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Article History

Received: 8 November 2024

Accepted: 25 March 2025

First Online: 10 April 2025

Declarations

:

: For influweb.it the research was conducted in accordance with Italian Data Protection Authority (Garante per la protezione dei dati personali) regulations on privacy, data collection and treatment, reported here . The Italian Data Protection Authority adheres to the norms set by the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Influweb’s data collection process was reviewed and approved by the institutional review board of the ISI Foundation which waived the need for ethics approval as the following applies: all use takes place in compliance with the rules contained in the GDPR; informed consent was obtained online from all participants of the platform at enrollment according to regulations, enabling the collection, storage, and treatment of data, and their publication in anonymized, processed, and aggregated forms for scientific purposes; the website has a “Privacy Statement” section in which the users who decide to enroll in the study can find all the information on who is responsible for the data acquisition and processing in each country. Informed consent was obtained online from all participants enabling the collection, storage, and treatment of data, and their publication in anonymized, processed, and aggregated for scientific purposes. The Influweb website () has a “Privacy Policy” section in which the users who decide to enroll in the study can find all the information on who is responsible for the data acquisition and processing. To ensure privacy and data security, all collected data is pseudonymized—participants' personal identifiers (e.g., email addresses) are stored separately and are inaccessible to researchers. Survey responses are linked only via an anonymized ID, preserving full privacy. Influweb operates on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) infrastructure in Europe, maintaining GDPR compliance, with continuous backups. Additionally, security measures to protect participant data include hashed passwords, two-factor authentication (2FA) and protection of data in transit by Transport Layer Security v1.3 (“TLSv1.3”).

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare no competing interests.