The Paradox of Encrypted Information Virality on WhatsApp
Abstract
WhatsApp is a mobile communication system that allows people to interact through groups. In this work, we analyze the dissemination of information within a group network that simulates the WhatsApp network. The built network considers two types of groups: organic groups, formed by friends and family, and artificial groups that are usually created with the purpose of being a mean of spreading certain subject or event, such as political campaigns. We analyzed the speed with which information is spread in this network considering the epidemiological model Susceptible-Infected (SI). We then deepen our analysis in order to identify parameters that cause this scattering to be partially controlled in order to make it difficult to propagate fake news in these networks. Our results quantify the viralization ability of content in WhatsApp and identify aspects that could limit such ability to prevent the platform from being abused in election periods.
Keywords:
Mobile Communication, Message Applications, Social Networks
References
Andreou, A., Silva, M., Benevenuto, F., Goga, O., Loiseau, P., and Mislove, A. (2019). Measuring the Facebook Advertising Ecosystem. In Proc. of the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, NDSS’19, San Diego, CA.
Barabási, A.-L. et al. (2016). Network science. Cambridge university press.
Bessi, A. and Ferrara, E. (2016). Social Bots Distort the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election Online Discussion. First Monday, 21(11).
Cha, M., Benevenuto, F., Ahn, Y.-Y., and Gummadi, K. P. (2012). Delayed Information Cascades in Flickr: Measurement, Analysis, and Modeling. Computer Networks, 56(3):1066–1076.
Chakrabarti, S., Stengel, L., and Solanki, S. (2018). Duty, Identity, Credibility: ’Fake News’ and the Ordinary Citizen in India. BBC World Service Audiences Research.
Feng, Z., Li, Y., Jin, L., and Feng, L. (2015). A Cluster-Based Epidemic Model for Retweeting Trend Prediction on Micro-blog. In Proc. of 26th Int’l Conf. on Database and Expert Systems Applications, DEXA, Valencia, Spain.
Freitas, C., Benevenuto, F., Ghosh, S., and Veloso, A. (2015). Reverse Engineering Socialbot Infiltration Strategies in Twitter. In Proc. of the 2015 IEEEACM Int’l Conf. on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining, ASONAM ’15.
Garimella, K. and Tyson, G. (2018). Whatapp doc? A first look at whatsapp public group data. In Proc. of 12th Int’l Conf. on Web and Social Media, ICWSM’18, Stanford, USA.
Guha, R., Kumar, R., Raghavan, P., and Tomkins, A. (2004). Propagation of trust and distrust. In Proc. of 13th Int’l Conf. on World Wide Web, WWW’04, New York, USA.
Howard, P. N. and Hussain, M. M. (2011). The Upheavals in Egypt and Tunisia: The Role of Digital Media. Journal of Democracy, 22(3):35–48.
Keeling, M. J. and Eames, K. T. (2005). Networks and Epidemic Models. Journal of The Royal Society Interface, 2(4):295–307.
Khurana, P. and Kumar, D. (2018). Sir Model for Fake News Spreading Through Whatsapp. In Proc. of 3rd Int’l Conf. on Internet of Things and Connected Technologies, ICIoTCT, India.
Malka, V., Ariel, Y., and Avidar, R. (2015). Fighting, worrying and sharing: Operation ‘Protective Edge’as the first WhatsApp War. Media, War & Conflict, 8(3):329–344.
McAuley, J. and Leskovec, J. (2012). Image Labeling on a Network: Using Social-Network Metadata for Image Classification. In 12th European Conf. on Computer Vision, ECCV12, Florence, Italy.
Melo, P., Messias, J., Resende, G., Garimella, K., Almeida, J., and Benevenuto, F. (2019). Whatsapp Monitor: A Fact-checking System for WhatsApp. In Proc. of 13th Int’l Conf. on Web and Social Media, ICWSM’19, Munich, Germany.
Mondal, M., Silva, L. A. A., and Benevenuto, F. (2017). A Measurement Study of Hate Speech in Social Media. In Proc. of ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media, HT’17, Prague, Czech Republic.
Moreno, A., Garrison, P., and Bhat, K. (2017). Whatsapp for Monitoring and Response During Critical Events: Aggie in the Ghana 2016 Election. In Proc. of 14th Int’l Conf. on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM’17, Albi, France.
Radcliffe, D. and Lam, A. (2018). Social Media in the Middle East: The Story of 2017. SSRN Electronic Journal.
Reis, J. C. S., Correia, A., Murai, F., Veloso, A., and Benevenuto, F. (2019). Supervised Learning for Fake News Detection. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 34(2).
