Author: Frederic Iong Kuen Pun

Posted on

Avoid Groupthink For Better Decision Making

A crowd of people

Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon where a group of people share the same idea/goal/decision, even if it’s irrational or prone to fallacy. This phenomenon may seem like it can only happen in textbooks, clearly with sufficient reasoning by qualified individuals a group would be pursuaded. However, this is something which happens, and an example of such case is the rocket launching of the Challenger in 1986

January 28, 1986, the space shuttle launch day for the Challenger. It was a freezing morning, which would of just been any other day – today was the exception. Engineers of the solid rocket boosters for the Challenger warned NASA flight managers that the O-rings for the boosters aren’t designed for such cold temperatures. However, despite the warning of qualified individuals with solid reasoning, NASA personnels fell victim to groupthink. As a result, they launched as scheduled which resulting in the explosion of the Challenger 73 seconds after liftoff. This is one of many other events.

The graphical representation of groupthink from he wisdom and/or madness of crowds

So now that we have an idea of groupthink, how do we represent this in a graph in a way that it behaves as mentioned above? The representation is actually very simple, as shown in the diagram from “the wisdom and/or madness of crowds“, a game which goes over different topics relationing to the graphical representation of crowds such as the small world and contagions theory.

The spread of information is similar to contagion, however rather than have infection based off of probability, we have it based on the information from neigbhors. As we can see in the model, it is very difficult to convince the group as a single node is only a fraction of the “influence” compared to everyone in the group itself. Taking a look at the model taken from the game, you can see that even if you managed to convince everyone in the group, you are unable to sway the concensus.

Even by convincing everyone (node in blue), it is unable to sway the group (nodes in grey)
References
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2018/09/18/avoid-groupthink-for-better-decision-making/#7847e24677da

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/groupthink.asp

https://ncase.me/crowds/
Posted on

Lateral Astroturfing Attacks on Twitter Trending Topics

Social media platforms

Social media has change the way we all interact with each other across the world. It can be many different types of media from text to image, and even touch. It can also cover many different ranges from across the world to you’re friend sitting next to you. This flexibility is one of the traits which gives social media this appeal as it creates a piece of the internet for everyone.

The internet was initially created without security in mind – internet was a better place, it was a simplier place. As the internet grew, malicious intent grew through virus and exploits which resulted in countermeasures such as encryption. Malicious intent can be “physical” like DOS attacks and leaking of passwords, but it can also be social like astroturfing attacks.

The acts of astroturfing vs real widespread movement represented by real grass and artifical turf

Astroturfing is “the attempt to create an impression of widespread grassroots support for a policy, individual, or product, where little such support exists”. In layman’s terms, we are creating a “movement” for something through the seeding from a mass of people. The attack is similar to DOS, where a set of hacked or created accounts are used to post about a certain topic. It is becoming a very widespread and effective means of advertisement, but manipulates the social media leading to skewed impressions and misrepresentations.

Relating this back to graph theory, using graphs to represent different characteristics we are able to visualize relationships between these astrobots. In the diagram below, the edges represent a keyword relationship between astrobots, which are nodes. From this picture, we can see different communities from the clusters with represent different types of account, such as suspended accounts, used to as a bot. By using a signed colored graph, where a positive sign is given to nodes of a similar type and negative otherwise, we are able to develop communities in relationship the keyword attacks.

Graph representing the relationship between astrobots via attacking the same keyword on the same day

Countering astrobots can be a very hairy situation, since depending on the type of bot, there can be side-effects from actions such as suspsension and/or banning. For example, these bots can be affected without the user’s acknowledgement, therefore suspension would led to anger or fustration from the original owner. By using graph theory, we are able to learn about the motives and characteristics of astrobots from different perspectives. Using this information, we are able to prevent this from happening and apply the most appropriate action without affecting actual users.

References

Elmas, Tuğrulcan, et al. “Lateral Astroturfing Attacks on Twitter Trending Topics.” ArXiv.org, 17 Oct. 2019,
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1910.07783.pdf.

Bienkov, Adam. “Astroturfing: What Is It and Why Does It Matter? | Adam Bienkov.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 8 Feb. 2012, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/08/what-is-astroturfing.