The volume of graph-structured data has been explosively growing due to the advancement in interconnected systems.

Recent advancements in graph diffusion models (GDMs) have enabled the synthesis of realistic network structures, yet ensuring fairness in the generated data remains a critical challenge. Existing solutions attempt to mitigate bias by re-training the GDMs with ad-hoc fairness constraints. Conversely, with this work, we propose FAROS, a novel FAir graph geneRatiOn framework leveraging attribute Switching mechanisms and directly running in the generation process of the pre-trained GDM. Technically, our approach works by altering nodes' sensitive attributes during the generation. To this end, FAROS calculates the optimal fraction of switching nodes, and selects the diffusion step to perform the switch by setting tailored multi-criteria constraints to preserve the node-topology profile from the original distribution (a proxy for accuracy) while ensuring the edge independence on the sensitive attributes for the generated graph (a proxy for fairness). Our experiments on benchmark datasets for link prediction demonstrate that the proposed approach effectively reduces fairness discrepancies while maintaining comparable (or even higher) accuracy performance to other similar baselines. Noteworthy, FAROS is also able to strike a better accuracy-fairness trade-off than other competitors in some of the tested settings under the Pareto optimality concept, demonstrating the effectiveness of the imposed multi-criteria constraints.

Machine learning over graphs has recently attracted growing attention due to its ability to analyze and learn complex relations within critical interconnected systems. However, the disparate impact that is amplified by the use of biased graph structures in these algorithms has raised significant concerns for their deployment in real-world decision systems. In addition, while synthetic graph generation has become pivotal for privacy and scalability considerations, the impact of generative learning algorithms on structural bias has not yet been investigated. Motivated by this, this work focuses on the analysis and mitigation of structural bias for both real and synthetic graphs. Specifically, we first theoretically analyze the sources of structural bias that result in disparity for the predictions of dyadic relations.

Machine learning over graphs has recently attracted growing attention due to its ability to analyze and learn complex relations within critical interconnected systems. However, the disparate impact that is amplified by the use of biased graph structures in these algorithms has raised significant concerns for the deployment of them in real-world decision systems. In addition, while synthetic graph generation has become pivotal for privacy and scalability considerations, the impact of generative learning algorithms on the structural bias has not yet been investigated. Motivated by this, this work focuses on the analysis and mitigation of structural bias for both real and synthetic graphs. Specifically, we first theoretically analyze the sources of structural bias that result in disparity for the predictions of dyadic relations. To alleviate the identified bias factors, we design a novel fairness regularizer that offers a versatile use. Faced with the bias amplification in graph generation models that is brought to light in this work, we further propose a fair graph generation framework, FairWire, by leveraging our fair regularizer design in a generative model. Experimental results on real-world networks validate that the proposed tools herein deliver effective structural bias mitigation for both real and synthetic graphs.