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Using Random String Classification to Filter and Annotate Automated Accounts

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Social, Cultural, and Behavioral Modeling (SBP-BRiMS 2018)

Abstract

Automated social media bots have existed almost as long as the social media platforms they inhabit. Their emergence has triggered numerous research efforts to develop increasingly sophisticated means to detect these accounts. These efforts have resulted in a cat and mouse cycle in which detection algorithms evolve trying to keep up with ever evolving bots. As part of this continued evolution, our research proposes using random string detection applied to user names to filter twitter streams for potential bot accounts and thereby generating annotated data.

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Acknowledgment

This work was supported in part by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative Award N000140811186 and Award N000141812108, the Army Research Laboratory Award W911NF1610049, Defense Threat Reductions Agency Award HDTRA11010102, and the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organization Systems (CASOS). The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the ONR, ARL, DTRA, or the U.S. government.

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Correspondence to David M. Beskow .

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Beskow, D.M., Carley, K.M. (2018). Using Random String Classification to Filter and Annotate Automated Accounts. In: Thomson, R., Dancy, C., Hyder, A., Bisgin, H. (eds) Social, Cultural, and Behavioral Modeling. SBP-BRiMS 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10899. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93372-6_40

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93372-6_40

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