Doctoral candidate Smirity Kaushik successfully defended her dissertation, "Digital Trust, Safety, and Privacy in the Age of Emerging Technologies," on June 16. Her committee included Professor Yang Wang (chair); Assistant Professor Madelyn Rose Sanfilippo; Professor Michael Twidale; Camille Cobb, assistant professor in the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science; and Yixin Zou, a tenure-track faculty member at Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy.
Abstract: Social media is a powerful tool for information dissemination and global engagement. However, it also exposes users to digital harms, including scams and privacy-invasive targeted advertising. Use of Generative AI amplifies these risks by enabling hyper-personalized and scalable synthetic content. These risks disproportionately affect the at-risk and understudied populations, such as young adults and non-Western users, whose needs are often overlooked in platform design and governance. This research advances safer, more trustworthy, and inclusive online experiences for users. It examines three interconnected social media harms: a) privacy-invasive targeted advertising; b) scams on platforms like TikTok; and c) misuse of Generative AI to generate fraudulent content. Employing a mixed-method approach that integrates interviews, surveys, and content analysis, this work makes four key contributions: a) identify novel targeted ads perceptions of non-Western users; b) establish influence of culture and religion in shaping people’s perceptions; c) systematize studying scams on TikTok; d) highlight enforcement gaps in misuse of Generative AI. The research informs design and policy interventions to enhance user safety and privacy.