Publications

CySafe Lab aims to publish at top-tier venues across Computational Social Science, Security, Artificial Intelligence, and Natural Language Processing. We aim to advance research at the intersection of online safety, platform accountability, and human behavior on the Web.

2026

  • Gold Standard or Gold-Plated? Human Practices of Triple Verification in CSAM Takedown

    Melissa Rottier, Michel Eeten, Savvas Zannettou

    CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 🏆 Best Paper Honorable Mention Award

  • Bowling with ChatGPT: On the Evolving User Interactions with Conversational AI Systems

    Sai Keerthana Karnam, Abhisek Dash, Krishna P. Gummadi, Animesh Mukherjee, Ingmar Weber, Savvas Zannettou

    The Web Conference

  • The Algorithmic Self-Portrait: Deconstructing Memory in ChatGPT

    Abhisek Dash, Soumi Das, Elisabeth Kirsten, Qinyuan Wu, Sai Keerthana Karnam, Krishna P. Gummadi, Thorsten Holz, Muhammad Bilal Zafar, Savvas Zannettou

    The Web Conference

  • Setting the Course, but Forgetting to Steer: Analyzing Compliance with GDPR's Right of Access to Data by Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube

    Sai Keerthana Karnam, Abhisek Dash, Antariksh Das, Sepehr Mousavi, Stefan Bechtold, Krishna P. Gummadi, Animesh Mukherjee, Ingmar Weber, Savvas Zannettou

    IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P)

  • Does Ad-Free Mean Less Data Collection? An Empirical Study of Platform Data Practices and User Expectations

    Sepehr Mousavi, Abhisek Dash, Savvas Zannettou, Krishna P. Gummadi

    The Web Conference

  • The Great Data Standoff: Researchers vs. Platforms Under the Digital Services Act

    Catalina Goanta, Savvas Zannettou, Rishabh Kaushal, Jacob Kerkhof, Thales Bertaglia, Taylor Annabell, Haoyang Gui, Gerasimos Spanakis, Adriana Iamnitchi

    International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM)

2025

  • From Meme to Threat: On the Hateful Meme Understanding and Induced Hateful Content Generation in Open-Source Vision Language Models

    Yihan Ma, Xinyue Shen, Yiting Qu, Ning Yu, Michael Backes, Savvas Zannettou, Yang Zhang

    USENIX Security Symposium

  • HateBench: Benchmarking Hate Speech Detectors on LLM-Generated Content and Hate Campaigns

    Xinyue Shen, Yixin Wu, Yiting Qu, Michael Backes, Savvas Zannettou, Yang Zhang

    USENIX Security Symposium

  • Hate in Plain Sight: On the Risks of Moderating AI-Generated Hateful Illusions

    Yiting Qu, Ziqing Yang, Yihan Ma, Michael Backes, Savvas Zannettou, Yang Zhang

    International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV)

  • Breaking Agents: Compromising Autonomous LLM Agents Through Malfunction Amplification

    Boyang Zhang, Yicong Tan, Yun Shen, Ahmed Salem, Michael Backes, Savvas Zannettou, Yang Zhang

    2025 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP)

  • ClipMind: A Framework for Auditing Short-Format Video Recommendations Using Multimodal AI Models

    Aoyu Gong, Sepehr Mousavi, Yiting Xia, Savvas Zannettou

    International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM)

  • Tracing Information Flows in the Hybrid Media System: The Agenda-Setting Role of Dark Platforms Surrounding the Ukraine Invasion Discourse

    Mónika Simon, Savvas Zannettou, Kasper Welbers, Anne C Kroon, Damian Trilling

    International Journal of Communication

  • Auditing the Compliance and Enforcement of Twitter's Advertising Policy

    Yash Vekaria, Zubair Shafiq, Savvas Zannettou

    Social Media+ Society

2024

  • What News Do People Get on Social Media? Analyzing Exposure and Consumption of News through Data Donations

    Salim Chouaki, Abhijnan Chakraborty, Oana Goga, Savvas Zannettou

    The Web Conference 2024

  • TikTok and the Art of Personalization: Investigating Exploration and Exploitation on Social Media Feeds

    Karan Vombatkere, Sepehr Mousavi, Savvas Zannettou, Franziska Roesner, Krishna P. Gummadi

    The Web Conference

  • You Only Prompt Once: On the Capabilities of Prompt Learning on Large Language Models to Tackle Toxic Content

    Xinlei He, Savvas Zannettou, Yun Shen, Yang Zhang

    IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P)

  • Analyzing User Engagement with TikTok's Short Format Video Recommendations using Data Donations

