Ukraine Struck Yandex Data Centers, Russian Bots Went Silent—Now Questions Are Mounting

[u/ArgentineBeauty]

https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/ukraine-struck-yandex-data-centers-russian-bots-went-silent-now-questions-are-mounting-23339

[u/skinmiach]

It amazes me how indifferent people are to bots in the comments, given how much comments matter. Seriously, I’ve been talking about this problem for so long, but all I hear is “just ignore it, dudes are just sharing their opinions.” They are not DUDES. If the Western world has lost its grip so badly that it can’t recognize a threat and stand up to it... then it deserves the position history is putting it in

[u/Fenxis → u/skinmiach]

Not taking Russian bots seriously is probably the number one failure of "Western" governments.

10+ years ago I remember reading an article in Vanity Fair with one of the of the staff members of one of these sites WRT to how easy it was to influence public perception.

[u/a_boo → u/Fenxis]

Imagine how peaceful and prosperous we’d all be by now if Russia couldn’t get on the internet.

[u/Foxyfox- → u/Fenxis]

At best, they are incompetent. At worst, treasonously complicit.

[u/DarkStrobeLight → u/skinmiach]

There's a non-zero chance that the indifference you've encountered towards bots is actually bots.

[u/LemurianLemurLad → u/DarkStrobeLight]

Non-zero? I would seriously guess MOST of the "bots are fine" crowd are actually bots.

[u/LitByStraylight → u/skinmiach]

100% of our substantive conversations are talking right past the only conversation we need to be having:

The US population is currently UTTERLY DOMINATED by information warfare such that a sober discussion of reality is literally not possible. There is no venue that would accept such a public conversation.

The problem is social media. Full stop.

It's not republicans, democrats, pedophiles, billionaires, racist boomers, out of touch woke kids, trans athelete, JK Rowling, FIFA peace prize recipients. ALL of these are enabled, symptoms, allowed, by a broken system.

Wipe it all off the table, and it all comes right back.

Fascism grows in any soil. Gotta keep weeding.

The thing we need to address - the thing that we AREN'T AT ALL ADDRESSING - is the fact that social media is actively damaging to us as a culture. More than crack and heroine, and that is not an exaggeration.

It should be regulated. Anything that so effectively allows for motivated interests to dominate our population's awareness should be regulated.

Nothing will protect a democracy from an idiot electorate.

Information will lose to misinformation every single time on social media, because misinformation is state sponsored. Information isn't.

If you have ever shared a meme, then you have been part of the problem. They aren't information, and even when harmless, chip by chip, bit by bit, micro interactions that bring dopamine with zero effort train us over and over and over and over to avoid effort. We see it at scale. It's not conjecture. We see that this is happening.

We should stop it, right?

But we aren't. Like... at all.

[u/LolsaurusWrex → u/skinmiach]

Those people underestimate the power of social engineering and overestimate their ability to see past it

[u/Physical_Gold_1485 → u/skinmiach]

The people saying "its not a big deal", "its really not that many bots", "there are genuine dumbasses that post stuff online too" are also the bots lol, of course russia would downplay it

[u/ArgentineBeauty]

Some right wing politicians are about to start wondering why no one is engaging with their posts anymore.

[u/Pkrhett → u/ArgentineBeauty]

r/conservative has 0 users at the time of this comment.

[u/roamingandy → u/Pkrhett]

I went over to have a look this morning and was astonished.

Wall to wall shitting on Trump for his Russia oil deal. Some not very nice things about Russia being said too, and even some nice ones about how Ukraine is only defending itself.

I pop over every time something big happens just to see how its being spun. Those posts are always downvoted, members posting them often banned, and the 'correct' narrative upvoted to the top to dominate.. except when its utterly devastating news that they just can't hide. Then the mods have an 'open thread' where non-members are allowed to post, which they then use as evidence of how astroturfed and under attack their sub is to mitigate the news, as that victimhood becomes the 'real story'.

Today, the head has been cut off of the snake and i wonder what it's non-Russian members are thinking about the complete 180 in tone?!

