Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior — Bot-Amplified Misinformation Spread

Outbreak Controls

Bot accounts 10%

Bot coordination (sync jitter) 80 ms

Organic share probability 35%

Threat Signal

⚠ Coordinated inauthentic behavior detected

Network reach

Elapsed time

0.0s

Organic shares

Bot shares

Bot timing synchrony (σ)

N/A

How it works

Each account is a node in a small-world social graph (dense within topic clusters, sparse between them). A false claim starts at one seed node and follows an SEIZ-style diffusion: Susceptible → Exposed → Sharer / Skeptic. An exposed organic account shares with probability p after a randomised delay, and only then can expose its own neighbours:

P(share | exposed) = p            (organic slider)
delay ~ Exponential(rate ∝ p)     (organic accounts, seconds)
delay = base + jitter·(rand-0.5)  (bot accounts, milliseconds)

Bot accounts behave differently on purpose: they always share (never skeptical), reach a wide pre-built follower list instead of only local neighbours, and react on a near-fixed timer. The tighter that timer (low jitter), the more their share timestamps cluster — exactly the signature threat-intel teams use to flag coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB): real platform takedowns (Meta, X/Twitter Trust & Safety, Stanford Internet Observatory reports) repeatedly cite abnormally low variance in post timing across accounts as a detection feature, because independent humans never react in near-lockstep.

The synchrony score σ is the standard deviation of bot share timestamps once at least 5 bots have shared. A small σ combined with a meaningful bot share count trips the "coordinated inauthentic behavior detected" flag — the same statistical idea (burstiness / timing variance far below organic baseline) behind real bot-network detectors, simplified here into one readable number.

Bot accounts — fraction of the network that are automated amplifiers (magenta nodes).
Bot coordination — jitter around the bots' shared reaction timer; 0 ms = a perfectly synchronized botnet burst, high ms = bots that look more like independent (organic) actors.
Organic share probability — how persuasive/shareable the claim is to genuine users.

Susceptible Exposed Sharing (organic) Sharing (bot) Skeptic / stopped

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