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Paper Number

2258

Paper Type

Complete

Description

Social media platforms generate huge profits from targeted advertising by collecting massive amounts of data from their users, usually referred to as data harvesting. However, practitioners from the social media industry suggest that data harvesting hurts users by promoting social media addiction and the spread of misinformation. Therefore, policymakers have recently been considering regulating social media platforms. This paper investigates how imposing the regulation on data harvesting impacts social media platforms and users by developing a game-theoretic model. Our main finding shows that while the objective of the regulation on data harvesting is to discourage platforms from collecting a massive amount of data from the users, imposing the regulation may sometimes increase the data harvesting levels and profits of social media platforms. We contribute to the Information Systems literature by broadening the knowledge of the impact of the government's regulation on social media platforms and users.

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Dec 12th, 12:00 AM

Solving the Social Dilemma with Equilibrium Data Harvesting Strategies: A Game-Theoretic Approach

Social media platforms generate huge profits from targeted advertising by collecting massive amounts of data from their users, usually referred to as data harvesting. However, practitioners from the social media industry suggest that data harvesting hurts users by promoting social media addiction and the spread of misinformation. Therefore, policymakers have recently been considering regulating social media platforms. This paper investigates how imposing the regulation on data harvesting impacts social media platforms and users by developing a game-theoretic model. Our main finding shows that while the objective of the regulation on data harvesting is to discourage platforms from collecting a massive amount of data from the users, imposing the regulation may sometimes increase the data harvesting levels and profits of social media platforms. We contribute to the Information Systems literature by broadening the knowledge of the impact of the government's regulation on social media platforms and users.

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