Toward Scalable Graph Unlearning: A Node Influence Maximization based Approach

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Li, Xunkai, Fan, Bowen, Wu, Zhengyu, Li, Zhiyu, Li, Rong-Hua, Wang, Guoren
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Li, Xunkai
Fan, Bowen
Wu, Zhengyu
Li, Zhiyu
Li, Rong-Hua
Wang, Guoren
author_facet Li, Xunkai
Fan, Bowen
Wu, Zhengyu
Li, Zhiyu
Li, Rong-Hua
Wang, Guoren
contents Machine unlearning, as a pivotal technology for enhancing model robustness and data privacy, has garnered significant attention in prevalent web mining applications, especially in thriving graph-based scenarios. However, most existing graph unlearning (GU) approaches face significant challenges due to the intricate interactions among web-scale graph elements during the model training: (1) The gradient-driven node entanglement hinders the complete knowledge removal in response to unlearning requests; (2) The billion-level graph elements in the web scenarios present inevitable scalability issues. To break the above limitations, we open up a new perspective by drawing a connection between GU and conventional social influence maximization. To this end, we propose Node Influence Maximization (NIM) through the decoupled influence propagation model and fine-grained influence function in a scalable manner, which is crafted to be a plug-and-play strategy to identify potential nodes affected by unlearning entities. This approach enables offline execution independent of GU, allowing it to be seamlessly integrated into most GU methods to improve their unlearning performance. Based on this, we introduce Scalable Graph Unlearning (SGU) as a new fine-tuned framework, which balances the forgetting and reasoning capability of the unlearned model by entity-specific optimizations. Extensive experiments on 14 datasets, including large-scale ogbn-papers100M, have demonstrated the effectiveness of our approach. Specifically, NIM enhances the forgetting capability of most GU methods, while SGU achieves comprehensive SOTA performance and maintains scalability.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_11823
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Toward Scalable Graph Unlearning: A Node Influence Maximization based Approach
Li, Xunkai
Fan, Bowen
Wu, Zhengyu
Li, Zhiyu
Li, Rong-Hua
Wang, Guoren
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Databases
Social and Information Networks
Machine unlearning, as a pivotal technology for enhancing model robustness and data privacy, has garnered significant attention in prevalent web mining applications, especially in thriving graph-based scenarios. However, most existing graph unlearning (GU) approaches face significant challenges due to the intricate interactions among web-scale graph elements during the model training: (1) The gradient-driven node entanglement hinders the complete knowledge removal in response to unlearning requests; (2) The billion-level graph elements in the web scenarios present inevitable scalability issues. To break the above limitations, we open up a new perspective by drawing a connection between GU and conventional social influence maximization. To this end, we propose Node Influence Maximization (NIM) through the decoupled influence propagation model and fine-grained influence function in a scalable manner, which is crafted to be a plug-and-play strategy to identify potential nodes affected by unlearning entities. This approach enables offline execution independent of GU, allowing it to be seamlessly integrated into most GU methods to improve their unlearning performance. Based on this, we introduce Scalable Graph Unlearning (SGU) as a new fine-tuned framework, which balances the forgetting and reasoning capability of the unlearned model by entity-specific optimizations. Extensive experiments on 14 datasets, including large-scale ogbn-papers100M, have demonstrated the effectiveness of our approach. Specifically, NIM enhances the forgetting capability of most GU methods, while SGU achieves comprehensive SOTA performance and maintains scalability.
title Toward Scalable Graph Unlearning: A Node Influence Maximization based Approach
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Databases
Social and Information Networks
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.11823