A review on social bot detection techniques and research directions

Abstract

The rise of web services and popularity of online social networks (OSN) like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. have led to the rise of unwelcome social bots as automated social actors. Those actors can play many malicious roles including infiltrators of human conversations, scammers, impersonators, misinformation disseminators, stock market manipulators, astroturfers, and any content polluter (spammers, malware spreaders) and so on. It is undeniable that social bots have major importance on social networks. Therefore, this paper reveals the potential hazards of malicious social bots, reviews the detection techniques within a methodological categorization and proposes avenues for future research.