Salvatore Romano

Harassment as Infrastructure: How Telegram's design enables TFGBV

Analysis of 2.8M messages across 16 groups/channels found organized networks of ~25,000 users across Italy and Spain spreading and monetizing non-consensual intimate images (NCII), including CSAM.

Artificial Elections 2.0: Generative AI in the 2026 French Elections

AI-generated content in the municipal elections remained largely unlabelled and increasingly normalized, expanding to cartoonish imagery and most prominent on the right/far right.

From FYP to WW3

During the 2025 NATO Summit, the For You Pages of 12 Dutch accounts prioritized military content (40%) and war speculation (19%); both feed and search reflected a largely pro-NATO stance.

YouTube's Safety Features Lost in Translation

Across all 83 supported languages, safety panels were unevenly distributed: English had full coverage while many languages, including European ones, lacked basic safety features.

AI Generated Algorithmic Virality (AI Slop)

Across three European countries, 25% of TikTok's top search results contained synthetic AI imagery (80%+ from 'Agentic AI Accounts'); only about half of AI content was properly labeled despite DSA commitments.

TikTok's Research API: Problems without Explanations

Missing metadata for official TikTok videos, ads, and prominent accounts makes the research API unreliable for data-donation studies and algorithmic auditing.

Meta's Failing Ad Moderation: Health Scams Targeting EU Users

Identified 46,000+ ads promoting unapproved drugs and deceptive health claims, reaching EU users 292M+ times, violating Meta's own standards and potentially several DSA provisions.

Pay-to-Play: Meta's Community (double) Standards on Pornographic Ads

3,000+ pornographic ads (including AI-generated media and celebrity deepfakes) were approved and generated 8M+ EU impressions, content that would be removed if posted by regular users.

Artificial Elections: Generative AI in 2024 French Elections

Found 51 instances of synthetic imagery, primarily used by right-wing parties to dramatize sensationalist narratives during the 2024 elections; none were labeled as AI-generated.