2014 International Conference on Circuit, Power and Computing Technologies [ICCPCT]
Content Based Filtering in Online Social Network
using Inference Algorithm
N.Thilagavathi
Assistant Professor,
Dept. of Information and Technology,
Sri Manakula Vinayagar Engineering College,
Puducherry, India.
thilagarajsanran@gmail.com
Abstract— The basic issue in the online social network is to
provide the ability for the user to manage the messages post on
their wall. Online social networks offer only minimal assistance to
avoid unwanted content displayed in the user wall. To enhance
the support, a system is designed to filter unwanted messages and
allow user to have direct control on the messages posted in the
wall. It is achieved using flexible rule based system that allows the
user to specify filtering rule for their wall. And, Inference
algorithms are used to infer new information from the filtering
rules to increase the efficiency of the filtering process. Machine
Learning based soft classifier is employed to facilitate the content
based filtering.
Index Terms— Online social networks, information filtering,
short text classification
I. INTRODUCTION
The advancement in computing and communication
technologies enables people to get together and share
information in innovative ways. Social networking sites are
the familiar interactive medium to share a significant amount
of individual information. In these networks, several types of
content such as text, image, audio, video etc are exchanged
every day. As per the facebook statistics, each month 90
pieces of content is created by an average user while more
than 30 billion pieces of information are shared each month.
Typically, information in the social networks is
dynamically changing and users are overwhelmed with large
amount of raw data. Content mining strategies are employed
to extract valuable information hidden within the enormous
amount of data. These techniques provide effective support to
complex tasks in the online social networks such as instance
access control or information filtering.
Information filtering is the process of providing appropriate
information to the people who need it. It significantly
searches for what actually concerns the textual document,
specifically web contents [1, 2, 3], and offers a user with
classification mechanism to avoid the unnecessary
information. This information filtering process is used in the
online social network for insightful objective.
In the Online social networks, there is a chance to post or
comment on other’s public or private walls. Information
filtering techniques can be assisted to support the user to
978-1-4799-2397-7/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
R.Taarika
PG Student,
Department of Computer Science,
Sri Manakula Vinayagar Engineering College,
Puducherry, India.
taarika.ravichandran8@gmail.com
automatically control the unwanted messages posted in their
wall.
This is the key of the online social network service which is
not provided up to now. Certainly, online social network
provide minimal support to prevent unwanted messages from
the wall. For instance, facebook offers three different methods
to filter the messages from the user wall.
The first method is to states who are the entire user allowed
to post messages in the wall. It may be friends, friends of
friends or defined group of friends. They are only allowed to
post message in the particular user wall. The second method is
to block specific users from posting messages into the wall. It
just prevents the particular user to post messages in the user
wall. And the third method is to hide the undesired posts from
timeline. It merely conceals the posted message.
The key limitation of the existing methods is that it cannot
filter the incoming posts based on the content. It just blocks
the user who posts the messages in the wall. Certainly it is not
essential to the block the users in all situations. The existing
methods do not support the content based filtering. So it is
impossible to prevent the undesired message without consider
the user who posts it. We believe that is the key online social
networks service that has not been provided so far.
To facilitate the content based filtering, this article
introduces the filtered wall architecture. It will filter the
incoming post based on the content.
The remainder of the section is organized as follows.
Section 2 surveys the related work whereas Section 3 provides
the architecture and concepts of the proposed system whereas
Section 4 illustrates the inference of new rule from the existing
rule. Finally Section 5 concludes the paper.
II. RELATED WORK
The main goal of this paper is to design a system to provide
customizable content based message filtering for online social
networks, based on machine learning techniques. Information
Filtering Systems are designed to categorize the information
which are generated dynamically and offer the information to
the user fulfill their requirement [6]. In the content – Based
Filtering system, each user is assumed to operate separately.
So the filtering system selects the information based on the
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 2014 International Conference on Circuit, Power and Computing Technologies [ICCPCT]
correlation between the content of the items and user
preferences.
It is contradictory with the collaborative filtering system
which selects information based on the correlation between
the people with similar preferences [7], [8]. Initially the
information filtering process was used to categorize the email
messages, subsequent papers have refer the various domains
such as newswire articles, internet news articles, network
resources etc [9], [10], [11]. Content-based filtering mostly
processes the textual document in nature and this builds
content-based filtering close to text classification.
In fact, the activity of filtering can be modeled as a case of
single label, binary classification, and partitioning incoming
documents into relevant and nonrelevant categories [12].
Other complex filtering systems comprise multilabel text
categorization that automatically labels the messages into
partial thematic categories.
Content-based filtering is mainly based on the use of the
ML paradigm. In that, a classifier is automatically induced by
learning from a set of preclassified examples. The feature
extraction procedure maps text into a compact representation
of its content, which is uniformly applied to training and
generalization phases. Bag-of-Words (BoW) approach yields
good performance and exists in general over more
sophisticated text representation that may have superior
semantics but lower statistical quality [13], [14], [15].
There are varieties of key approaches in content-based
filtering and text classification. Based on the application, each
approach may having mutual advantages and disadvantages.
