The DARPA Twitter Bot Challenge
V. S. Subrahmanian, Amos Azaria, Skylar Durst, Vadim Kagan, Aram Galstyan, Kristina Lerman, Linhong Zhu, Emilio Ferrara, Alessandro Flammini, Filippo Menczer · Computer · 2016
From politicians and nation states to terrorist groups, numerous organizations reportedly conduct explicit campaigns to influence opinions on social media, posing a risk to freedom of expression. Thus, there is a need to identify and eliminate "influence bots" - realistic, automated identities that illicitly shape discussions on sites like Twitter and Facebook - before they get too influential.