetration in local markets to estimate a structural model of industry demand and supply, this paper is the first to provide empirical evidence on the industry-wide effects of breaking net neutrality.

Efficient Resource Allocation Contracts to Reduce Adverse Events

On online platforms, goods, services, and content providers, also known as agents, introduce adverse events. The frequency of these events depends on each agent’s effort level. In “Efficient Resource Allocation Contracts to Reduce Adverse Events,” Liang, Sun, Tang, and Zhang study continuous-time dynamic contracts that utilize resource allocation and monetary transfers to induce agents to exert effort and reduce the arrival rate of adverse events. They devise an iterative algorithm that characterizes and calculates such contracts and specify the profit-maximizing contract for the platform, also known as the principal. In contrast to the single-agent case, in which efficiency is not achievable, they show that efficient and incentive-compatible contracts, which allocate all resources and induce agents to exert constant effort, generally exist with two or more agents. Additionally, they also provide efficient and incentive-compatible dynamic contracts that can be expressed in closed form and are therefore easy to understand and implement in practice.

A Study on Movie Recommendations using Collaborative Filtering

The Recommendation system plays a major role nowadays, which is used for many applications. We know that the online content and service providers have a huge amount of content so the problem which arises is which data is required for whom so the problem of providing apposite content frequently. This paper represents the overview and approaches of techniques generated in a recommendation system. One of them is Collaborative Filtering which we will discuss about.

How Online Content Providers Moderate User‐Generated Content to Prevent Harmful Online Communication: An Analysis of Policies and Their Implementation

This article reports two studies conducted in the United States, Germany, South Korea, and China to examine how online content providers (OCPs) exercise their responsibility in dealing with harmful online communication (HOC) by moderating user‐generated content. The first study employed content analysis of 547 HOC policy documents. In the second study, 41 representatives of OCPs were interviewed regarding the implementation of these policies. We show that HOC policies are most often communicated through user‐unfriendly terms of service. Only Korean OCPs present their policies very vividly. Few organizations, mainly United States and German, encourage counter‐speech. The most common organizational actions against HOC mentioned in the policies are deleting posts or blocking accounts. The interviews reveal, however, that organizations—apart from those from China—are cautious in implementing such reactive actions. They fear accusations of censorship and acknowledge the tension between free speech and their content moderation practice. What emerged as the “gold standard” for identifying HOC was manual inspection. However, organizations operating large platforms widely apply machine‐learning technology or artificial intelligence. In sum, our research suggests that OCPs are not proactive enough in their communication for HOC prevention and often focus more on avoiding legal ramifications than on educating users when handling HOC.

Tubes and bubbles topological confinement of YouTube recommendations.

The role of recommendation algorithms in online user confinement is at the heart of a fast-growing literature. Recent empirical studies generally suggest that filter bubbles may principally be observed in the case of explicit recommendation (based on user-declared preferences) rather than implicit recommendation (based on user activity). We focus on YouTube which has become a major online content provider but where confinement has until now been little-studied in a systematic manner. We aim to contribute to the above literature by showing whether recommendation on YouTube exhibits phenomena typical of filter bubbles, tending to lower the diversity of consumed content. Starting from a diverse number of seed videos, we first describe the properties of the sets of suggested videos in order to design a sound exploration protocol able to capture latent recommendation graphs recursively induced by these suggestions. These graphs form the background of potential user navigations along non-personalized recommendations. From there, be it in topological, topical or temporal terms, we show that the landscape of what we call mean-field YouTube recommendations is often prone to confinement dynamics. Moreover, the most confined recommendation graphs i.e., potential bubbles, seem to be organized around sets of videos that garner the highest audience and thus plausibly viewing time.

Factors influencing the willingness-to-pay of internet users in Vietnam for the fee-based online contents

The aim of this study is to identify key factors that influence the willingness-to-pay (WTP) of Internet users in Vietnam for fee-based online contents. The study collects 309 suitable questionnaires filled by internet users over 18 years old and living in Vietnam, who frequently use online contents and have ideally made payment for online contents. The analysis results indicate that the willingness-to-pay for the fee-based online contents of Vietnamese users are influenced by their attitudes toward paying and ethical self-efficacy for online piracy. The study also identifies the antecedents of attitude, which include the perceived benefits of usefulness and enjoyment, the perceived sacrifice of the fee, social influences from other people, and especially the free mentality. The study then suggests managerial implications to online content providers in enhancing WTP for the fee-based online contents in Vietnam.

