题　目：Economics of Social Media Fake Accounts

嘉　宾：Zihong Huang, Ph.D. candidate, University of Minnesota

主持人：魏煊  助理教授  上海交通大学安泰经济与管理学院

时　间：2022年11月22日（周二） 14:00-15:30

地　点：腾讯会议 (校内师生如需会议号和密码，请发送电邮至xuziqing@sjtu.edu.cn获取)

内容简介:

Amid the rise of the influencer economy, fake social media accounts have become a prevalent problem on many social media platforms. Yet the problem of fake accounts is still poorly understood and so is the effectiveness of coping strategies. This research models the ecosystem of fake accounts in an influencer economy and obtains insights on fake-account purchasing behaviors, the impact of anti-fake efforts, and the roles of social media literacy, anti-fake technology, and costs of fake accounts. We show that not only low-quality influencers may buy fake accounts to mimic high-quality ones in a “pooling” equilibrium, high-quality influencers may also buy to prevent mimicry in a “costly-separating” equilibrium. There is also a “naturally-separating” equilibrium where the two types are separated without buying fake accounts. We find that increasing anti-fake efforts and social media literacy may cause more fake accounts. The platform generally prefers either a zero-effort pooling equilibrium or a high-effort naturally-separating equilibrium. Compared to the level of anti-fake efforts preferred by consumers, the platform may be overly or insufficiently aggressive. Some anti-fake strategies, such as increasing social media literacy and fake-account costs, may benefit consumers but not the platform. One exception is increasing the effectiveness of anti-fake technology, which benefits both the platform and consumers and reduces the number of fake accounts. See the full paper on SSRN here： https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4206104

演讲人简介：

Zihong Huang is a Ph.D. candidate in Information and Decision Sciences department at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. His research mainly falls into in streams: economics of social media manipulation and role of IT and AI on FinTech markets using game-theoretic modeling and Econometrics, respectively. Some of his studies are conditionally accepted by Information Systems Research or under review at Management Science. He holds four degrees, including a radio engineering bachelor from Southeast University, an economics bachelor from Peking University, an electronic engineering master from Tsinghua University, and a computer science master from the University of Minnesota. He also has three years of industry/public sector experience, serving as a product manager in the crowdfunding industry and a FinTech researcher in China’s central bank.

欢迎广大师生参加！