The widespread diffusion of Online Social Networks has given unforeseen opportunities for their users to share contents and mutually interact. However, current platforms offer inadequate guarantees as far as concerns the privacy of their users. To address these issues and leave to the users more control on their data, several recent proposals suggest to decentralize the storage of social data, aiming at leaving their control entirely to their owners. This approach has lead to the definition of Decentralized Online Social Networks (DOSNs), ranging from completely decentralized solutions, i.e. P2P solutions, to hybrid systems integrating external and private resources for storing user data. While DOSNs allow users to have more control over their data, they raise new challenges concerning the management and availability of social data. Guaranteeing data availability in a highly dynamic environment, defining proper algorithms for information diffusion and guaranteeing data privacy in a distributed setting are currently open problems in this area. This survey presents an overview of these challenges and of the main solutions presented in the literature. Existing proposals are classified taking into account the strategies adopted to manage social data, focusing on the data availability and on information diffusion. The survey also presents the new privacy issues arising in DOSNs. Finally, an overview of the main open issues in this research area is presented.
Managing Social Contents in Decentralized Online Social Networks: a survey
Barbara Guidi;Laura Ricci
2018-01-01
Abstract
The widespread diffusion of Online Social Networks has given unforeseen opportunities for their users to share contents and mutually interact. However, current platforms offer inadequate guarantees as far as concerns the privacy of their users. To address these issues and leave to the users more control on their data, several recent proposals suggest to decentralize the storage of social data, aiming at leaving their control entirely to their owners. This approach has lead to the definition of Decentralized Online Social Networks (DOSNs), ranging from completely decentralized solutions, i.e. P2P solutions, to hybrid systems integrating external and private resources for storing user data. While DOSNs allow users to have more control over their data, they raise new challenges concerning the management and availability of social data. Guaranteeing data availability in a highly dynamic environment, defining proper algorithms for information diffusion and guaranteeing data privacy in a distributed setting are currently open problems in this area. This survey presents an overview of these challenges and of the main solutions presented in the literature. Existing proposals are classified taking into account the strategies adopted to manage social data, focusing on the data availability and on information diffusion. The survey also presents the new privacy issues arising in DOSNs. Finally, an overview of the main open issues in this research area is presented.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