[u/APRForReddit → u/roamingandy]

/r/conservative is one of the most interesting subreddits because it used to be incredibly anti-Trump. In like the 2015-era when Trump was primarying ahead of his first presidency, that subreddit HATED trump and trump supporters were routinely downvoted and called names. That subreddit overwhelmingly supported Ted Cruz

[u/Strange_Dust7128 → u/APRForReddit]

The computer-generated posts got better.

[u/Shapes_in_Clouds → u/APRForReddit]

I mean it is interesting but it's not unique to that subreddit. The Republican establishment back then was largely opposed to Trump. Even Fox News was actively trying to sabotage him during the primary debates, and most prominent conservative figures and voters opposed him. Trump was initially supported only by a grass roots populist movement, and during his first term the old guard GOP tried to put a leash on and control him.

How he has slowly captured the party and essentially become its singular leader is fascinating and something that will be studied for a long time.

[u/insanococo → u/Shapes_in_Clouds]

>Trump was initially supported only by a grass roots populist movement

No, he was not. He was supported then just as now by Russia and their bot farms. He is and was astroturfed.

[u/UpperApe → u/roamingandy]

i wonder what it's non-Russian members are thinking about the complete 180 in tone?!

Literally nothing. Not a thought in their head. They don't notice and don't care.

[u/roamingandy → u/UpperApe]

I've noticed in the past that they often actually do, if you get to a big unexpected story early. Sometimes the agents haven't been given a coordinated new narrative to push yet, so there's a brief window of disagreement with the Orange Turd and his admin, until a narrative is worked out which instantly flies to the top and descenting voices are downvoted.

Judging by what appear to be the actual users on Reddit, these are poorly educated people, but they do have their own thoughts. They've just been trained to accept that they must have been wrong, once the 'movement' tells them what they should believe.

I mention this because if those voices were deplatformed, i think a lot of people would fairly quickly start to notice and talk about some of the awful shit going on around them, and be listened to by others in those circles, since they haven't been told how to shut that specific discussion down.. they might even remember old stories they were told were too big not to vote for Trump, who would blow them wide open on day 1.. like the Epstein Files, 'No more wars!, 'Biden did this' to gas prices, etc, etc.

[u/MaritMonkey → u/roamingandy]

descenting voices are downvoted.

They're not just downvoted, they're often entirely removed by moderation(/admin? Idk).

Those "open discussion" threads are actually way more interesting than what's left of the discussions after the "everything is red v blue" comb sweeps over them but I got bored of making new accounts to participate. :)

[u/seams → u/roamingandy]

i wonder what it's non-Russian members are thinking about the complete 180 in tone?!

"We sure are getting brigaded right now", mostly. That's their answer anytime anyone goes off the party line.

[u/rebbsitor → u/roamingandy]

There's been some very obvious clean up on that sub in the last couple hours. The front page is mostly posts that are 3 hours old or less, and then a gap to 1+ day old posts.

[u/Monterey-Jack → u/Pkrhett]

You mean we could have fixed this bot problem all this time we just cut russia off from the internet?

[u/f_crick → u/Monterey-Jack]

It’s just temporary. They’ll eventually adapt to whatever the circumstances are.

[u/MaybeLithiumFlower → u/f_crick]

This is one place the increase in tech costs due to AI is actually a good thing. It's extremely expensive and difficult to source the parts to build a data-centre now. And if Ukraine could hit that one they can possibly do it again.

Russia being kept off the internet would be really nice for a while.

[u/jeefzors → u/MaybeLithiumFlower]

if they could keep it up during election season, that'd be great

[u/ItalianDragon → u/jeefzors]

Perhaps we can ask Zelensky to strike Russian data centers offline just in time for the elections ?

[u/big_trike → u/ItalianDragon]

It would certainly benefit Ukraine if Russia had less influence on the US and Europe.

[u/digiorno → u/big_trike]

Certain several Ukrainian generals are prioritizing this. Taking wind of the conservative sails around the globe will only help Ukraine.

[u/MaybeLithiumFlower → u/digiorno]

Ukraine might just save the world.