Resende, G., Melo, P., Sousa, H., Messias, J., Vasconcelos, M., Almeida, J., and Benevenuto, F. (2019).
(Mis)Information Dissemination in WhatsApp: Gathering, Analyzing and Countermeasures. In Proc. of the Web Conference, WWW ’19, San Francisco, USA.
Resende, G., Messias, J., Silva, M., Almeida, J., Vasconcelos, M., and Benevenuto, F. (2018). A System for Monitoring Public Political Groups in WhatsApp. In Proc. of the 24th Brazilian Symposium on Multimedia and the Web, WebMedia ’18, Salvador, Brazil. ACM.
Ribeiro, F. N., Saha, K., Babaei, M., Henrique, L., Messias, J., Benevenuto, F., Goga, O., Gummadi, K. P., and Redmiles, E. M. (2019). On Microtargeting Socially Divisive Ads: A Case Study of Russia-Linked Ad Campaigns on Facebook. In Proc. of the ACM Conf. on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, FAT*’19, Atlanta, USA.
Rosenfeld, A., Sina, S., Sarne, D., Avidov, O., and Kraus, S. (2018). A Study of WhatsApp Usage Patterns and Prediction Models without Message Content. arXiv preprint arXiv:1802.03393.
Seufert, M., Hoßfeld, T., Schwind, A., Burger, V., and Tran-Gia, P. (2016). Group-based Communication in WhatsApp. In IFIP Networking Conference and Workshops, NETWORKING 2016, Vienna, Austria.
Seufert, M., Schwind, A., Hoßfeld, T., and Tran-Gia, P. (2015). Analysis of Group-Based Communication in WhatsApp. In Proc. of 7th EAI Int’l Conf. on Mobile Networks and Management, MONAMI’15, Santander, Spain.
Speicher, T., Ali, M., Venkatadri, G., Ribeiro, F. N., Arvanitakis, G., Benevenuto, F., Gummadi, K. P., Loiseau, P., and Mislove, A. (2018). On the Potential for Discrimination in Online Targeted Advertising. In Proc. of the ACM Conf. on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, FAT*’18.
Starbird, K., Arif, A., Wilson, T., Van Koevering, K., Yefimova, K., and Scarnecchia, D. (2018). Ecosystem or Echo-System? Exploring Content Sharing across Alternative Media Domains. In Proc. of 12th Int’l Conf. on Web and Social Media, ICWSM’18, Stanford, USA.
Barabási, A.-L. et al. (2016). Network science. Cambridge university press.
Bessi, A. and Ferrara, E. (2016). Social Bots Distort the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election Online Discussion. First Monday, 21(11).
Cha, M., Benevenuto, F., Ahn, Y.-Y., and Gummadi, K. P. (2012). Delayed Information Cascades in Flickr: Measurement, Analysis, and Modeling. Computer Networks, 56(3):1066–1076.
Chakrabarti, S., Stengel, L., and Solanki, S. (2018). Duty, Identity, Credibility: ’Fake News’ and the Ordinary Citizen in India. BBC World Service Audiences Research.
Feng, Z., Li, Y., Jin, L., and Feng, L. (2015). A Cluster-Based Epidemic Model for Retweeting Trend Prediction on Micro-blog. In Proc. of 26th Int’l Conf. on Database and Expert Systems Applications, DEXA, Valencia, Spain.
Freitas, C., Benevenuto, F., Ghosh, S., and Veloso, A. (2015). Reverse Engineering Socialbot Infiltration Strategies in Twitter. In Proc. of the 2015 IEEEACM Int’l Conf. on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining, ASONAM ’15.
Garimella, K. and Tyson, G. (2018). Whatapp doc? A first look at whatsapp public group data. In Proc. of 12th Int’l Conf. on Web and Social Media, ICWSM’18, Stanford, USA.
Guha, R., Kumar, R., Raghavan, P., and Tomkins, A. (2004). Propagation of trust and distrust. In Proc. of 13th Int’l Conf. on World Wide Web, WWW’04, New York, USA.
Howard, P. N. and Hussain, M. M. (2011). The Upheavals in Egypt and Tunisia: The Role of Digital Media. Journal of Democracy, 22(3):35–48.
Keeling, M. J. and Eames, K. T. (2005). Networks and Epidemic Models. Journal of The Royal Society Interface, 2(4):295–307.
Khurana, P. and Kumar, D. (2018). Sir Model for Fake News Spreading Through Whatsapp. In Proc. of 3rd Int’l Conf. on Internet of Things and Connected Technologies, ICIoTCT, India.