    Savvas Zannettou, Olivia Nemes-Nemeth, Oshrat Ayalon, Angelica Goetzen, Krishna P. Gummadi, Elissa Redmiles, Franziska Roesner

    CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI)

  • From Isolation to Desolation: Investigating Self-Harm Discussions in Incel Communities

    Moonis Ali, Savvas Zannettou

    International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM)

  • Auditing Algorithmic Explanations of Social Media Feeds: A Case Study of TikTok Video Explanations

    Sepehr Mousavi, Krishna P. Gummadi, Savvas Zannettou

    International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM) 🏆 Best Paper Honorable Mention Award

  • Characterizing Information Propagation in Fringe Communities on Telegram

    Mohamad Hoseini, Philipe Melo, Fabrı́cio Benevenuto, Anja Feldmann, Savvas Zannettou

    International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM)

  • Strategies and Attacks of Digital Militias in WhatsApp Political Groups

    Daniel Kansaon, Philipe Melo, Savvas Zannettou, Fabrı́cio Benevenuto

    International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM)

  • Don't Break the Chain: Measuring Message Forwarding on WhatsApp

    Philipe Melo, Mohamad Hoseini, Savvas Zannettou, Fabrı́cio Benevenuto

    International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM)

  • Reviewing War: Unconventional User Reviews as a Side Channel to Circumvent Information Controls

    Miguel Moreno Moreno, Sergio Pastrana, Jens Helge Reelfs, Pellayo Vallina, Savvas Zannettou, Andriy Pachenko, Georgios Smaragdakis, Oliver Hohlfeld, Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez, Juan Tapiador

    International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM)

  • The Faces and Forms of Pandemic Humor: Exploring Covid-19 Memes with Visual Machine Learning

    Mark Boukes, Giselinde Kuipers, Zilin Lin, Savvas Zannettou

    Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media

2023

  • Understanding and Detecting Hateful Content using Contrastive Learning

    Felipe González-Pizarro, Savvas Zannettou

    International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM)

  • "Learn the Facts About COVID-19": Analyzing the Use of Warning Labels on TikTok Videos

    Chen Ling, Krishna P Gummadi, Savvas Zannettou

    International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM)

  • On the Evolution of (Hateful) Memes by Means of Multimodal Contrastive Learning

    Yiting Qu, Xinlei He, Shannon Pierson, Michael Backes, Yang Zhang, Savvas Zannettou

    IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P)

  • LAMBRETTA: Learning to Rank for Twitter Soft Moderation

    Pujan Paudel, Jeremy Blackburn, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Savvas Zannettou, Gianluca Stringhini

    IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P)

  • Non-Polar Opposites: Analyzing the Relationship Between Echo Chambers and Hostile Intergroup Interactions on Reddit

    Alexandros Efstratiou, Jeremy Blackburn, Tristan Caulfield, Gianluca Stringhini, Savvas Zannettou, Emiliano De Cristofaro

    International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM)

  • Unsafe Diffusion: On the Generation of Unsafe Images and Hateful Memes From Text-To-Image Models

    Yiting Qu, Xinyue Shen, Xinlei He, Michael Backes, Savvas Zannettou, Yang Zhang

    ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS)

  • On the Globalization of the QAnon Conspiracy Theory through Telegram

    Mohamad Hoseini, Philipe Melo, Fabricio Benevenuto, Anja Feldmann, Savvas Zannettou

    15th ACM Web Science Conference 2023

2022

  • TROLLMAGNIFIER: Detecting State-Sponsored Troll Accounts on Reddit

    Mohammad Hammas Saeed, Shiza Ali, Jeremy Blackburn, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Savvas Zannettou, Gianluca Stringhini

    IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P)

  • On Xing Tian and the Perseverance of Anti-China Sentiment Online

    Xinyue Shen, Xinlei He, Michael Backes, Jeremy Blackburn, Savvas Zannettou, Yang Zhang

    International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM)

  • The gospel according to Q: Understanding the QAnon conspiracy from the perspective of canonical information

    Antonis Papasavva, Max Aliapoulios, Cameron Ballard, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Gianluca Stringhini, Savvas Zannettou, Jeremy Blackburn

    International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM)

  • "It is just a flu": Assessing the Effect of Watch History on YouTube's Pseudoscientific Video Recommendations

    Kostantinos Papadamou, Savvas Zannettou, Jeremy Blackburn, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Gianluca Stringhini, Michael Sirivianos

    International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM)

  • Why So Toxic? Measuring and Triggering Toxic Behavior in Open-Domain Chatbots

    Wai Man Si, Michael Backes, Jeremy Blackburn, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Gianluca Stringhini, Savvas Zannettou, Yang Zhang

    2022 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 🏆 Best Paper Honorable Mention Award