[u/OkCoconut3270 → u/Monterey-Jack]

Not just Russia, but it wouldn't be a bad start

[u/mleb_mleb_mleb → u/OkCoconut3270]

as far as the uprise of idiot flavored conservatism in the US goes, russia is number one by a long shot. so many years i said the conservative sub was a farce and would always be met with "oh so just because you don't like it it's bots??"

no, this, the old doj blogs sharing regular crackdowns on fake news websites and social media accounts pushing insane conservative rhetoric and untold facebook pages targeting our moms and dads which bald eagle skull yeah memes, arresting russian operatives who stayed stateside to pay influencers to publish certain content ... all of that shit was manufactured and the stupidest part is it worked. it wasn't bots because i didn't like it, it was bots because it was so brazenly unhinged that it was probably fucking bots.

i worked in a blue collar job for a decade. even the younger bro rogan dork types didn't use reddit, they called it a "liberal shit hole". i'm sure there was a small handful of unhinged people who got lost on their way to 4chan that surfed /r/conservative but for the most part i've always believed that sub existed not to sway people to become low IQ magas, but to exist on this site as a division amplifier. how many threads in these past years had comments upvoted with something along the lines of "i just peeped at /r/conservative and there's no mention of this anywhere". its always been around to uphold a sense of tribalism and division, i don't doubt reddit has sold the keys to it to a nation state. it is funny to see its activity drop off though, which really confirms my general experience that nation states have been behind that sub for quite some time now.

there is indeed an angry part of me that just wants to say cut the fucking undersea cables to russia. but there's always collateral damage in that. what id really like is for thought leaders to come together and try to solution something because we've collectively done checks notes literally nothing to try to curb this bullshit to date. this moment is honestly the first time where we can honestly just straight up feel how much of our bullshit this past decade is hugely attributed to russia. peoples family's have been destroyed over the impacts of this shit, people have been murdered and detained as we live the reality of all of this misinformation and fake persona that has flooded platforms. tech companies have enabled this shit. dickheads like peter thiel and musk and project 2025 find a lot of convenient overlap in these misinformation/destabilization initiatives and they all helped open the white house doors to russia as soon as trump won. and now we're just compromised as fuck at the federal level so i'm not like hopeful that america can "wake up". i'm sure they're scrambling to get these operations back online at other data centers considering these are largely nation-state sponsored initiatives in russia.

these assholes will continue the left vs right illusion for us peasants to squabble over while they build and fortify the actual top vs bottom systemic division globally for as long as we stay dumb.

[u/Allegorist → u/mleb_mleb_mleb]

The worst was r/The_Donald in the 2016 cycle and briefly thereafter. It was so obviously manufactured that it would have been called out in days at this point. And to some extent it was called out, but lots of people had never seen that kind of thing before. That was really the introduction to this kind of bullshit on Reddit. It wasn't mostly bots at the time, but rather Russian government contracted agencies with buildings full of people working 24/7 to push their narrative with dozens of accounts managed by each person. And it was actually shut down because it was eventually shown to be just that, but the damage was done, and Russia realized how effective it was.

[u/pasaroanth → u/Pkrhett]

I just glanced in there for the same reason I look down the chute of a portapotty to scope out the turd pile when I take a pee.

One of the top comments on a post was something to the effect of “midterms are 3 weeks away and this is the kind of post we are discussing on here?” regarding the Talarico absence. They’re so used to being fed outrage porn by the bots that when it slows down they don’t know what to do with themselves.

[u/jiminyshrue → u/Pkrhett]

Ha! Look up the new posts, there was an 8 hr stretch where there absolutely no new submissions. Lmao

[u/GoodbyeThings → u/jiminyshrue]

yesterday there was also a 7h stretch btw, but I did notice that too. Would love to see an analysis of the comments since posts being sporadic could be explained by it being nighttime in the US too, I guess

[u/GodSPAMit → u/Pkrhett]

went in there for the first time in years for shits and giggles just now...

saw someone tagged as a trump conservative talking about how Russia isn't to be trusted and blah blah blah and like... does he not realize the russian and israeli botting and trolling that has lead to things like trump being in office or brexit??

I just can't man, he was making somewhat reasonable points but the irony was genuinely painful

[u/rangecontrol → u/Pkrhett]

mods out too?

[u/GoldenPigeonParty → u/Pkrhett]

Nah, they probably got like 8 people wondering why they don't feel angry today.

