Bridging separate communities with common interest in distributed social networks through the use of social objects

In light of the growing number of user privacy violations in centralized social networks, the need to define effective platforms for decentralized online social networks (DOSNs) is deeply felt. Interesting solutions have been proposed in the past, which own the necessary mechanisms to allow users keeping control over their personal information and setting the rules to regulate the access of other users. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of this type of solutions is severely reduced by the fact that different user communities with a shared interest could be disconnected/separated from each other. This translates into a reduced ability in effectively spreading data of common interest towards all interested users, as it currently happens in centralized social networks. In order to overcome the cited limitation, this paper proposes a disruptive approach, which exploits the availability of a new class of Internet of Things (IoT) devices with autonomous social behaviors and cognitive abilities. Such devices can be leveraged as friendship intermediaries between devices' owners who are connected to a DOSN platform and share the same interest. We will demonstrate that clear advantages can be achieved in terms of increased percentage of Interested Reachable Nodes (a specific measure of Delivery Ratio) in distributed social networks among humans, when enhanced with so called Mediator Objects adhering to the well-known social IoT (SIoT) paradigm. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.