In depth comparison analysis [4], has been conducted to verify
the superiority of classifiers such as Boosting-based classifiers
[16], Neural Networks [17], [18], and Support Vector
Machines [19] over other popular methods, such as Rocchio
[20] and Naive Bayesian [21]. However, most of the work
related to text categorization by ML has been applied for long-
form text and the evaluated performance of the text
classification methods strictly depends on the nature of textual
documents.
Content-based filtering on messages posted on online social
networks user walls poses additional challenges given the
short length of these messages other than the wide range of
topics. Probably, there are lot of difficulties in defining robust
features, essentially due to the fact that the description of the
short text is concise and crisp, with many misspellings,
nonstandard terms, and noise. Zelikovitz and Hirsh [22] try to
improve the classification of short text streams by developing
a semi-supervised learning strategy based on a combination of
labeled training data and a corpus of unlabeled related
documents.
This solution is inapplicable to the online social networks,
in which short messages are not summary or part of longer
semantically related documents. Another approach is proposed
by Bobicev and Sokolova [23] that evade the problem of
error-prone feature construction by assuming a statistical
learning method that can work reasonably well without feature
engineering.
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However, this method is named as Prediction by Partial
Mapping, produces a language model that is used in
probabilistic text classifiers which are hard classifiers in
nature and do not easily integrate soft, multimembership
paradigms. In our scenario, gradual membership to classes a
key feature for defining flexible policy-based personalization
strategies is need to be considered.
III. CONTENT BASED FILTERING
To support the content based filtering in online social
network, Filtered wall architecture is introduced. In this
architecture, text mining techniques are employed to
categorize the incoming messages. Traditional text
classification methods have major inadequacy in classifying
the short text message. Short text message do not have
sufficient word occurrences. An automated system called
filtered wall is designed in this paper to filter unwanted
messages from user walls.
In this system, Machine Learning based text categorization
[4] techniques are used to automatically allot each short text
message with set of categories based on the content. Short
Text Classifier is built to accurate extraction and set of
discriminating feature in the message. Neural learning model
is employed for the efficient text classification. In particular,
Radial Basis Function Network [5] acts as a soft classifier to
handle noisy data and intrinsically unclear classes. Neural
model is enclosed within a hierarchical two level
classification. In the first level, RBFN classifies the short
messages as Neutral or Nonneutral and in the second level
Nonneutral messages are classified based on the
appropriateness to each of the considered category.
In addition the classification facilities, the system offer the
robust rule layer to specify Filtering Rules (FR) in a flexible
language. Using that, user can specify what content should not
be displayed on their walls. According to the user needs,
different varieties of filtering rules are combined and
customized. The system also supports the user – defined
Blacklists (BL) that is, list of users that are temporarily
blocked to post messages on the user wall.
Filtered Wall
GUI
Short Text
Content Based
Classification
Filtering
Filtering Rules
Social Network
Blacklists Rules Manager
Fig. 1. Filtered Wall Architecture
 2014 International Conference on Circuit, Power and Computing Technologies [ICCPCT]
The architecture to support of online social network
services comprises of three major components (Figure 1):
Social Network Manager, Short text classification and Content
Based Filtering. Social Network Manager (SNM) offers the
basic online social networks functionalities such as profile
management, relationship management etc Short Text
Classification is employed to classify the incoming post
messages.
Content Based filtering offers the support for
message filtration. Specifically, users interact with the system
via a GUI to set up and manage their FRs/ BLs. Moreover, the
GUI provides users with a FW, that is, a wall where only
messages that are authorized according to their FRs/BLs are
published. As graphically depicted in Figure 1, the path
followed by a message, from its writing to the possible final
publication can be summarized as follows:
1. After entering the private wall of one of his/her
contacts, the user tries to post a message, which is intercepted
by the Filtered Wall.
2. A Machine Learning-based text classifier extracts
metadata from the content of the message.
3. Filtered Wall uses metadata provided by the
classifier, together with data extracted from the social graph
and users’ profiles, to enforce the filtering and Black List
rules.
4. Depending on the result of the previous step, the
message will be published or filtered by Filtered Wall.
The core components of the proposed system are the Short
Text Classifier modules and the Content-Based Messages
Filtering (CBMF).
A. Short Text Classifier
Short text classifier aims to classify the messages
according to a set of categories. For that, a classifier is build to
extract and select the discriminating features of the short text
message. Short text classification is comprised with two
phases: Text representation and Machine Learning based
classification.
In the first phase, the short text message is
represented in vector space model [24]. It will denote the text
in an appropriate format to extract its discriminant feature. In
this model, a short text message is represented as a vector of
weights, Dj= w1j, w2j,……. wTj. The term frequency-inverse
document frequency (tf-idf) weighting function is employed to
calculate the weight of each term in the message.
While in the second phase, a neural network classifier
is employed to classify the incoming message. It automatically
categorizes the short message into the suitable category, which
are neutral or non neutral messages. Non neutral messages are
further to analyzed to determine the appropriateness to each
category.