[u/germanmojo → u/GoldenPigeonParty]

I clicked, it said 0 online

[u/ygg_studios → u/Pkrhett]

omg literally

[u/Francesami → u/Pkrhett]

There's an eleven hour gap with no new posts from 9:30 Sunday (EDT) to 8:00 this morning.

[u/celuur → u/ArgentineBeauty]

So here's my question - if we know where it's coming from, why can't we flag it to people as foreign manipulation?

[u/AshundertheOlivetree → u/celuur]

Because Facebook and Twitter are controlled by people who are fine with conflict, just not on their platform.

[u/recurecur → u/AshundertheOlivetree]

If they flagged all the users and purged or block, advertisers could probably argue they were defrauded if large swathes were given to bots of demographic vs user of demographic.

[u/Intelligent-Try-4738 → u/recurecur]

OK agree, but the advertisers are being defrauded right now and now they know!

[u/InsertCleverNickHere → u/celuur]

Bots create controversy, which generates engagement, which makes the platform (Reddit, YouTube, Facebook) money.

[u/ACompletelyLostCause → u/celuur]

Because wealthy people in charge benefit both politically and financially from the manipulation.

Most of the people manipulated by the bots want to be manipulated as its feeding their need for rage bait and making them feel good. Crack addicts don't usually support actions that cut the supply of crack.

[u/ZestyTako → u/celuur]

Conservatives aren’t really known for fact based reasoning

[u/hot_space_pizza → u/ArgentineBeauty]

Thats a funny image. Can someone turn off Elons data center next please

[u/JimiusRostock → u/ArgentineBeauty]

In Germany the amount of people engaging with far-right content like the AfD has dropped by up to 70% since the strikes.

[u/DarkSkyKnight]

I think the real interesting thing is actually that data centers may now become legitimate military targets going forward. First in the Iran war, and now this.

[u/Graymarth → u/DarkSkyKnight]

Honestly this just shows how short-sighted the development of these data centers in heavily populated areas has been. Take the data centers here in the US as an example, the grok data center in Memphis was the one that told the military to blow up that girls school in Iran, now that data center in the middle of a major city is a military target that if we ever end up in a war that comes to the homefront will probably be one of the first places to get blown up alongside the innocent people having to live near the damn thing.

If they want these data centers doing work for the military they need to put them on freaking military bases or away from society period.

[u/GenuinelyBeingNice → u/Graymarth]

data center in the middle of a major city is a military target

It is slightly relieving that data centers are not only HUGE (big target) but also veeery sensitive. A missile that can only destroy a small fraction of the area that the data center occupies, is enough to bring the entire data center offline.

[u/CelebrationFit8548 → u/DarkSkyKnight]

Especially to stifle the bot and troll farm 'misinformation campaigns' during surrounding and or other countries elections.

Trump will be crying lot's of tears as the GOP bots cease.

[u/Surfer_Rick → u/DarkSkyKnight]

This was retaliation for Russian strikes on Ukrainian data centers. 

You're right the cat is now out of the bag. But data centers were always on the table for Russian/Iranian axis attacks. 

[u/RC_CobraChicken → u/DarkSkyKnight]

If you look back to that AWS East outage a bit ago and how much shit started failing due to the outage, I'd say Data Centers have been a key target for a while now. So many things are backended onto these cloud environments that evaporating one site could very well have a much larger butterfly effect than some/most population centers, really depends on what you want to disrupt.

[u/HaggisLad → u/RC_CobraChicken]

The big thing about the AWS one was that despite the promises of distributed architecture some idiot decided to host a key piece of code in only one place. That was a learning for some architects and should have been solved fairly quickly such that one getting shut down does not break the whole thing. Having said that even one going down still has a large if less widespread impact

[u/eagerrangerdanger]

Ukraine is actually making America great again! Слава Україні! 🇺🇦

[u/Sensitive_nob → u/eagerrangerdanger]

not only America. Germanys far right party AfD has 70% less engagement underneath their posts.

[u/Monterey-Jack → u/eagerrangerdanger]

Ukraine has done more for america than the current president has done his entire life.

[u/Final-Carry2090 → u/Monterey-Jack]

Hey, America will have the biggest celebration ever when this guy croaks.

