论文标题
通过在Twitter上遵循火车滥用来制造党派回声室
The Manufacture of Partisan Echo Chambers by Follow Train Abuse on Twitter
论文作者
论文摘要
越来越多的证据表明，社交媒体的关键脆弱性，例如党派回声室的出现和错误信息的病毒传播。我们表明，这些漏洞被与所谓的“关注火车”相关的虐待行为放大，其中提到了许多志同道合的帐户供其他人遵循。我们介绍了大型美国超级党派火车网络的首次系统分析。我们观察到人为影响的人为膨胀：通过遵循火车的利润从中位数增加了六倍的每日追随者增长，从而大量促进了帐户。这催化了高度聚集的回声室的形成，该腔室围绕着一个致密的活性帐户核心组织。火车帐户还从事违反平台政策的其他行为：我们发现通过不真实的自动化帐户和异常内容删除活动的活动证据，以及从低认真性和阴谋来源的有毒内容放大。一些火车帐户已经活跃了多年，这表明平台需要更加关注这种滥用。
A growing body of evidence points to critical vulnerabilities of social media, such as the emergence of partisan echo chambers and the viral spread of misinformation. We show that these vulnerabilities are amplified by abusive behaviors associated with so-called "follow trains" on Twitter, in which long lists of like-minded accounts are mentioned for others to follow. We present the first systematic analysis of a large U.S. hyper-partisan train network. We observe an artificial inflation of influence: accounts heavily promoted by follow trains profit from a median six-fold increase in daily follower growth. This catalyzes the formation of highly clustered echo chambers, hierarchically organized around a dense core of active accounts. Train accounts also engage in other behaviors that violate platform policies: we find evidence of activity by inauthentic automated accounts and abnormal content deletion, as well as amplification of toxic content from low-credibility and conspiratorial sources. Some train accounts have been active for years, suggesting that platforms need to pay greater attention to this kind of abuse.