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B. Content-Based Messages Filtering (CBMF)
CBMF exploits the message categorization to enforce the
Filtering Rules specified by the user. First of all, in online
social network, the same message may have different
meanings and relevance based on who writes it. As a
consequence, FRs should allow users to state constraints on
message creators. Creators on which a FR applies can be
selected on the basis of several different criteria; one of the
most relevant is by imposing conditions on their profile’s
attributes. In such a way it is, for instance, possible to define
rules applying only to young creators or to creators with a
given religious/political view.
Given the social network scenario, creators may also be
identified by exploiting information on their social graph.
Each Filtering rule comprises of three essential things: Creator
specification, content based filtering and action of the system.
Creator specification indicates the various criteria for creator
selection. Content based filtering specifies the content need to
be filtered based on the user preference. Action of the system
is to either notify or block the message.
FR= (author, creatorSpec, contentSpec, action)
In general, more than a filtering rule can apply to the same
user. A message is therefore published only if it is not blocked
by any of the filtering rules that apply to the message creator.
Note moreover, that it may happen that a user profile does not
contain a value for the attribute(s) referred by a FR (e.g., the
profile does not specify a value for the attribute Hometown
whereas the FR blocks all the messages authored by users
coming from a specific city).
Black List rules can also be used to enhance the filtering
process. BL mechanism is to avoid messages from undesired
creators, independent from their contents. BLs is directly
managed by the system, which should be able to determine
who are the users to be inserted in the BL and decide when
user’s retention in the BL is finished.
To enhance flexibility, such information is given to the
system through a set of rules, called BL rules. Wall owners
specify who has to be banned from their walls and for how
long. Banning considers two major measures: the number of
times user is inserted in blacklist in certain amount of time and
users whose message is continued to be failing in filtering
rules.
Blacklist rule comprises of four essential things: author,
creator specification, creator behavior and time. Author is the
user who specifies the rule. Creator specification indicates the
user who is allowed to post messages in wall. Creator
behavior deals with the banning criteria. Time specifies the
amount of time the user is banned to post message.
BL = (author, creatorSpec, creatorBehavior, T)
 2014 International Conference on Circuit, Power and Computing Technologies [ICCPCT]
IV.INFERENCE RULE
In the online social networks, unnecessary messages are
controlled by specifying the filtering rules. Generally,
Filtering Rules are static in nature. It means that the rules do
not changed based on the content of the message in the user
wall. In the online social networks, large amount of
information are changing dynamically. Hence the predefined
rules may not be representative for the longer terms. In order
to deal with this, online learning paradigms are used to infer
the new rules from the existing rules.
For example, a post message exhibits, “It is an offence for
an Indian to sell weapons to enemy nations. James, who is
Indian, sold some missiles to Pakistan, an enemy country”.
Suppose user may specify the filtering rule as “Information
regarding to crime person will not be displayed in my wall”.
In the post, the person James is a crime because he sold
missiles to hostile nation. But the information is not directly
specified in the post. In this case, if the filtering rule is merely
applied in the post message, it will not able to identify that
James is a crime. In order find the indirect relationship in the
post message, inference rule are applied.
Inference process determines the entailment relationship
between the sentences and generates the new rule. The new
rule will be added in the knowledge base. Forward chaining
algorithm is exploited to generate the new rules. Forward
chaining is a reasoning technique that intent is to show the
applicability of an implication by prove that all elements of
the premise possess.
Inference procedure makes use of the idea of a renaming
and composition of substitutions. Renaming is the concept of
renaming a sentence of another if they are similar apart from
the variable names. Substitution is the concept of mapping of
a variable to other variable.
The forward-chaining inference algorithm (fig.2) adds all
the sentences to knowledge base. Consider sentence p that can
be inferred from the knowledge base. If it is previously stored
in the knowledge base, it just returns the sentence p. If p is a
new sentence, then consider each implication contains a
premise that matches p. If all the left over premises are in
knowledge base, then infer the new conclusion. If the
premises can be matched numerous ways, then infer the
matching conclusion.
procedure FORWARD-CHAIN(KB, p)
if there is a sentence in KB that is a renaming of p
then return
Add p to KB
for each (p1 A ... A pn => q) in KB such that for
some i, UNIFY(pi,p) = 0 succeeds do
FlND-AND-lNFER(KB, [p1,..,pi-1,pi+1,. .. ,pn],q, θ)
end
procedure FIND-AND-lNFER(KB, premises, conclusion, θ)
if premises = [ \ then
FORWARD-CHAIN(KB, SuBST( θ, conclusion))
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else for each p' in KB such that UNlFY(p',
SUBST( θ, FlRST( premises))) = θ2 do
FlND-AND-lNFER(KB,REST(premises),
conclusion, COMPOSE( θ, θ2))
End
Fig. 2. Inference Algorithm
V.CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
To filter the undesired messages from OSN walls, the
system exploits a machine learning soft classifier to enforce
customizable content-dependent filtering rules. Learning
paradigms are used to infer new rules from the existing one.
Moreover, the flexibility of the system in terms of filtering
options is enhanced through the management of black lists. As
future work, we intend to exploit similar techniques to infer BL
rules
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