Malka, V., Ariel, Y., and Avidar, R. (2015). Fighting, worrying and sharing: Operation ‘Protective Edge’as the first WhatsApp War. Media, War & Conflict, 8(3):329–344.
McAuley, J. and Leskovec, J. (2012). Image Labeling on a Network: Using Social-Network Metadata for Image Classification. In 12th European Conf. on Computer Vision, ECCV12, Florence, Italy.
Melo, P., Messias, J., Resende, G., Garimella, K., Almeida, J., and Benevenuto, F. (2019). Whatsapp Monitor: A Fact-checking System for WhatsApp. In Proc. of 13th Int’l Conf. on Web and Social Media, ICWSM’19, Munich, Germany.
Mondal, M., Silva, L. A. A., and Benevenuto, F. (2017). A Measurement Study of Hate Speech in Social Media. In Proc. of ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media, HT’17, Prague, Czech Republic.
Moreno, A., Garrison, P., and Bhat, K. (2017). Whatsapp for Monitoring and Response During Critical Events: Aggie in the Ghana 2016 Election. In Proc. of 14th Int’l Conf. on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM’17, Albi, France.
Radcliffe, D. and Lam, A. (2018). Social Media in the Middle East: The Story of 2017. SSRN Electronic Journal.
Reis, J. C. S., Correia, A., Murai, F., Veloso, A., and Benevenuto, F. (2019). Supervised Learning for Fake News Detection. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 34(2).
Resende, G., Melo, P., Sousa, H., Messias, J., Vasconcelos, M., Almeida, J., and Benevenuto, F. (2019).
(Mis)Information Dissemination in WhatsApp: Gathering, Analyzing and Countermeasures. In Proc. of the Web Conference, WWW ’19, San Francisco, USA.
Resende, G., Messias, J., Silva, M., Almeida, J., Vasconcelos, M., and Benevenuto, F. (2018). A System for Monitoring Public Political Groups in WhatsApp. In Proc. of the 24th Brazilian Symposium on Multimedia and the Web, WebMedia ’18, Salvador, Brazil. ACM.
Ribeiro, F. N., Saha, K., Babaei, M., Henrique, L., Messias, J., Benevenuto, F., Goga, O., Gummadi, K. P., and Redmiles, E. M. (2019). On Microtargeting Socially Divisive Ads: A Case Study of Russia-Linked Ad Campaigns on Facebook. In Proc. of the ACM Conf. on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, FAT*’19, Atlanta, USA.
Rosenfeld, A., Sina, S., Sarne, D., Avidov, O., and Kraus, S. (2018). A Study of WhatsApp Usage Patterns and Prediction Models without Message Content. arXiv preprint arXiv:1802.03393.
Seufert, M., Hoßfeld, T., Schwind, A., Burger, V., and Tran-Gia, P. (2016). Group-based Communication in WhatsApp. In IFIP Networking Conference and Workshops, NETWORKING 2016, Vienna, Austria.
Seufert, M., Schwind, A., Hoßfeld, T., and Tran-Gia, P. (2015). Analysis of Group-Based Communication in WhatsApp. In Proc. of 7th EAI Int’l Conf. on Mobile Networks and Management, MONAMI’15, Santander, Spain.
Speicher, T., Ali, M., Venkatadri, G., Ribeiro, F. N., Arvanitakis, G., Benevenuto, F., Gummadi, K. P., Loiseau, P., and Mislove, A. (2018). On the Potential for Discrimination in Online Targeted Advertising. In Proc. of the ACM Conf. on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, FAT*’18.
Starbird, K., Arif, A., Wilson, T., Van Koevering, K., Yefimova, K., and Scarnecchia, D. (2018). Ecosystem or Echo-System? Exploring Content Sharing across Alternative Media Domains. In Proc. of 12th Int’l Conf. on Web and Social Media, ICWSM’18, Stanford, USA.
Published
2019-05-06
How to Cite
VIEIRA, Carolina Coimbra; MELO, Philipe de Freitas; VAZ DE MELO, Pedro O. S.; BENEVENUTO, Fabricio.
The Paradox of Encrypted Information Virality on WhatsApp. In: BRAZILIAN SYMPOSIUM ON COMPUTER NETWORKS AND DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS (SBRC), 37. , 2019, Gramado.
Anais [...].
Porto Alegre: Sociedade Brasileira de Computação,
2019
.
p. 403-416.
ISSN 2177-9384.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/sbrc.2019.7375.