Paywalls: Monetizing Online Content

In recent years, many providers of news and entertainment have been exploring the possibility of monetizing online content. In the context of newspapers, the paywall instituted by the New York Times starting in March 2011 is a well-publicized case in point. While the premise behind paywalls is that the subscription revenue can potentially be a new source of income, the externalities that might arise as a consequence of this pricing change are unclear. We study two potential externalities of newspaper paywalls and compare them against the new direct subscription revenue generated. The first externality that we consider is the effect of a paywall on the engagement of its online reader base. The second externality is the spillover effect on the print version of the newspaper. If readers view print and online versions of a newspaper as substitutes, increasing the price of the latter is likely to increase the demand for the former. Moreover, many newspaper paywalls offer bundles wherein print subscribers are provided free access to the online newspaper. Therefore, the value that a reader derives from the print subscription could be higher subsequent to the erection of the paywall. As a result, paywalls are likely to have a positive spillover effect on print subscription, and consequently, circulation. We document the sizes of the two externalities for the New York Times paywall and compare them with the direct subscription revenue generated. We comment on implications for newspapers and online content providers who are seeking mechanisms to monetize digital content.

Online Platforms and Digital Advertising Market Study: Observations on the Statement of Scope

I appreciate the opportunity to submit observations on the Statement of Scope (“SOS”) of the Market Study on “Online Platforms and Digital Advertising”. This Market Study is welcome given the importance of digital advertising for online content providers (which I will refer to as “publishers”), as well as the complexity and opacity of digital advertising markets. My research reveals that these markets do not function properly. They are ridden with conflicts of interest, leveraging practices, and their lack of competitiveness allows online platforms to generate supra-competitive rents to the detriment of advertisers, publishers and, ultimately, consumers. Investment in ad tech (i.e., the technologies developed and used by intermediaries between advertisers and publishers) has considerably declined. My observations are based on several recent research papers I have authored or co-authored on digital advertising, with a focus on online display advertising, and on the competitive relationship between online platforms and news publishers. They are also informed by earlier papers I wrote on two-sided markets, intermediation platforms, big data, and business models based on the offering of “free” services, which are monetized by selling advertising. The law and economics of online platforms has been one of my main areas of focus in the past decade.

Reklamdan Kaçınma Bağlamında Geleneksel ve Modern Film İzleme Ortamlarının Genç İzleyiciler Üzerinden Karşılaştırılması: Netflix ve Sinema Salonları Örneği

Gelişen teknoloji gündelik hayat pratiklerimizi büyük bir hızla değiştirmeye ve dönüştürmeye devam etmektedir. Söz konusu alanlardan biri de modern bireyin film izleme alışkanlığı olarak ele alınabilir. Yeni iletişim teknolojilerinin getirdiği bir takım olanaklar dâhilinde birey film izleme eylemini farklı şekillerde gerçekleştirebilme şansına sahip olmuştur. Film izlemek için de sinemaya gitme zorunluluğu, teknolojik gelişim sürecinin bir çıktısı olarak değerlendirilebilecek online içerik sağlayıcı platformlar aracılığıyla ortadan kalkmıştır. Son yıllarda popülerliği hızla artan online içerik sağlayıcı platformlar günümüz bireyine istediği filmi, istediği zamanda, istediği yerde izleyebilme olanağı sunmuştur. Söz konusu platformlardan içerik çeşitliliği, erişilebilirliğinin yüksek olması ve servis sağlama kalitesinin niteliğiyle öne çıkanlardan belki de ilk akla geleni Netflix’tir. Netflix’i öne çıkaran ve çekici kılan bir takım özellikleri bulunmaktadır. Bu çekici faktörlerden birisi reklamdan kaçınma olanağıdır. Bundan hareketle bu çalışmada, Netflix’in gençlerin film izleme alışkanlıkları üzerinde nasıl bir değişime sebep olduğu, reklamdan kaçınma isteğinin gençlerin Netflix abonesi olmaları noktasında ne tür bir etkiye sahip olduğu, Netflix ve sinema karşılaştırıldığında gençlerin günümüz dünyasında bu iki film izleme ortamına dair genel görüşlerinin ortaya çıkarılması amaçlanmaktadır. Bu amaçla; yarı yapılandırılmış görüşme tekniği, veri toplama aracı olarak kullanılmıştır ve Netflix aboneliği bulunan gençler araştırma örneklemine dâhil edilmiştir. Bu bağlamda, on yedi genç ile derinlemesine görüşme yapılmıştır. Reklamdan kaçınma eğiliminin Netflix abonesi olma üzerinde etkili olması bu çalışmada ulaşılan en önemli sonuçtur.

