{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/fact-or-fiction-can-truthful-mechanisms","title":"FACT or Fiction: Can Truthful Mechanisms Eliminate Federated Free Riding?","arxiv_id":"2405.13879","date":"2024-05-22","proceeding":null,"authors":["Marco Bornstein","Amrit Singh Bedi","Abdirisak Mohamed","Furong Huang"],"abstract":"Standard federated learning (FL) approaches are vulnerable to the free-rider dilemma: participating agents can contribute little to nothing yet receive a well-trained aggregated model. While prior mechanisms attempt to solve the free-rider dilemma, none have addressed the issue of truthfulness. In practice, adversarial agents can provide false information to the server in order to cheat its way out of contributing to federated training. In an effort to make free-riding-averse federated mechanisms truthful, and consequently less prone to breaking down in practice, we propose FACT. FACT is the first federated mechanism that: (1) eliminates federated free riding by using a penalty system, (2) ensures agents provide truthful information by creating a competitive environment, and (3) encourages agent participation by offering better performance than training alone. Empirically, FACT avoids free-riding when agents are untruthful, and reduces agent loss by over 4x.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.13879v3","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.13879v3.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"fact-or-fiction-can-truthful-mechanisms","repo_url":"https://github.com/marcobornstein/fact","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":0,"framework":"pytorch","reach":null}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"federated-learning","task_name":"Federated Learning"}],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":"https://syntology.ai/paper/2405.13879","atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2405.13879","mcp":{"get_harvested_code_for_paper":{"arxiv_id":"2405.13879"}},"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers","read_at":"2026-09-25T09:33:49+00:00","read_at_is":"when the build read Syntology's graph, not when any sample ran","claim":"Per-sample execution status on synthesized fixtures; not a correctness claim about the paper. Samples come from repositories linked to the paper, official or community; repo_kind says which.","repos":[{"provenance":"external:paperswithcode_snapshot_2025-07-28","url":"https://github.com/marcobornstein/fact","reach":null}],"summary":{"ran_fixture":1,"ran_draft_wrong":1},"by_repo_kind":{"official":{"samples":2,"ran":2,"repositories":1}},"repo_kind_vocabulary":{"official":"The archive marks this repository official for the paper","named_in_paper":"The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official","listed":"In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper","found_in_text":"Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted","community":"Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested"},"n_pointer_only_for_licence":0,"samples":[{"code_sha256_prefix":"061bbdbbceb412ed","entry":"sandwich_game","repo":"marcobornstein/fact","repo_kind":"official","path":"utils/truthfulness.py","file_url":"https://github.com/marcobornstein/fact/blob/HEAD/utils/truthfulness.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran_fixture","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"RAISES","metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"061bbdbbceb412ed"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"26510348bcba4b34","entry":"truthfulness_mechanism","repo":"marcobornstein/fact","repo_kind":"official","path":"utils/truthfulness.py","file_url":"https://github.com/marcobornstein/fact/blob/HEAD/utils/truthfulness.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran_draft_wrong","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"OUTPUT_MISDECLARED","metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"26510348bcba4b34"}}]},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}