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An essential topic in online social network security is how to accurately detect bot accounts and relieve their harmful impacts (e.g., misinformation, rumor, and spam) on genuine users. Based on a real-world data set, we construct…
Social media platforms face an ongoing challenge in combating the proliferation of social bots, automated accounts that are also known to distort public opinion and support the spread of disinformation. Over the years, social bots have…
Social media moderation policies are often at the center of public debate, and their implementation and enactment are sometimes surrounded by a veil of mystery. Unsurprisingly, due to limited platform transparency and data access,…
Online social media enables mass-level, transparent, and democratized discussion on numerous socio-political issues. Due to such openness, these platforms often endure manipulation and misinformation - leading to negative impacts. To…
A growing suite of research illustrates the negative impact of social media bots in amplifying harmful information with widespread social implications. Social bot detection algorithms have been developed to help identify these bot agents…
Social media platforms allow users to create polls to gather public opinion on diverse topics. However, we know little about what such polls are used for and how reliable they are, especially in significant contexts like elections. Focusing…
Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered recommender systems play a crucial role in determining the content that users are exposed to on social media platforms. However, the behavioural patterns of these systems are often opaque, complicating…
The year 2020 will be remembered for two events of global significance: the COVID-19 pandemic and 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. In this chapter, we summarize recent studies using large public Twitter data sets on these issues. We have…
The proliferation of harmful content shared online poses a threat to online information integrity and the integrity of discussion across platforms. Despite various moderation interventions adopted by social media platforms, researchers and…
The internet has become a central medium through which `networked publics' express their opinions and engage in debate. Offensive comments and personal attacks can inhibit participation in these spaces. Automated content moderation aims to…
In recent years, bullying and aggression against users on social media have grown significantly, causing serious consequences to victims of all demographics. In particular, cyberbullying affects more than half of young social media users…
Centrality is one of the most studied concepts in social network analysis. There is a huge literature regarding centrality measures, as ways to identify the most relevant users in a social network. The challenge is to find measures that can…
Many Twitter users are bots. They can be used for spamming, opinion manipulation and online fraud. Recently we discovered the Star Wars botnet, consisting of more than 350,000 bots tweeting random quotations exclusively from Star Wars…
As Large Language Models (LLMs) become more sophisticated, there is a possibility to harness LLMs to power social media bots. This work investigates the realism of generating LLM-Powered social media bot networks. Through a combination of…
Bot as it is popularly called is an inherent attributes of botnet tool. Botnet is a group of malicious tools acting as an entity. Furthermore, history has it that the aim of what gave rise to botnet was the idea to simplify the method of…
The presence and complexity of political Twitter bots has increased in recent years, making it a very difficult task to recognize these accounts from real, human users. We intended to provide an answer to the following question: are…
Social media platforms continue to struggle with the growing presence of social bots-automated accounts that can influence public opinion and facilitate the spread of disinformation. Over time, these social bots have advanced significantly,…
While social media has been proved as an exceptionally useful tool to interact with other people and massively and quickly spread helpful information, its great potential has been ill-intentionally leveraged as well to distort political…
To help activists call new volunteers to action, we present Botivist: a platform that uses Twitter bots to find potential volunteers and request contributions. By leveraging different Twitter accounts, Botivist employs different strategies…
Twitter, as one of the most popular social networks, provides a platform for communication and online discourse. Unfortunately, it has also become a target for bots and fake accounts, resulting in the spread of false information and…