Related papers: How many bots are you following?
Social media, seen by some as the modern public square, is vulnerable to manipulation. By controlling inauthentic accounts impersonating humans, malicious actors can amplify disinformation within target communities. The consequences of such…
As social media has permeated large parts of the population it simultaneously has become a way to reach many people e.g. with political messages. One way to efficiently reach those people is the application of automated computer programs…
Social media, once hailed as a vehicle for democratization and the promotion of positive social change across the globe, are under attack for becoming a tool of political manipulation and spread of disinformation. A case in point is the…
It has recently become possible to study the dynamics of information diffusion in techno-social systems at scale, due to the emergence of online platforms, such as Twitter, with millions of users. One question that systematically recurs is…
The use of social media platforms has been gradually increasing and fake news spreading is becoming an alarming issue nowadays. The spreading of fake news means disseminating false, confusing, and spurious information which hurts families,…
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…
We present the first in-depth and large-scale study of misleading repurposing, in which a malicious user changes the identity of their social media account via, among other things, changes to the profile attributes in order to use the…
Contemporary social coding platforms such as GitHub facilitate collaborative distributed software development. Developers engaged in these platforms often use machine accounts (bots) for automating effort-intensive or repetitive activities.…
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…
Large language models (LLMs) exhibit impressive capabilities in generating realistic text across diverse subjects. Concerns have been raised that they could be utilized to produce fake content with a deceptive intention, although evidence…
In recent years, Twitter has seen a proliferation of automated accounts or bots that send spam, offer clickbait, compromise security using malware, and attempt to skew public opinion. Previous research estimates that around 9% to 17% of…
Conspiracy theories can threaten society by spreading misinformation, deepening polarization, and eroding trust in democratic institutions. Social media often fuels the spread of conspiracies, primarily driven by two key actors:…
Machine learning has witnessed remarkable breakthroughs in recent years. As machine learning permeates various aspects of daily life, individuals and organizations increasingly interact with these systems, exhibiting a wide range of social…
Social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have facilitated the spread of misinformation, necessitating automated detection systems. This systematic review evaluates 36 studies that apply machine learning (ML) and deep…
Modern society depends on the flow of information over online social networks, and users of popular platforms generate significant behavioral data about themselves and their social ties. However, it remains unclear what fundamental limits…
Despite rapid development, current bot detection models still face challenges in dealing with incomplete data and cross-platform applications. In this paper, we propose BotBuster, a social bot detector built with the concept of a mixture of…
Efforts by foreign actors to influence public opinion have gained considerable attention because of their potential to impact democratic elections. Thus, the ability to identify and counter sources of disinformation is increasingly becoming…
Misinformation on social media presents a major threat to modern societies. While previous research has analyzed the virality across true and false social media posts, not every misleading post is necessarily equally viral. Rather,…
Within OSNs, many of our supposedly online friends may instead be fake accounts called social bots, part of large groups that purposely re-share targeted content. Here, we study retweeting behaviors on Twitter, with the ultimate goal of…
Until recently, social media were seen to promote democratic discourse on social and political issues. However, this powerful communication ecosystem has come under scrutiny for allowing hostile actors to exploit online discussions in an…