mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

The Rise of Social Bots

arXiv 1407.5225 ↗First posted 19 Jul 2014cs.SI cs.CY physics.data-ancited by 96

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Abstract (arXiv)

The Turing test aimed to recognize the behavior of a human from that of a computer algorithm. Such challenge is more relevant than ever in today's social media context, where limited attention and technology constrain the expressive power of humans, while incentives abound to develop software agents mimicking humans. These social bots interact, often unnoticed, with real people in social media ecosystems, but their abundance is uncertain. While many bots are benign, one can design harmful bots with the goals of persuading, smearing, or deceiving. Here we discuss the characteristics of modern, sophisticated social bots, and how their presence can endanger online ecosystems and our society. We then review current efforts to detect social bots on Twitter. Features related to content, network, sentiment, and temporal patterns of activity are imitated by bots but at the same time can help discriminate synthetic behaviors from human ones, yielding signatures of engineered social tampering.

Key facts. Cited by 96 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 19 Jul 2014.

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Citing papers per year: 2020: 1; 2021: 15; 2022: 9; 2023: 23; 2024: 13; 2025: 12; 2026: 23.

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  1. 2023Co-Writing with Opinionated Language Models Affects Users' Viewscited by 145
  2. 2023Should ChatGPT be Biased? Challenges and Risks of Bias in Large Language Modelscited by 144
  3. 2022Towards Robust Graph Neural Networks for Noisy Graphs with Sparse Labelscited by 63
  4. 2022"Real Attackers Don't Compute Gradients": Bridging the Gap Between Adversarial ML Research and Practicecited by 55
  5. 2024Y Social: an LLM-powered Social Media Digital Twincited by 43
  6. 2023Anatomy of an AI-powered malicious social botnetcited by 35
  7. 2023On the Detectability of ChatGPT Content: Benchmarking, Methodology, and Evaluation through the Lens of Academic Writingcited by 26
  8. 2025VLM as Policy: Common-Law Content Moderation Framework for Short Video Platformcited by 19
  9. 2022RoSGAS: Adaptive Social Bot Detection with Reinforced Self-Supervised GNN Architecture Searchcited by 17
  10. 2023LMBot: Distilling Graph Knowledge into Language Model for Graph-less Deployment in Twitter Bot Detectioncited by 17
  11. 2023MGTAB: A Multi-Relational Graph-Based Twitter Account Detection Benchmarkcited by 16
  12. 2024Characteristics and prevalence of fake social media profiles with AI-generated facescited by 14
38 more
  1. 2024Lies, Damned Lies, and Distributional Language Statistics: Persuasion and Deception with Large Language Modelscited by 14
  2. 2024Large language models can consistently generate high-quality content for election disinformation operationscited by 13
  3. 2024A Simulation System Towards Solving Societal-Scale Manipulationcited by 12
  4. 2023Social-LLM: Modeling User Behavior at Scale using Language Models and Social Network Datacited by 11
  5. 2024Online Detection of LLM-Generated Texts via Sequential Hypothesis Testing by Bettingcited by 11
  6. 2023Adversarial Socialbots Modeling Based on Structural Information Principlescited by 10
  7. 2026Agents in the Wild: Safety, Society, and the Illusion of Sociality on Moltbookcited by 10
  8. 2023Combating Bilateral Edge Noise for Robust Link Predictioncited by 9
  9. 2026The Moltbook Illusion: Separating Human Influence from Emergent Behavior in AI Agent Societiescited by 9
  10. 2022Exposing Influence Campaigns in the Age of LLMs: A Behavioral-Based AI Approach to Detecting State-Sponsored Trollscited by 8
  11. 2021On the Importance of Domain-specific Explanations in AI-based Cybersecurity Systems (Technical Report)cited by 7
  12. 2023Over-Sampling Strategy in Feature Space for Graphs based Class-imbalanced Bot Detectioncited by 7
  13. 2023Demystifying Misconceptions in Social Bots Researchcited by 7
  14. 2021Studying Fake News Spreading, Polarisation Dynamics, and Manipulation by Bots: a Tale of Networks and Languagecited by 6
  15. 2022Detecting Political Biases of Named Entities and Hashtags on Twittercited by 6
  16. 2025Emergent Coordinated Behaviors in Networked LLM Agents: Modeling the Strategic Dynamics of Information Operationscited by 6
  17. 2021Cognitive network science for understanding online social cognitions: A brief reviewcited by 5
  18. 2022Rewiring What-to-Watch-Next Recommendations to Reduce Radicalization Pathwayscited by 5
  19. 2023Robust language-based mental health assessments in time and space through social mediacited by 5
  20. 2023RF-GNN: Random Forest Boosted Graph Neural Network for Social Bot Detectioncited by 5
  21. 2023Robust Graph Clustering via Meta Weighting for Noisy Graphscited by 5
  22. 2024I Am Not Them: Fluid Identities and Persistent Out-group Bias in Large Language Modelscited by 5
  23. 2024Engagement-Driven Content Generation with Large Language Modelscited by 5
  24. 2026Overstating Attitudes, Ignoring Networks: LLM Biases in Simulating Misinformation Susceptibilitycited by 5
  25. 2024A Systematic Review of Machine Learning Approaches for Detecting Deceptive Activities on Social Media: Methods, Challenges, and Biasescited by 4
  26. 2026Reactive Writers: How Co-Writing with AI Changes How We Engage with Ideascited by 4
  27. 2021Crossing the Tepper Line: An Emerging Ontology for Describing the Dynamic Sociality of Embodied AIcited by 3
  28. 2021WhatTheWikiFact: Fact-Checking Claims Against Wikipediacited by 3
  29. 2021Sketch-based Creativity Support Tools using Deep Learningcited by 3
  30. 2021Identification of Twitter Bots Based on an Explainable Machine Learning Framework: The US 2020 Elections Case Studycited by 3
  31. 2023Wearing Masks Implies Refuting Trump?: Towards Target-specific User Stance Prediction across Events in COVID-19 and US Election 2020cited by 3
  32. 2023False Information, Bots and Malicious Campaigns: Demystifying Elements of Social Media Manipulationscited by 3
  33. 2025Social Identity in Human-Agent Interaction: A Primercited by 3
  34. 2026LLMs can persuade only psychologically susceptible humans on societal issues, via trust in AI and emotional appeals, amid logical fallaciescited by 3
  35. 2020Network Inference from a Mixture of Diffusion Models for Fake News Mitigationcited by 2
  36. 2021A multi-modal approach towards mining social media data during natural disasters -- a case study of Hurricane Irmacited by 2
  37. 2021Like Article, Like Audience: Enforcing Multimodal Correlations for Disinformation Detectioncited by 2
  38. 2023From Online Behaviours to Images: A Novel Approach to Social Bot Detectioncited by 2

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