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Main Authors: Yang, Ya-Ting, Li, Tao, Zhu, Quanyan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.00825
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author Yang, Ya-Ting
Li, Tao
Zhu, Quanyan
author_facet Yang, Ya-Ting
Li, Tao
Zhu, Quanyan
contents Social network platforms (SNP) rely heavily on user-generated content to attract users, yet they have limited control over content provision, which leads to misinformation. As countermeasures, SNPs have implemented policies to notify users by tagging the content and influencing users' responses to the tagged content. The population-level response creates a social nudge to the content provider that encourages it to supply more authentic content. Yet, when designing tags to leverage social nudges, SNP must be cautious about misdetection, which impairs its ability to create social nudges. We establish a Bayesian persuaded branching process to study SNP's tagging policy design under misdetection. Misinformation circulation is modeled by a multi-type branching process, where users are persuaded through tags to give positive/negative comments that influence misinformation spread. When translated into posterior belief space, the SNP's problem is reduced to an equality-constrained optimization, the optimal condition of which is given by the Lagrangian characterization. The key finding is that SNP's optimal policy is transparent tagging, albeit misdetection, which nudges the provider not to generate misinformation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_00825
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Transparent Tagging for Strategic Social Nudges on User-Generated Misinformation
Yang, Ya-Ting
Li, Tao
Zhu, Quanyan
Computer Science and Game Theory
Social and Information Networks
Social network platforms (SNP) rely heavily on user-generated content to attract users, yet they have limited control over content provision, which leads to misinformation. As countermeasures, SNPs have implemented policies to notify users by tagging the content and influencing users' responses to the tagged content. The population-level response creates a social nudge to the content provider that encourages it to supply more authentic content. Yet, when designing tags to leverage social nudges, SNP must be cautious about misdetection, which impairs its ability to create social nudges. We establish a Bayesian persuaded branching process to study SNP's tagging policy design under misdetection. Misinformation circulation is modeled by a multi-type branching process, where users are persuaded through tags to give positive/negative comments that influence misinformation spread. When translated into posterior belief space, the SNP's problem is reduced to an equality-constrained optimization, the optimal condition of which is given by the Lagrangian characterization. The key finding is that SNP's optimal policy is transparent tagging, albeit misdetection, which nudges the provider not to generate misinformation.
title Transparent Tagging for Strategic Social Nudges on User-Generated Misinformation
topic Computer Science and Game Theory
Social and Information Networks
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.00825