Account Deletion Prediction on RuNet: A Case Study of Suspicious Twitter Accounts Active During the Russian-Ukrainian Crisis

摘要

Social networks are dynamically changing over time e.g., some accounts are being created and some are being deleted or become private. This ephemerality at both an account level and content level results from a combination of privacy concerns, spam, and deceptive behaviors. In this study we analyze a large dataset of 180,340 accounts active during the Russian-Ukrainian crisis to discover a series of predictive features for the removal or shutdown of a suspicious account. We find that unlike previously reported profile and network features, lexical features form the basis for highly accurate prediction of the deletion of an account.