Exploring the construction and infiltration strategies of social bots in sina microblog

Nowadays, millions of people use Online Social Networks (OSNs) like Twitter, Facebook and Sina Microblog to express opinions on current events. The widespread use of these OSNs has also led to the emergence of social bots, some of which can become influential users. This paper studies the automated construction technology and infiltration strategies of social bots in Sina Microblog, aiming to build friendly and influential social bots to resist malicious interpretations. We first examine critical technology for Sina Microblog data collection, revealing vulnerabilities in its defense mechanism. We then construct 96 social bots and investigate the influence of different infiltration strategies, including attribute settings and interaction types. Over a 42-day infiltration period, our social bots gained 5,546 followers with a 100% survival rate. Results show that the proposed strategies are effective and can evade Sina Microblog’s defense mechanisms. This study alerts to weaknesses in Sina Microblog defenses and provides a reference for social bot detection.

Wenxian Wang, Xingshu Chen, Shuyu Jiang, Haizhou Wang, Mingyong Yin, Peiming Wang