The coming age of adversarial social bot detection

Stefano Cresci, Marinella Petrocchi, Angelo Spognardi, Stefano Tognazzi

Abstract: Social bots are automated accounts often involved in unethical or illegal activities. Academia has shown how these accounts evolve over time, becoming increasingly smart at hiding their true nature by disguising themselves as genuine accounts. If they evade, bots hunters adapt their solutions to find them: the cat and mouse game. Inspired by adversarial machine learning and computer security, we propose an adversarial and proactive approach to social bot detection, and we call scholars to arms, to shed light on this open and intriguing field of study.