Network Traffic Type-Based Quality of Experience (QoE) Assessment for Universal Services

Nowadays, more and more online content providers are offering multiple types of data services. To provide users with a better service experience, Quality of Experience (QoE) has been widely used in the delivery quality measurement of network services. How to accurately measure the QoE score for all types of network services has become a meaningful but difficult problem. To solve this problem, we proposed a unified QoE scoring framework that measures the user experience of almost all types of network services. The framework first uses a machine learning model (random forest) to classify network services, then selects different nonlinear expressions based on the type of service and comprehensively calculates the QoE score through the Quality of Service (QOS) metrics including transmission delay, packet loss rate, and throughput rate. Experiment results show that the proposed method has the ability to be applied on almost all the types of network traffic, and it achieves better QoE assessment accuracy than other works.

A Hybrid Filtering Approach for an Improved Context-aware Recommender System

Background: The domain of context-aware recommender approaches has made a substantial advancement over the last decade, but many applications still do not include contextual information while providing recommendations. Contextual information is crucial for various application areas and should not be ignored. Objective: There are generally three algorithms which can be used to include context and those are - pre-filter approach, post-filter approach and contextual modeling. Each of the algorithms has their own drawbacks if any single approach is chosen. The goal of this work is to identify and propose a new hybrid approach which can include contextual information to improve the current movie recommender systems. Method: Post evaluation of various patents related to recommender systems, the proposed approach modifies the post filter approach to rectify its shortcomings and combines it with the pre-filter approach based on the importance of contextual attribute provided by the user. Results: The performance of the proposed system is measured in terms of precision of the system and ranking of the recommended movies to the user. The results of experimental setup also demonstrate that the proposed system improves the precision and ranking of the recommendations provided to the user. Conclusion: With the help of this hybrid approach, the proposed system eliminates the problem of sparsity which is present in the pre-filter algorithm, and has performance improvement over the traditional post-filter approach. The proposed system will be vital for movie ticketing brands for the promotional purposes and various online content providers to recommend the accurate movies to their users.

Paywalls: Monetizing Online Content

In recent years, many news providers have begun monetizing online content through paywalls. While the premise behind paywalls is that the subscription revenue can be a new source of income, the externalities that might arise from this pricing change are unclear. The authors study two potential externalities of newspaper paywalls: (1) the effect of a paywall on the engagement of its online reader base and (2) the spillover effect on the print version of the newspaper. The engagement effect considers how the paywall altered the various engagement metrics among light and heavy readers of online news. The spillover effect is likely to arise if readers view print and online versions of a newspaper as substitutes, implying that increasing the price of the latter is likely to increase the demand for the former. Moreover, many newspaper paywalls offer bundles wherein print subscribers are provided free access to the online newspaper. Therefore, the value that a reader derives from the print subscription could be higher after the erection of the paywall. As a result, paywalls are likely to have a positive spillover effect on print subscription and, consequently, circulation. The authors document the sizes of the two externalities for the New York Times paywall and compare them with the direct subscription revenue generated. They comment on implications for newspapers and online content providers that are seeking mechanisms to monetize digital content.

Selling the Premium in Freemium

The success of a freemium model depends on the number of customers who purchase the premium version in the presence of the free version. The authors investigate the strategy of extending the premium product line to spur demand for the existing premium version. Extending the results of the standard product line model is insufficient in such cases because of the conceptual nuances in a freemium context. The authors conduct a randomized field experiment with an online content provider that offers book titles in a PDF version for free and sells the paperback version for a premium. The authors show that paperback titles accompanied by an additional premium version, either in e-book or hardcover format, have higher sales than those in the control condition. The positive impact on paperback sales is stronger for titles that are more popular or cheaper, and the effect of introducing the e-book version is higher when the e-book price is closer to the paperback price. By analyzing individual customer choices, the authors identify the existence of the compromise effect and the attraction effect in the extended product line setting, a significant contribution not only in the freemium context but also to the product line literature.

