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Technology

How Shadow Banning Can Silently Shift Opinion Online

In a new study, Yale SOM’s Tauhid Zaman and Yen-Shao Chen show how a social media platform can shift users’ positions or increase overall polarization by selectively muting and amplifying posts in ways that appear neutral to an outside observer.

An illustration of shadowy figures moving among screens of phones and other devices
  • Can We Protect Our Election from the Bots?

    More than 50,000 Russia-linked bots were active on Twitter during the 2016 election. Are they back? We talked with Prof. Tauhid Zaman, who has carried out a series of studies identifying bot networks and assessing their impact.

    A photo illustration of legions of toy robots
  • What’s the Danger from TikTok?

    In September, under pressure from the Trump administration to sell its U.S. operations, the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok tentatively agreed to partner with Oracle. We asked Prof. Paul Bracken, an expert on strategy and technology, about the security threat from Chinese technology companies and how the conflict might play out.

    A shadow of a person walking in front of a TikTok sign
  • The Borderlessness of Tech-Driven Media

    Dayo Olopade ’15, a lead for film and television partnerships at Google, discusses the global disruption of production, distribution, and consumption of media around the world.

    An illustration of a the planet earth wearing a mask in a TV studio
  • Facebook’s Dominance Is Built on Anti-Competitive Behavior

    In a new paper, Yale SOM’s Fiona Scott Morton writes that the company took control of the social media industry by misleading consumers and buying up rivals.

    An illustration of a Facebook logo as Pac-Man eating Instagram and WhatsApp logos
  • An App as a Lifeline for Immigrant Communities

    Laura Arrazola ’19, a graduate of Yale SOM's Master of Advanced Management program, describes her experiences managing a virtual community that helps hard-hit immigrants navigate the pandemic.

    An illustration of immigrants in the U.S.
  • The Antitrust Case against Google

    State and federal authorities are reportedly preparing to bring antitrust charges against Google. We talked to Yale SOM’s Fiona Scott Morton about the company's dominant role in online advertising and how it limits competition.

    A one way sign next to a Google sign
  • A Vast Experiment in Remote Work

    Scott Wharton ’95, who leads Logitech’s video collaboration group, sees far-reaching and sustained changes from the remote work explosion forced on us by the pandemic.

    An illustration of people communicating through videoconferencing software
  • What Happens When a Billion Identities Are Digitized?

    The success of India’s Aadhaar, a biometrically secured national identification system, has ignited a debate over whether any entity, public or private, should have the ability to pool our full digital profiles.

    A woman having her eyes scanned at an Aadhaar registration office in Guwahati, India, in 2018. Photo: David Talukdar/NurPhoto via Getty Images.
  • Are Electronic Health Records Useful Yet? 

    The story of EHRs serves as a prelude to what we’re experiencing today in almost every facet of our lives: a utopian promise of ubiquitous data tempered by technical challenges and concerns over privacy.

    Javier Larrea/Alamy Stock Photo
  • How Machine Learning Can Find Extremists on Social Media

    Yale SOM's Tauhid Zaman investigated how artificial intelligence could assist efforts to detect and suspend extremist accounts, before they are used to recruit members and spread propaganda.

    A complex network diagram with some nodes highlighted in red