Neural Influence Estimator: Towards Real-time Solutions to Influence Blocking Maximization

TL;DR

This paper introduces a neural influence estimator (NIE) that enables real-time influence blocking maximization solutions on large social networks by replacing costly simulations with a fast, learned surrogate model.

Contribution

The paper proposes a novel neural influence estimator that significantly accelerates influence blocking maximization, enabling solutions on much larger networks than previously possible.

Findings

NIE-based method is up to 10,000 times faster than Monte Carlo simulations.

Can solve influence blocking problems on networks with hundreds of thousands of nodes within one minute.

Achieves comparable optimization quality to traditional methods.

Abstract

Real-time solutions to the influence blocking maximization (IBM) problems are crucial for promptly containing the spread of misinformation. However, achieving this goal is non-trivial, mainly because assessing the blocked influence of an IBM problem solution typically requires plenty of expensive Monte Carlo simulations (MCSs). This work presents a novel approach that enables solving IBM problems with hundreds of thousands of nodes and edges in seconds. The key idea is to construct a fast-to-evaluate surrogate model called neural influence estimator (NIE) offline as a substitute for the time-intensive MCSs, and then combine it with optimization algorithms to address IBM problems online. To this end, a learning problem is formulated to build the NIE that takes the false-and-true information instance as input, extracts features describing the topology and inter-relationship between two seed sets, and predicts the blocked influence. A well-trained NIE can generalize across different IBM problems given a social network, and can be readily combined with existing IBM optimization algorithms. The experiments on 25 IBM problems with up to millions of edges show that the NIE-based optimization method can be up to four orders of magnitude faster than MCSs-based optimization method to achieve the same optimization quality. Moreover, given a one-minute limit, the NIE-based method can solve IBM problems with up to hundreds of thousands of nodes, which is at least one order of magnitude larger than what can be solved by existing methods.