WHY WE SHARE IT – AN INVESTIGATION ABOUT REASONS FOR ACCOUNT SHARING OF ONLINE CONTENT PROVIDERS

To remain competitive in the realm of the Internet, developers of new business models not only have to take into account the behavior of online consumers, but also their misbehavior. Today, companies are faced with special challenges regarding consumer misbehavior, particularly in the segment of online content providers (e.g. Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, etc.), where it has become a common practice to share an account with multiple persons, while only one of them is the rightful owner. Such misbehavior may lead to negative consequences, such as direct and indirect financial performance implications, increased workload to deal with dysfunctional customer behavior, underestimated membership, and a lack of understanding the true customer base (Harris & Raynolds, 2003; Hwang et al., 2009). Therefore this study investigates account sharing as a part of customer misbehavior with a qualitative approach to identify customers’ reasons for account sharing. Thereby this investigation makes meaningful implications for companies (e.g., Netflix) and research alike.

The Internationalization of Online Video Content Industry: An Analysis of the Behaviour of Consumers and Content Providers

Online video content has received great demand worldwide. It provides consumers with the liberty to choose what, when and how they want to view film content. The concern is on whether the new trend affects the behaviour of local consumers and local content providers. Hence, the main objective of this paper is to investigate how consumer preferences are altered and how consumers’ new preferences affect local businesses. Primary data through interview with selected local content providers and secondary data were collected and analysed. The findings show that the traditional and online content providers are affected by the internationalization of this industry.eISSN: 2398-4287 © 2018. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open-access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/e-bpj.v3i8.1407

Subscription price and advertising space decisions for online content firms with reference effect

Abstract This paper investigates how an online content provider decides the optimal subscription price and the advertising space allocation considering the reference price effect. We consider a hybrid business model in which the provider offers both a subscription service to viewers and an advertising service to advertisers. The viewers consist of subscribers and non-subscribers, and the latter are only permitted to watch a fraction of the content. We develop a new reference price model by incorporating the viewer experience and examine both constant and dynamic scenarios. We find that it is not always optimal for the provider to adopt a hybrid business model. In particular, when the viewer’s sensitivity to advertising is relatively small, the provider should adopt a subscription-support model (i.e., offering paid content only). Moreover, the provider should reduce the advertising space when viewers pay more attention to the viewer experience. Under the dynamic scenario, we examine the impact of the reference effect on the provider’s decisions. We find that the stable value of the subscription price may not be consistent with the stable value of the reference price when the viewer experience is considered. By comparing profits under different scenarios, we find that when the provider neglects the reference effect, he will overestimate (underestimate) the profit if the initial reference price is relatively low (high).

A model of periodization of radio and internet advertising history

PurposeThis paper aims to describe the development of forms of advertising on radio and internet when they were new media and propose a model of periodization through which the two histories can be understood and appreciated.Design/methodology/approachTwo narrative histories were constructed based on data collected from numerous public and private, historical and contemporary and primary and secondary materials. The methodology of New Historicism informed the research.FindingsWhen the two histories are viewed through the model, many similarities in terms of milestones and markers become apparent.Research limitations/implicationsPerhaps when the next new electronic mass medium is invented, a future researcher may look back on this model and consider whether it applies.Practical implicationsFor practitioners who consider history a relevant source of knowledge and inspiration, this research offers a way of organizing and understanding the history of internet advertising.Social implicationsToday’s consumers, especially Millennials, continue to seek to avoid advertising on the internet. The use of ad blockers poses a significant threat to the business models of online content providers. This research demonstrates that resistance to advertising is nothing new and that it may be, in the end, futile.Originality/valueThe model is an original creation, based on an original view of history, and offered as a lens through which to understand this history.

Standing on the Shoulders of Web Giants: The Economic Effects of Personal Data Brokers

In several jurisdictions, like the European Union and California, consumers now have a legal right to port the data that a company has collected about them to another service. This has spurred the emergence of personal data brokers (PDBs), which offer consumers financial rewards for access to their personal data collected by large online content and service providers (CSPs). Using a game-theoretic model, we investigate how PDBs affect market outcomes in the data economy and under which conditions users will indeed benefit from them. Across several model variants, we find that in markets with a PDB two main equilibrium outcomes exist. First, a minimum income equilibrium can arise, where the PDB only pays a minimal reward, and the CSP lowers its service quality in the long run, leaving consumers worse off than without a PDB. Second, a positive income equilibrium can arise, where the PDB pays significant rewards to consumers, and the CSP’s quality may be higher or lower depending on the PDB's efficiency on the data market. Whether consumers are better off in this equilibrium depends on the relative strengths of three effects that we characterize formally and denote as competition effect, displacement effect, and appropriation effect. Consumers will only benefit from a PDB if it can sell their data efficiently; but in this case, the CSP will also demand a higher (non-zero) price for using its service. Thus, our results bear important managerial and policy implications for data-driven business models and the regulation of data access and portability.