Related papers: Openbots
The arm race between spambots and spambot-detectors is made of several cycles (or generations): a new wave of spambots is created (and new spam is spread), new spambot filters are derived and old spambots mutate (or evolve) to new species.…
Automated social media accounts, known as bots, are increasingly recognized as key tools for manipulative online activities. These activities can stem from coordination among several accounts and these automated campaigns can manipulate…
Although not all bots are malicious, the vast majority of them are responsible for spreading misinformation and manipulating the public opinion about several issues, i.e., elections and many more. Therefore, the early detection of bots is…
The use of autonomous bots for automatic support in software development tasks is increasing. In the past, however, they were not always perceived positively and sometimes experienced a negative bias compared to their human counterparts. We…
While most online social media accounts are controlled by humans, these platforms also host automated agents called social bots or sybil accounts. Recent literature reported on cases of social bots imitating humans to manipulate…
In a software project, esp. in open-source, a contribution is a valuable piece of work made to the project: writing code, reporting bugs, translating, improving documentation, creating graphics, etc. We are now at the beginning of an…
Collaborative filtering is a rapidly advancing research area. Every year several new techniques are proposed and yet it is not clear which of the techniques work best and under what conditions. In this paper we conduct a study comparing…
Collaboration is a central theme in multi-robot systems as tasks and demands increasingly require capabilities that go beyond what any one individual robot possesses. Yet, despite extensive work on cooperative control and coordinated…
The emergence of Multimodal Foundation Models (MFMs) holds significant promise for transforming social media platforms. However, this advancement also introduces substantial security and ethical concerns, as it may facilitate malicious…
Developing adaptable, extensible, and accurate task bots with minimal or zero human intervention is a significant challenge in dialog research. This thesis examines the obstacles and potential solutions for creating such bots, focusing on…
The rapid progress in AI and Robotics may lead to a profound societal transformation, as humans and robots begin to coexist within shared communities, introducing both opportunities and challenges. To explore this future, we present Virtual…
Botnets in online social networks are increasingly often affecting the regular flow of discussion, attacking regular users and their posts, spamming them with irrelevant or offensive content, and even manipulating the popularity of messages…
A bot is a piece of software that is usually installed on an infected machine without the user's knowledge. A bot is controlled remotely by the attacker under a Command and Control structure. Recent statistics show that bots represent one…
Online Social Networks (OSNs) are a cornerstone in modern society, serving as platforms for diverse content consumption by millions of users each day. However, the challenge of ensuring the accuracy of information shared on these platforms…
Research in social robotics is commonly focused on designing robots that imitate human behavior. While this might increase a user's satisfaction and acceptance of robots at first glance, it does not automatically aid a non-expert user in…
Socialbots are intelligent software controlling all the behavior of fake accounts in an online social network. They use artificial intelligence techniques to pass themselves off as human social media users. Socialbots exploit user trust to…
Data-driven algorithmic and AI systems are increasingly being deployed to automate or augment decision processes across a wide range of public service settings. Yet community members are often unaware of the presence, operation, and impacts…
Crowdfunding has emerged as a widespread strategy for startups seeking financing, particularly through reward-based methods. However, understanding its economic impact at both micro and macro levels requires thorough analysis, often…
Social botnets have become an important phenomenon on social media. There are many ways in which social bots can disrupt or influence online discourse, such as, spam hashtags, scam twitter users, and astroturfing. In this paper we…
This paper replicates, extends, and refutes conclusions made in a study published in PLoS ONE ("Even Good Bots Fight"), which claimed to identify substantial levels of conflict between automated software agents (or bots) in Wikipedia using…