Detecting bots with temporal logic.

Social bots are computer programs that act like human users on social media platforms. Social bot detection is a rapidly growing field dominated by machine learning approaches. In this paper, we propose a complementary method to machine learning by exploring bot detection as a model checking problem...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Synthese Vol. 202; no. 3; pp. 1 - 40
Autores principales: Pedersen, Mina Young, Slavkovik, Marija, Smets, Sonja
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Springer Nature Sep2023
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:Social bots are computer programs that act like human users on social media platforms. Social bot detection is a rapidly growing field dominated by machine learning approaches. In this paper, we propose a complementary method to machine learning by exploring bot detection as a model checking problem. We introduce Temporal Network Logic (TNL) which we use to specify social networks where agents can post and follow each other. Using this logic, we formalize different types of social bot behavior with formulas that are satisfied in a model of a network with bots. We also consider an extension of the logic where we explore the expressive power of including elements from hybrid logic in our framework. We give model checking algorithms for TNL and its hybrid extension, and show that the complexity of the former is in p and the latter in pspace.