"I Like" - Analysing Interactions within Social Networks to Assert the Trustworthiness of Users, Sources and Content

Abstract

Online Social Network platforms provide users to create sensitive personal information such as user profiles that can be shared with other users within their social graph. Whilst these sites provide users with generic privacy settings to control who can be granted access, these platforms assume that all users in a social graph share the same level of trust. Moreover, these platforms also assume that what is shared within the Social Network can be trusted. Therefore, Social Networks do not take into consideration the notion of trust whilst users share or consume information. In this work, we conduct a user study to analyse the trends of interactions amongst users. We also analyse in detail the user's perception of trust whilst interacting within Social Networks. The results from this user study will help us understand how trust values can be asserted for users, sources and content by using information from within Social Networks.