Nov 23, 2025

Comparative LLM methods for Social Media Bot Detection

Matthew Pagett, Andreas Raaskov

This project examines the potential of LLMs to detect social media

bots in (near) real-time, and the potential of using less-advanced LLMs to detect more advanced LLMs. It contributes to the cognitive defense toolset for protecting information ecosystems.

Reviewer's Comments

Reviewer's Comments

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Report is well written and the research question has clear value. The lack of a strong ground-truth dataset is the biggest concern. It is hard to evaluate whether this approach will work against the actual threat without real examples of advanced LLM-generated bot accounts. It may be worth a separate project focused on proactively building that dataset. In addition, the inconsistent classifications depending on prompt phrasing make the current prototype unreliable.

Things for the team to consider:

(1) A robust dataset is essential. What are the practical paths to collecting or constructing a vetted set of LLM-generated accounts for evaluation?

(3) It may help to define the risk spectrum. Some bots are annoying while others are genuinely dangerous / harmful. A medium-accuracy classifier becomes more compelling if it focuses on accounts that are both likely AI-generated and capable of causing harm.

(3) Developers will increasingly design bots to evade text-based filters. Are there non-content signals (behavioral patterns, metadata, network structure) that could improve detection reliability over time?

Cite this work

@misc {

title={

(HckPrj) Comparative LLM methods for Social Media Bot Detection

},

author={

Matthew Pagett, Andreas Raaskov

},

date={

11/23/25

},

organization={Apart Research},

note={Research submission to the research sprint hosted by Apart.},

howpublished={https://apartresearch.com}

}

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This work was done during one weekend by research workshop participants and does not represent the work of Apart Research.
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