FROG: Fair Removal on Graph

With growing emphasis on privacy regulations, machine unlearning has become increasingly critical in real-world applications such as social networks and recommender systems, many of which are naturally represented as graphs. However, existing graph unlearning methods often modify nodes or edges indiscriminately, overlooking their impact on fairness. For instance, forgetting links between users of different genders may inadvertently exacerbate group disparities. To address this issue, we propose a novel framework that jointly optimizes both the graph structure and the model to achieve fair unlearning. Our method rewires the graph by removing redundant edges that hinder forgetting while preserving fairness through targeted edge augmentation. We further introduce a worst-case evaluation mechanism to assess robustness under challenging scenarios. Experiments on real-world datasets show that our approach achieves more effective and fair unlearning than existing baselines.

Authors

Institutions

Publication Details

Published
2025-11-08
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1145/3746252.3761341
Primary Topic
Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00
Controls
|||
ALL TIME
JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEP
OCT
article

FROG: Fair Removal on Graph

Gabriele Tolomei, Lu Lin, Jiali Cheng, Kaushiki Nag et al.
Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
article

FROG: Fair Removal on Graph

Gabriele Tolomei, Lu Lin, Jiali Cheng, Kaushiki Nag, Xiangguo Sun, Sijia Liu, Ziheng Chen, Hadi Amiri
article en

Abstract

With growing emphasis on privacy regulations, machine unlearning has become increasingly critical in real-world applications such as social networks and recommender systems, many of which are naturally represented as graphs. However, existing graph unlearning methods often modify nodes or edges indiscriminately, overlooking their impact on fairness. For instance, forgetting links between users of different genders may inadvertently exacerbate group disparities. To address this issue, we propose a novel framework that jointly optimizes both the graph structure and the model to achieve fair unlearning. Our method rewires the graph by removing redundant edges that hinder forgetting while preserving fairness through targeted edge augmentation. We further introduce a worst-case evaluation mechanism to assess robustness under challenging scenarios. Experiments on real-world datasets show that our approach achieves more effective and fair unlearning than existing baselines.

Pennsylvania State University (US), Walmart (United States) (US), University of Massachusetts Lowell (US), Chinese University of Hong Kong (HK), Sapienza University of Rome (IT), Michigan State University (US)
Openalex Percentile: Top 67%
Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
AI Navigator

Ask Laika to Summarize, Analyze, and Connect papers live on the map.

Summarize Papers & Methodologies

Extract key findings, datasets, and comparative methods across publications.

Benchmark Rankings & Visual Analytics

Rank top research institutions, authors, funders, topics, and journals by Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) and paper volume with instant charts.

Connect Distant Disciplines

Bridge topological clusters on the map to find hidden collaborative intersections.

FROG: Fair Removal on Graph — Gabriele Tolomei, Lu Lin, et al. · (2025) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS