research-article

A First Look at User-Controlled Moderation on Web3 Social Media: The Case of Memo.cash

Authors:

Aravindh Raman,

Raul J MondragÓN,

Gareth TysonAuthors Info & Claims

OASIS '23: Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Open Challenges in Online Social Networks

Pages 29 - 37

https://doi.org/10.1145/3599696.3612901

Published: 04 September 2023 Publication History

Abstract

Web3 social media strives to eliminate the need for centralized management by building upon on technologies such public ledgers and smart contracts. This has generated significant hype, but creates many notable challenges, many of which remain unaddressed. One such challenge is content moderation. Specifically, the immutable nature of blockchain means that it becomes impossible to retrospectively delete posts. This means that illegal content posts cannot be moderated or removed. In an attempt to overcome this, Web3 platforms, such as memo.cash, allow users to filter out posts from their personal timelines. Taking memo.cash as a use case, the goal of this work is to study the efficacy of the approach, and identify associated challenges. A particularly unique feature of memo.cash is that users must pay money (satoshi) for each social action (e.g., posting and blocking other users). We conjecture that this may impact the nature of moderation, particularly among poorer users. To explore this, we gather data from memo.cash covering 24K users, 317K posts, and 2.57M user actions. We investigate how the need to pay may impact the moderation system and propose potential solutions to address the challenges that arise.

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Cited By

Sokoto SBalduf LTrautwein DWei YTyson GCastro IAscigil OPavlou GKorczyński MScheuermann BKról MBalzarotti DXu W(2024)Guardians of the galaxyProceedings of the 33rd USENIX Conference on Security Symposium10.5555/3698900.3698985(1507-1524)Online publication date: 14-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3698900.3698985
Gruzd ASaiphoo AMai P(2024)The lure of decentralized social media: Extending the UTAUT model for understanding users’ adoption of blockchain-based social mediaPLOS ONE10.1371/journal.pone.030845819:8(e0308458)Online publication date: 7-Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0308458

Index Terms

A First Look at User-Controlled Moderation on Web3 Social Media: The Case of Memo.cash
1. Networks
  1. Network performance evaluation
    1. Network measurement
2. Social and professional topics
  1. User characteristics

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cover image ACM Conferences

OASIS '23: Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Open Challenges in Online Social Networks

September 2023

53 pages

ISBN:9798400702259

DOI:10.1145/3599696

Copyright © 2023 ACM.

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Published: 04 September 2023

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HT '23: 34th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media

September 4 - 8, 2023

Rome, Italy

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Cited By

Sokoto SBalduf LTrautwein DWei YTyson GCastro IAscigil OPavlou GKorczyński MScheuermann BKról MBalzarotti DXu W(2024)Guardians of the galaxyProceedings of the 33rd USENIX Conference on Security Symposium10.5555/3698900.3698985(1507-1524)Online publication date: 14-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3698900.3698985
Gruzd ASaiphoo AMai P(2024)The lure of decentralized social media: Extending the UTAUT model for understanding users’ adoption of blockchain-based social mediaPLOS ONE10.1371/journal.pone.030845819:8(e0308458)Online publication date: 7-Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0308458

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