Nowadays, social networks become ubiquitous platforms for sharing and diffusing information around the world. However, spreading rumors as unverified and opaque information in social networks causes harmful damages to societies. An approach for combating rumors in social networks is to use soft control mechanisms i.e. enhancing the people’s knowledge and awareness against the rumor to persuade them avoiding rumor dissemination. In this paper, we propose a soft rumor control model in which people refer to their trusted friends or ask the reputable authorities about the rumor to avoid rumor spreading. The model includes a method for selecting consultants who are both expert in rumor context and responsive to queries about rumors by the user. The battlespace between rumor and anti-rumor spreaders is then modeled as an evolutionary game to analyze the controls’ effectiveness. To evaluate the proposed model, we use Pheme dataset of tweets and conduct simulation analysis. It is shown that trusted consultants suggested by the model with high precision are the same users who send anti-rumor messages in real world. Furthermore, we analyze and compare soft rumor control methods on societies with different assumed cyber literacy and habits. Moreover, it is interestingly shown that using soft rumor control mechanisms in some situations outperforms traditional hard controls (e.g. censorship). Note that as we have used tangible factors in formulating the proposed model, it can help social network developers to build feasible soft rumor control facilities in their own products.

如今，社交网络已成为在世界各地共享和传播信息的无处不在的平台。但是，在社交网络中散布谣言为未经验证和不透明的信息会对社会造成有害损害。打击社交网络中的谣言的一种方法是使用软控制机制，即增强人们对谣言的知识和意识，以说服他们避免谣言的传播。在本文中，我们提出了一种软的谣言控制模型，在该模型中，人们可以参考自己信任的朋友或向声誉良好的权威咨询有关谣言的内容，以防止谣言传播。该模型包括一种选择顾问的方法，该顾问既是谣言方面的专家，又响应用户对谣言的查询。然后，将谣言传播者与反谣言传播者之间的战斗空间建模为一个演化游戏，以分析控件的有效性。为了评估提出的模型，我们使用推文的Pheme数据集并进行仿真分析。结果表明，该模型所建议的可信顾问具有很高的真实感，是在真实世界中发送反谣言信息的用户。此外，我们分析和比较了具有不同假定网络素养和习惯的社会的软谣言控制方法。此外，有趣的是，在某些情况下使用软谣言控制机制要胜过传统的硬控制（例如审查制度）。请注意，由于我们在制定建议的模型时使用了有形的因素，因此可以帮助社交网络开发人员在自己的产品中建立可行的软谣言控制功能。