Detecting Inactive Cyberwarriors from Online Forums
Ruei-Yuan Wang Hung-Hsuan Chen
The proliferation of misinformation has emerged as a new form of warfare in
the information age. This type of warfare involves cyberwarriors, who
deliberately propagate messages aimed at defaming opponents or fostering unity
among allies. In this study, we investigate the level of activity exhibited by
cyberwarriors within a large online forum, and remarkably, we discover that
only a minute fraction of cyberwarriors are active users. Surprisingly, despite
their expected role of actively disseminating misinformation, cyberwarriors
remain predominantly silent during peacetime and only spring into action when
necessary. Moreover, we analyze the challenges associated with identifying
cyberwarriors and provide evidence that detecting inactive cyberwarriors is
considerably more challenging than identifying their active counterparts.
Finally, we discuss potential methodologies to more effectively identify
cyberwarriors during their inactive phases, offering insights into better
capturing their presence and actions. The experimental code is released for
reproducibility:
\url{https://github.com/Ryaninthegame/Detect-Inactive-Spammers-on-PTT}.