Two very important problems regarding spreading phenomena in complextopologies are the optimal selection of node sets either to minimize ormaximize the extent of outbreaks. Both problems are nontrivial when a smallfraction of the nodes in the network can be used to achieve the desired goal.The minimization problem is equivalent to a structural optimization. The"superblockers", i.e., the nodes that should be removed from the network tominimize the size of outbreaks, are those nodes that make connected componentsas small as possible. "Superspreaders" are instead the nodes such that, ifchosen as initiators, they maximize the average size of outbreaks. The identityof superspreaders is expected to depend not just on the topology, but also onthe specific dynamics considered. Recently, it has been conjectured that thetwo optimization problems might be equivalent, in the sense that superblockersact also as superspreaders. In spite of its potential groundbreakingimportance, no empirical study has been performed to validate this conjecture.In this paper, we perform an extensive analysis over a large set of real-worldnetworks to test the similarity between sets of superblockers and ofsuperspreaders. We show that the two optimization problems are not equivalent:superblockers do not act as optimal spreaders.
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