CSE648-PSOSM-2021

  Privacy and Security in Online Social Media Introduction Platforms like Twitter and Instagram are used by millions of users every day across the World. For some, these are their main source of news and information on current events across the world, but they can be misused for all sorts of cybercrimes. Here we tackle one such problem of information retrieval from images and videos. Twitter is a world-known microblogging and social networking site which allows users to post and interact with messages known as tweets. Although these tweets now support images and videos, back in 2006 when twitter started it didn’t support any of these. After June 2011, images could be now integrated with tweets, and then in 2016, tweets also contained videos. Twitter has 330 million active monthly users with more than 200 thousand tweets every minute.[1] Instagram is a photo and video-sharing social network. The service allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashta

Introduction Social media is one of the cornerstones of people's lives these days. People use them to follow friends and famous people, see what they're up to, and share knowledge and entertainment. Among them, one of the most prominent social media platforms is Twitter. A micro-blogging platform where people of all kinds share bite-sized updates about themselves or the things around them. It's so popular that even governments use it as one of the ways to connect to the public and disseminate information. Sounds fine and dandy till now. But alas, not everything is perfect, and Twitter is no exception. Even with Twitter's massive scale, it still is under the control of a single organization, and hence, all data on the platform goes through them, and they have the final say on who stays on the platform and who gets to see what. Of course, many of us don't prefer that, so a new social media network came along, called Mastodon. It claims to solve the issue of having all

  BotShot: A deep dive into Twitter Bots   Introduction Twitter, as we all know, is undoubtedly one of the most popular social networking sites, with over 100 million daily active users and 500 million tweets sent daily. Since it is extremely popular, it is not just used for connecting with other people, it is also used by a number of people as a platform to gather news stories and information regarding the latest events happening across the globe.  However, this also presents a major problem since information on Twitter is not verified and people with malicious intent can post misinformation and further they can use bot accounts which on their command will spread this misinformation to a vast majority of the population.  But what exactly is a Twitter bot? Twitter bots are automated user accounts that interact with Twitter using an application programming interface (API). These bots can be programmed to perform tasks normally associated with human interaction, including follow users, f

    India Farmer's Protest was in the news in early 2021 for being one of the largest organized protests. The farmer's protest was not only in national news but was also featured internationally by many media outlets. Social Media is the new way to share information, and it's here to stay. Twitter is one such platform where the information travels at a blazing fast speed through replies and retweets. Tweets are instant and easy to make, therefore allowing easy access to the platform.  The protest created a lot of buzz on Twitter. People from both sides of the argument used Twitter to spread awareness among the general public. The issue caught wind when the international popstar Rihana made a tweet recognizing the farmer's protest. The importance of Twitter cannot be understated as the government sought out to ban over 1200 Twitter accounts that were allegedly labelled "Khalistani sympathizers." Tweets from many famous Indian and international celebrities follo