[u/SamiraSimp → u/Monterey-Jack]

i'm pretty sure you can pick up a random rock and it will have done more for america than this president has. what Ukraine has done for us really can't be understated in how much it might actually help our situation. everyone reading, make sure to vote for someone that supports Ukraine

[u/Ok_Drawer_6325 → u/eagerrangerdanger]

Thank you. Don’t stop now!

[u/m0j0m0j → u/Ok_Drawer_6325]

Write to your representative to help Ukraine. Because Trump sure won’t.

[u/Caledor152 → u/eagerrangerdanger]

LONG LIVE UKRAINE! 🇺🇦 . Always voted against Trump because some of us knew he was a Russian asset since the 1980's even.

Russia is still killing innocent Ukrainian civilians. If your an American reading this VOTE BLUE downballot in the midterms Tuesday, November 3, 2026. Not only will it help us stop Trump by winning majority in the House and the Senate. It can also help Ukaine aswell

[u/blastcat4]

I imagine Meta is freaking out over this. It's probably causing their traffic to plummet and negatively affecting their advertising efforts.

[u/Starling_Call → u/blastcat4]

Further evidence that they don't give a shit if their profits erode democracy 

[u/TheGriffin → u/blastcat4]

Twitter too.

Ol' Musky threw a fit

[u/inquisitive56]

A technical question here...what prevents the world from isolating all internet traffic in and out of Russia?

[u/billwoodcock → u/inquisitive56]

Nothing. I mean, it’s a vast amount of work, so the Russian government is the only one incentivized enough to do it, and they only do it periodically, as an “exercise” but it’s doable.

If a general sanction were passed against Russia by any major power, rather than targeted sanctions, you’d see it done from the outside, rather than the current “we’re pulling up the drawbridge now” from the inside.

[u/johnny_snq → u/inquisitive56]

Well. Reddit, twitter, fb and all other platforms that are used by bots are measuring the interactivenes and screen time of users. Bots help them keep the users engaged bringing more add revenue

[u/netralitov → u/johnny_snq]

I would give a whole dollar to see which subs traffic plummeted after the attack

[u/DjScenester]

No pro Trump and no pro Russia comments all of a sudden?

Hmmm

Nah, doesn’t seem suspicious at all lol

[u/Adventurous-Mind6940 → u/DjScenester]

r/conservative is real quiet all the sudden. 🤔

[u/trentraps → u/Adventurous-Mind6940]

Omg an 11 hour gap in posting on r/conservative, that is incredible.

[u/DjScenester → u/trentraps]

You don’t trash the GOP or the Russians there. You get banned! Even if it’s factual.

[u/PrizeSyntax]

Bots need data centers to run, data centers stopped working, bots stopped working. What's so complicated about that?

[u/JMurdock77 → u/PrizeSyntax]

It’s uncomfortable for some to recognize how much their worldview was being fed to them wholesale by an adversary.

[u/SciFiPi → u/JMurdock77]

About a year ago a reddittor analyzed posts on the conservative sub.

The only day the two most active users in Conservative didn't post was November 1st, which happened to be the day of a power outage in Moscow that was the result of a Ukranian drone attack.

Nearly every day, two users on r/Conservative account for more than 30% of new posts. Sometimes exceeding 50%. (6 charts) : r/visualization

[u/Intelligent-Half-620 → u/SciFiPi]

That sub is absolutely dead outside of bots/russians. Its not even useful to look at to see where maga is at these days. 

[u/Affectionate-Ad-6255 → u/SciFiPi]

It's not just a political issue when 63% of your interactions are with a bot online

[u/modest_merc → u/JMurdock77]

This has been known for a while now

[u/__Yakovlev__ → u/modest_merc]

Not by the people that need to hear it 

[u/Basilbitch → u/__Yakovlev__]

Not by the people who need to UNDERSTAND it.

They hear it, the dismiss it a left propaganda, but now they can't find it. It not on every algorithmicly currate rage Facebook post...did the world just get less apocalyptic overnight... No that cant be the case cause there are still Democrats out there... What else could it be ?

[u/InsuranceToTheRescue → u/Basilbitch]

The thing is, it's not just catering to a specific group of politics. You're so close to understanding it yourself.

