8 papers
Turning Trust to Transactions: Tracking Affiliate Marketing and FTC Compliance in YouTube's Influencer Economy
Chen Sun, Yash Vekaria, Zubair Shafiq +1
YouTube has evolved into a powerful platform where creators monetize their influence through affiliate marketing, raising concerns about transparency and ethics, especially when cr…
Measuring the Semantic Structure and Evolution of Conspiracy Theories
Manisha Keim, Sarmad Chandio, Osama Khalid +1
Research on conspiracy theories has largely focused on belief formation, exposure, and diffusion, while paying less attention to how their meanings change over time. This gap persi…
Towards Multi-Stakeholder Vulnerability Notifications in the Ad-Tech Supply Chain
Yash Vekaria, Rishab Nithyanand, Zubair Shafiq
Online advertising relies on a complex and opaque supply chain that involves multiple stakeholders, including advertisers, publishers, and ad-networks, each with distinct and somet…
Examining the Role of YouTube Production and Consumption Dynamics on the Formation of Extreme Ideologies
Sarmad Chandio, Rishab Nithyanand
The relationship between content production and consumption on algorithm-driven platforms like YouTube plays a critical role in shaping ideological behaviors. While prior work has…
On the Suitability of LLM-Driven Agents for Dark Pattern Audits
Chen Sun, Yash Vekaria, Rishab Nithyanand
As LLM-driven agents begin to autonomously navigate the web, their ability to interpret and respond to manipulative interface design becomes critical. A fundamental question that e…
Mind the IP Gap: Measuring the impact of IPv6 on DNS censorship
Ian Martiny, Hammas Bin Tanveer, Jack Wampler +2
Internet censorship impacts large segments of the Internet, but so far, prior work has focused almost exclusively on performing measurements using IPv4. As the Internet grows, and…