Second life: a social network of humans and bots

Second Life (SL) is a virtual world where people interact and socialize through virtual avatars. Avatars behave similarly to their human counterparts in real life and naturally define a social network. However, not only human-controlled avatars participate in the social network. Automated avatars called bots are common, difficult to identify and, when malicious, can severely detract from the user experience of SL. In this paper we study the SL social network and the role of bots within it. Using traces of avatars in a popular SL region, we analyze the social graph formed by avatar interactions. We find that it resembles natural networks more than other online social networks, and that bots have a fundamental impact on the SL social network. Finally, we propose a bot detection strategy based on the importance of the social connections of avatars in the social graph.