Skip to main content
USENIX
  • Conferences
  • Students
Sign in
  • Home
  • Attend
    • Registration Information
    • Registration Discounts
    • Venue, Hotel, and Travel
    • Student and Grants
    • Co-located Workshops
  • Program
    • Workshop Program
  • Sponsorship
  • Participate
    • Instructions for Authors and Speakers
    • Call for Papers
  • About
    • Workshop Organizers
    • Questions
    • Services
    • Past Workshops
  • Home
  • Attend
  • Program
  • Sponsorship
  • Participate
  • About

help promote

FOCI '16 button

connect with us


  •  Twitter
  •  Facebook
  •  LinkedIn
  •  Google+
  •  YouTube

twitter

Tweets by @usenix

usenix conference policies

  • Event Code of Conduct
  • Conference Network Policy
  • Statement on Environmental Responsibility Policy

You are here

Home » GhostPost: Seamless Restoration of Censored Social Media Posts
Tweet

connect with us

GhostPost: Seamless Restoration of Censored Social Media Posts

Authors: 

Frederick Douglas and Matthew Caesar, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign

Abstract: 

The control of voices within a country is as important to a censor as blocking information from outside. This control must extend to social media. Screening every post prior to publication is not practical; instead, censors find and delete objectionable content after it has been posted. This paper presents GhostPost, a distributed system that conveniently and safely restores deleted posts on any social media platform, with an implementation for Sina Weibo. Our simulations show that even if the censor deletes most posts within two hours (roughly the capability of Sina Weibo’s censor), it cannot prevent a well established GhostPost deployment from preserving a majority of the posts our users would want to see.

Frederick Douglas, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign

Matthew Caesar, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign

Open Access Media

USENIX is committed to Open Access to the research presented at our events. Papers and proceedings are freely available to everyone once the event begins. Any video, audio, and/or slides that are posted after the event are also free and open to everyone. Support USENIX and our commitment to Open Access.

BibTeX
@inproceedings {198592,
author = {Frederick Douglas and Matthew Caesar},
title = {GhostPost: Seamless Restoration of Censored Social Media Posts},
booktitle = {6th {USENIX} Workshop on Free and Open Communications on the Internet ({FOCI} 16)},
year = {2016},
address = {Austin, TX},
url = {https://www.usenix.org/conference/foci16/workshop-program/presentation/douglas},
publisher = {{USENIX} Association},
month = aug,
}
Download
Douglas PDF
View the slides
  • Log in or    Register to post comments

© USENIX

  • Privacy Policy
  • Conference Policies
  • Contact Us