BotOrNot: A System to Evaluate Social Bots

TL;DR

BotOrNot is a publicly available system that uses over a thousand features to assess whether Twitter accounts exhibit characteristics of social bots, aiding in the detection of automated accounts involved in manipulation and misinformation.

Contribution

This paper introduces BotOrNot, a comprehensive system leveraging extensive features to evaluate social bot likelihood on Twitter, with high scalability and public accessibility.

Findings

Over one million requests served since 2014

Utilizes more than one thousand features for detection

Effective in identifying social bots and their behaviors

Abstract

While most online social media accounts are controlled by humans, these platforms also host automated agents called social bots or sybil accounts. Recent literature reported on cases of social bots imitating humans to manipulate discussions, alter the popularity of users, pollute content and spread misinformation, and even perform terrorist propaganda and recruitment actions. Here we present BotOrNot, a publicly-available service that leverages more than one thousand features to evaluate the extent to which a Twitter account exhibits similarity to the known characteristics of social bots. Since its release in May 2014, BotOrNot has served over one million requests via our website and APIs.