This kind of manipulation isn't about left vs right or Republican vs Democrat. It's everybody on Russia's radar being pitted against each other. All sides are getting whipped up. You're not immune, nor are the causes you agree with automatically unaffected.

[u/a_shootin_star → u/InsuranceToTheRescue]

Though we shouldn't conflate a lack of understanding with plain old stupidity.

"In conversation with the stupid person, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like, that have taken possession of them."

- Boenhoffer, 1951

[u/Telesto1087 → u/InsuranceToTheRescue]

This is political destabilisation enabled by the lack of oversight on social media platforms. Papers used to get banned by governments all over the world for shit like this, somehow now it's ok for social media to serve as outlets for your enemy psyops.

[u/InsuranceToTheRescue → u/Telesto1087]

IMO there's an argument to be made regarding Sec. 230. In the US, papers wouldn't get banned, by definition. However, editors were liable for the content in the paper because they were picking & choosing (read: editorializing) what readers got to see. They decided on the articles and they even decided on the wording.

Social media was originally just a platform. It was like a local marketplace where anybody could setup in any stall. However, now almost every platform filters and sorts content based on . . . Well, we don't always know exactly what it's based on. "Engagement" is the vague-ish metric we talk about. Regardless, social media platforms are effectively picking & choosing what users get to see. They use an algorithm, employing math, instead of an editor's judgement, but there's not much different.

[u/waiting4singularity → u/__Yakovlev__]

"botfarms are a hoax, russia and heritage foundation dont interfere with political processes or public opinion" - someone who went to live on a rightwing echochamber denying me

[u/__Yakovlev__ → u/waiting4singularity]

They'll just tell themselves whatever they need in order to not have to change their world view.

[u/Apart-Zucchini-5825 → u/__Yakovlev__]

Yeah their retort has been "No you're the bots" but now the bots have been taken offline and oops, their side was actually the bots all along.

[u/ElectronicTrade7039 → u/__Yakovlev__]

They'll just think that Yuri Charles and Comrade Paul are sick this week.

[u/Leody → u/modest_merc]

Not by the people being influenced by them, unfortunately.

[u/BigLlamasHouse → u/Leody]

and they picked very proud people to influence, and that group... well... they'll burn it all down before they admit they're wrong

an event like this, how many does it convince? when a whole group's pride has prevented them from seeking knowledge

they think it's Biden's fault gas is expensive right now

[u/Morgannin09 → u/BigLlamasHouse]

The reason this type of psy-op works is because it feeds people what they already want to believe while energizing them into action about it. At best, if this pressure can stay up, the people gobbling up all the bullshit will lose steam without the constant feed of propaganda and stay home in November, but I'm not holding my breath.

[u/GoblinGreenThumb → u/Morgannin09]

Its made me begrudgingly respectful of Russia in a way. Its so funny that the war with Ukraine was what really tripped them up. And at nearly the exact moment when their most complete pysop on the west succeeded.

Watching trump trying to walk the lone of what everyone wanted and what put in wanted was kinda funny

[u/DarthArtero → u/GoblinGreenThumb]

Agreed. Since at least the late 1970s, very likely much earlier than that, the Russian propaganda machine was and still is blasting away at the Western powers towards destabilization of the current governments with the goal of installing more "russian friendly" puppet governments.

While it is true that throughout history, the Russians have risen and fell countless times. One thing has remained constant, their mastery of propaganda and psychological manipulation has always been one of the best.

[u/ThePirateDude → u/Leody]

And those people will absolutely not ask themselves any questions about all this.

[u/wytewydow → u/modest_merc]

We're all here, in the reddits, where this information is widely known and understood. There are millions of others who are not us, and have no idea that people buy bots to boost their perceived importance.

[u/BraveCowardCat → u/modest_merc]

These are the people who thought Qanon was real. They aren't known for their ability to distinguish fact from fiction.

[u/misterwizzard → u/modest_merc]

Known but not accepted generally. People hear that popular subs like this are up to 40% bots but they don't know what it does

[u/Lostmyvibe → u/misterwizzard]

They think the 40% bots are the ones that are disagreeing with them, while the actual bots are the ones giving them their talking points.

