Reconciling Multiple Social Networks Effectively and Efficiently: An Embedding Approach

Recently, reconciling social networks, identifying the accounts belonging to the same individual across social networks, receives significant attention from both academic and industry. Most of the existing studies have limitations in the following three aspects: multiplicity, comprehensiveness and robustness. To address these limitations, we rethink this problem and, for the first time, robustly and comprehensively reconcile multiple social networks. In this paper, we propose two frameworks, MASTER and MASTER+, i.e., across Multiple social networks, integrate Attribute and STructure Embedding for Reconciliation. In MASTER, we first design a novel Constrained Dual Embedding model, simultaneously embedding and reconciling multiple social networks, to formulate this problem into a unified optimization. To address this optimization, we then design an effective NS-Alternating algorithm and prove it converges to KKT points. To further speed up MASTER, we propose a scalable framework, namely MASTER+. The core idea is to group accounts into clusters and then perform MASTER in each cluster in parallel. Specifically, we design an efficient Augmented PreEmbedding model and Balance-aware Fuzzy Clustering algorithm for the high efficiency and the high accuracy. Extensive experiments demonstrate that both MASTER and MASTER+ outperform the state-of-the-art approaches. Moreover, MASTER+ inherits the effectiveness of MASTER and enjoys higher efficiency.

Automated summary

Recently, there has been significant attention on reconciling social networks and identifying accounts belonging to the same individual across different platforms. Existing studies have limitations in terms of multiplicity, comprehensiveness, and robustness. To address these limitations, the paper proposes two frameworks, MASTER and MASTER+, that robustly and comprehensively reconcile multiple social networks, outperforming existing approaches. MASTER+ further enhances efficiency by grouping accounts into clusters and performing reconciliation in parallel.