Abstract: In this talk, I will discuss how our work has overcome some complex challenges in tackling modern socio-technical problems on the Web. Using concrete examples from our research, I will delve into some of the unique datasets we have collected and analyses we have performed, focusing on emerging issues like hate speech, coordinated harassment campaigns, and deplatforming. I will talk about quantitative approaches to model Web communities' influence on the spread of disinformation, conspiracies, weaponized memes, etc. Finally, I will discuss how we can design proactive systems to anticipate and predict online abuse and, if time permits, how "fringe" information ecosystems might also expose researchers to attacks by the very actors they study.
Bio:Emiliano De Cristofaro is Professor of Computer Science at UC Riverside. Prior to joining UCR in 2023, he was at University College London (2013-2023) and Xerox PARC (2011-2013). He received a PhD in 2011 from the University of California, Irvine, advised by Gene Tsudik. His research interests include security, privacy, and applied cryptography; currently, he focuses on trustworthy machine learning and cybersafety. Emiliano has co-chaired the PETS Symposium and the security/privacy tracks at WWW and ACM CCS. With his co-authors, he received distinguished paper/honorable mention awards from ACM CCS, NDSS, ACM IMC, and ACM CSCW. Ostensibly, he only refers to himself in the third person when writing seminar bios.
Abstract: In this talk, I will discuss how our work has overcome some complex challenges in tackling modern socio-technical problems on the Web. Using concrete examples from our research, I will delve into some of the unique datasets we have collected and analyses we have performed, focusing on emerging issues like hate speech, coordinated harassment campaigns, and deplatforming. I will talk about quantitative approaches to model Web communities' influence on the spread of disinformation, conspiracies, weaponized memes, etc. Finally, I will discuss how we can design proactive systems to anticipate and predict online abuse and, if time permits, how "fringe" information ecosystems might also expose researchers to attacks by the very actors they study.
Bio:Emiliano De Cristofaro is Professor of Computer Science at UC Riverside. Prior to joining UCR in 2023, he was at University College London (2013-2023) and Xerox PARC (2011-2013). He received a PhD in 2011 from the University of California, Irvine, advised by Gene Tsudik. His research interests include security, privacy, and applied cryptography; currently, he focuses on trustworthy machine learning and cybersafety. Emiliano has co-chaired the PETS Symposium and the security/privacy tracks at WWW and ACM CCS. With his co-authors, he received distinguished paper/honorable mention awards from ACM CCS, NDSS, ACM IMC, and ACM CSCW. Ostensibly, he only refers to himself in the third person when writing seminar bios.