信息操作利用API操纵社交媒体

中文摘要 AI 辅助

关于信息操作的研究主要集中于此类活动中涉及的协调账户及其推广的内容。恶意行为者通过程序化接口（API）管理不真实账户的活动，但这一底层基础设施在促成和揭露此类协调行为中的作用在很大程度上仍未得到探索。本研究调查了Twitter（现为X）的API如何被用于在该平台上协调影响力操作。由于API访问通过开发者应用程序进行管理，我们从2018年至2021年间被下线的43项操作中提取了应用程序元数据，并应用三种互补的计算方法来研究多种形式的操纵。我们的分析揭示了几个反复出现的模式：跨活动重复使用的API即服务基础设施、未经用户同意进行未经授权参与的作弊应用程序、伪装应用程序名称以隐藏活动来源，以及表明集中控制的同步应用程序网络。将应用程序使用情况作为协调指标，为检测提供了适度但一致的改进。这些发现表明，社交媒体API在促成在线操纵方面发挥着重要作用，而Twitter/X移除应用程序级元数据，已消除了平台透明度和审核的一个重要工具。

英文摘要

Research on information operations has focused primarily on the coordinated accounts involved in such campaigns and in the content they promote. Bad actors manage the activity of inauthentic accounts through programmatic interfaces (APIs), but the role of this underlying infrastructure in enabling and uncovering such coordinated behaviors remains largely unexplored. This study investigates how the Twitter (now X) API was used to coordinate influence operations on the platform. Since API access is managed through developer apps, we extract app metadata from 43 operations taken down between 2018 and 2021 and apply three complementary computational approaches to study diverse forms of manipulation. Our analysis reveals several recurring patterns: API-as-a-service infrastructure reused across campaigns, gaming apps performing unauthorized engagement without user consent, spoofed app names to hide activity origins, and synchronized app networks indicating centralized control. Adding app usage as a coordination indicator provides a modest but consistent improvement in detection. These findings suggest that social media APIs play an important role in enabling online manipulation, and that the removal of app-level metadata by Twitter/X has eliminated an important tool for platform transparency and moderation.

发表机构

• Indiana University（印第安纳大学）

机构由 AI 辅助整理，请以论文原文为准。