June 21st - June 25th
The decentralization of Social Media through the blockchain technology
@WebSci 2021
A new era of social media
A new era of social media
Online Social Networks (OSNs) have become one of the most popular applications of the daily life of users worldwide. Today the number of Social Media users is about 3 billion, and this trend increases year after year with a high impact on the privacy issue. During the last years, decentralization of social services has been considered as a big opportunity to overcome the main privacy issues in OSNs, and not only (fake news, censorship, etc.). Blockchain technology represents today the most well-known decentralized technique, which has been taken into account to develop the new generation of decentralized social platforms.
Online Social Networks (OSNs) have become one of the most popular applications of the daily life of users worldwide. Today the number of Social Media users is about 3 billion, and this trend increases year after year with a high impact on the privacy issue. During the last years, decentralization of social services has been considered as a big opportunity to overcome the main privacy issues in OSNs, and not only (fake news, censorship, etc.). Blockchain technology represents today the most well-known decentralized technique, which has been taken into account to develop the new generation of decentralized social platforms.
Blockchain-based Online Social Media (BOSMs) are decentralized Social Media platforms that use the blockchain technology as the underlying technology or as a tool in order to provide rewarding strategies. In this tutorial, we will highlight the BOSMs scenario by presenting their main characteristics and how data could be collected and analysed.
Blockchain-based Online Social Media (BOSMs) are decentralized Social Media platforms that use the blockchain technology as the underlying technology or as a tool in order to provide rewarding strategies. In this tutorial, we will highlight the BOSMs scenario by presenting their main characteristics and how data could be collected and analysed.
Activities of the tutorial
Activities of the tutorial
In this tutorial, we will highlight the BOSMs scenario by presenting their main characteristics and how data could be collected and analysed. We will provide an overview of the blockchain technology and how it is used in BOSMs, and we will show current BOSMs, such as Steemit, how they work, and how data could be collected and analysed.
In this tutorial, we will highlight the BOSMs scenario by presenting their main characteristics and how data could be collected and analysed. We will provide an overview of the blockchain technology and how it is used in BOSMs, and we will show current BOSMs, such as Steemit, how they work, and how data could be collected and analysed.
The technical side of the tutorial will be principally focused on the blockchain Steem and it will cover two parts: an overview of how data could be collected, and the setup of graph analyses. In the first part we will build a minimal crawler for the blocks that are published in the blockchain by exploiting the official Python APIs provided by Steem. In the second part of the tutorial, we will show how these data can be used for a number of analyses, showing a concrete example by building a graph of transactions through efficient large scale graph libraries such as Networkit and iGraph.
The technical side of the tutorial will be principally focused on the blockchain Steem and it will cover two parts: an overview of how data could be collected, and the setup of graph analyses. In the first part we will build a minimal crawler for the blocks that are published in the blockchain by exploiting the official Python APIs provided by Steem. In the second part of the tutorial, we will show how these data can be used for a number of analyses, showing a concrete example by building a graph of transactions through efficient large scale graph libraries such as Networkit and iGraph.
To summarize, the organization of the tutorial will be:
To summarize, the organization of the tutorial will be:
- Introduction of the Blockchain-based Social Media,
- Overview of the Blockchain technology,
- Presentation of the economic and social sides of Blockchain-based Social Media,
- Blockchain-based Social Media analysis: the Steem case study
- data collection through the official Steem APIs;
- understanding the block structure;
- data analysis through large-scale graph libraries.
The duration of the tutorial is estimated to be around 2 hours and 30 minutes.
The duration of the tutorial is estimated to be around 2 hours and 30 minutes.
Speakers
Speakers
Barbara Guidi
Barbara Guidi
Assistant Professor @ UniversitĂ di Pisa
Andrea Michienzi
Andrea Michienzi
PhD Student @ UniversitĂ di Pisa