Double-edged Swords: The Good and the Bad of Privacy and Anonymity in Social Media

1 NEED FOR PRIVACY AND ANONYMITY IN ONLINE SOCIAL MEDIA SITES Online Social Media sites (OSMs) like Facebook and Twitter drastically changed the way users communicate with each other and share content. OSMs provide inexpensive communication medium that allows anyone to quickly reach millions of users. Consequently, in these platforms anyone can publish content and anyone interested in the content can obtain it, representing a transformative revolution in our society. However, the very strength of OSMs to easily reach millions of users also indicates that there might be dire consequences to the content publishers if it reaches wrong people. For example, A content creator might lose her job simply because her rant in Facebook might be viewed by her boss [3] or even worse, Government organizations might press criminal charges against an activist solely based on her political opinions expressed in OSM posts [2]. To that end, over time, as OSMs gradually become a medium for freedom of expression, specially in times of unrest [9], there is a strong need for protecting users and their freedom of expression. In other words, there is a need for more privacy and anonymity to the users in OSMs so that they can preserve their right to free speech without fear of repercussions from their Government or other authorities. However, there is a cost—more private and anonymous platforms can also be abused to hurt other users, e.g., via spreading hate, cyber bullying or trolling. In this talk, we will emphasize that we can leverage the OSM data as social sensors to understand privacy and anonymity practices in social media and improve upon them. Moreover, we argue that privacy and anonymity are double-edged swords—needed by many (e.g., activists during Arab Spring) but also abused by some to harm others. To that end, we argue that these social sensors might enable the OSM operators to stop the abuse too. We would next expand upon how social sensors can be used to (i) understand the need for privacy and anonymity and (ii) limit the abuse of these technologies