Farrés, P. R., Masali, A., & Cerquides, J. (2025). Real time detection of coordinated bots on Bluesky. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications, 57–68. https://doi.org/10.3233/faia250576
Summary
This paper tackles the detection of coordinated bot activity on Bluesky, a comparatively young decentralized social media platform. The authors argue that misinformation gains perceived credibility largely through virality, and that virality is frequently manufactured by coordinated bot networks rather than emerging organically. Against this backdrop, they propose an approach to identify coordinated bot behavior in real time, positioning early detection as a necessary defense for information integrity on emerging platforms. The work extends the established literature on social bots and coordinated inauthentic behavior — largely developed around X, Instagram, and TikTok — to the understudied Bluesky context.
Key Contributions
- Addresses coordinated bot detection on Bluesky, a relatively new and understudied platform.
- Frames the detection task around coordination in real time, rather than retrospective analysis or per-account classification.
- Introduces a conceptual distinction between benign organic coordination and malicious coordinated bot activity as the basis for detection.
Methods
- Uses Bluesky as the case study platform, taking advantage of its openness for observing activity as it unfolds.
- Develops a real-time detection approach for coordinated bot networks. The specific algorithmic details are not available from the abstract.
Findings
- Specific empirical results are not reported in the available abstract; the contribution is primarily framing and methodological direction.
- Conceptually, the authors assert that viralization is often driven by coordinated activity, and that real-time detection of such coordination on Bluesky is both feasible and necessary.
Connections
This work sits at the intersection of coordinated inauthentic behavior and information disorder, sharing the coordination-detection focus of methodological contributions like Kansaon2025-id and the coordinated-network line advanced in Giglietto2020-9d8acdd7 and Giglietto2022-0e951ac5. Its platform-specific attention to Bluesky connects it to other studies of emerging and decentralized platforms and bot-driven amplification such as Pierri2025-hm and DeVerna2025-dl.
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