Related papers: Adversarial Botometer: Adversarial Analysis for So…
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…
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…
Nowadays, social media represent persuasive tools that have been progressively weaponized to affect people's beliefs, spread manipulative narratives, and sow conflicts along divergent factions. Software-controlled accounts (i.e., bots) are…
Bots are user accounts in social media which are controlled by computer programs. Similar to many other things, they are used for both good and evil purposes. One nefarious use-case for them is to spread misinformation or biased data in the…
Bots have been in the spotlight for many social media studies, for they have been observed to be participating in the manipulation of information and opinions on social media. These studies analyzed the activity and influence of bots in a…
This paper presents a study on the growing threat of "sleeper social bots," AI-driven social bots in the political landscape, created to spread disinformation and manipulate public opinion. We based the name sleeper social bots on their…
Amidst widespread reports of digital influence operations during major elections, policymakers, scholars, and journalists have become increasingly interested in the political impact of social media 'bots.' Most recently, platform companies…
Malicious Twitter bots are detrimental to public discourse on social media. Past studies have looked at spammers, fake followers, and astroturfing bots, but retweet bots, which artificially inflate content, are not well understood. In this…
In recent years, social bots have been using increasingly more sophisticated, challenging detection strategies. While many approaches and features have been proposed, social bots evade detection and interact much like humans making it…
Adversarial Internet robots (botnets) represent a growing threat to the safe use and stability of the Internet. Botnets can play a role in launching adversary reconnaissance (scanning and phishing), influence operations (upvoting), and…
With the remarkable capability to reach the public instantly, social media has become integral in sharing scholarly articles to measure public response. Since spamming by bots on social media can steer the conversation and present a false…
Recent research brought awareness of the issue of bots on social media and the significant risks of mass manipulation of public opinion in the context of political discussion. In this work, we leverage Twitter to study the discourse during…
Online social networks (OSN) like Twitter or Facebook are popular and powerful since they allow reaching millions of users online. They are also a popular target for socialbot attacks. Without a deep understanding of the impact of such…
Twitter bot detection has become an important and challenging task to combat misinformation and protect the integrity of the online discourse. State-of-the-art approaches generally leverage the topological structure of the Twittersphere,…
Research on social bots aims at advancing knowledge and providing solutions to one of the most debated forms of online manipulation. Yet, social bot research is plagued by widespread biases, hyped results, and misconceptions that set the…
Adversarial examples are inputs to a machine learning system that result in an incorrect output from that system. Attacks launched through this type of input can cause severe consequences: for example, in the field of image recognition, a…
A very large number of people use Online Social Networks daily. Such platforms thus become attractive targets for agents that seek to gain access to the attention of large audiences, and influence perceptions or opinions. Botnets,…
Automated social agents, or bots, are increasingly becoming a problem on social media platforms. There is a growing body of literature and multiple tools to aid in the detection of such agents on online social networking platforms. We…
Twitter bots are automatic programs operated by malicious actors to manipulate public opinion and spread misinformation. Research efforts have been made to automatically identify bots based on texts and networks on social media. Existing…
So-called 'social bots' have garnered a lot of attention lately. Previous research showed that they attempted to influence political events such as the Brexit referendum and the US presidential elections. It remains, however, somewhat…