[u/Elizabeth-WildFox886 → u/modest_merc]

But the MAGA pedofiles and similar tankie types would rather be an ostrich with their head up their own asses than internalise this

[u/SputnikDX → u/JMurdock77]

Oh I'm sorry was the discovery that Russia rigged the election that was released 10 years ago not enough time to soften the blow?

[u/Classic-Bird-4526 → u/JMurdock77]

When RT was available in U.S., it was full of Russian propaganda. Certain nations account for the majority of world propaganda, including both Russia and the U.S.

[u/Ill-Jellyfish6101 → u/Classic-Bird-4526]

The number of people that would quote RT to me as if it was actual news in the last decade was terrifying.

Literally state sponsored propaganda. But tell me again how it fits your world view so you're going to listen to it anyway.

Just horrifying.

[u/TheWesternMythos → u/PrizeSyntax]

As a society , as a species , we don't understand cognitive warfare. We do not understand our minds have been under siege for a while.

Our biological immune system is very good because it was tuned all of evolution. Our cognitive immune system is very much trash as it's had much much less time to tune itself 

We can tune it ourselves during the individual lifespan , but first we need to understand thats a thing to be done.

Everyone knows bots exist. Very few, if any, have mapped their cognitive genealogy...

[u/Consistent-Car6226 → u/TheWesternMythos]

Yes! When Europeans got good at sailing and could colonize anywhere on the planet, we physically put bodies together that had been separated for 1000s of years. It was a disaster. Sharing viruses wiped out populations of people. I don’t think anyone appreciates how similar the internet/social media is. We are not just physically connected, but everyone’s brains are now mentally connected. Ideas are being shared like a virus. The most viral ideas spread the fastest. And good ideas are going extinct.

[u/hobbycollector → u/Consistent-Car6226]

The printing press had a similar effect. It basically caused the enlightenment. Revolutions followed and stable monarchies fell.

[u/likwidkool → u/TheWesternMythos]

Problem is the right think they see everything clearly and we the non believers are the ones being duped. They believe all the Russian and Christian nationalist propaganda as gospel. They’ll never believe it’s them in fact that need to open their eyes and do research.

[u/Psychobob2213 → u/TheWesternMythos]

There are still plenty of people that don't even know bots exist unfortunately.

[u/ididntseeitcoming → u/PrizeSyntax]

That’s a very shallow explanation of what happened.

The MASSIVE decline in anti vax, pro Russian propaganda, and other various misinformation posts/comments is what should be troubling.

A large amount of absolute garbage on the internet is being fed to the entire western world by Russian bot farms. And we are eating it up like hot cakes.

[u/DigDugged → u/ididntseeitcoming]

Man, if the Russians were lobbing missiles at the U.S., we'd surely defend ourselves.

Kind of wild that we've given Russia unlimited access to mind control the west, with absolutely no defense or retaliation.

[u/CulturalKing5623 → u/DigDugged]

Man, if the Russians were lobbing missiles at the U.S., we'd surely defend ourselves.

The Russian are providing direct intelligence to Iran so they can lob missiles at US troops in the region. We responded by buying diesel from them, giving them a financial lifeline in the war after we placed sanctions on Russia a couple months ago to prevent this exact thing from happening.

[The sanctions] directs Trump to impose up to 100% tariffs on the top five importers of Russian oil or natural gas, with an exception for countries that import less than 15% of Russia’s natural gas exports and have taken significant steps to reduce those imports.

So yeah, Russia is helping Iran target the US in the Middle East in our war of aggression, driving up the price of diesel in the US so now we're going to buy more Diesel from Russia so they can fund their war of aggression against out ally.

Oh and just for shits and giggles, Kash Patel, head of the FBI, is vising Moscow this week, one month out from the midterms.

[u/DigDugged → u/CulturalKing5623]

When you describe it like that (I.e. accurately) it kinda sounds like a war that's happening all over the world. A World War if you like.

[u/potatodrinker → u/PrizeSyntax]

Social media engagement metrics were down like 30% suddenly and some of us had to explain, awkwardly, it's the non humans who died during those strikes. Path to recovery is to get more DCs up and flood our platforms with bots once more.

[u/GoodMix392 → u/potatodrinker]

I’d be curious to know how much the social media giants rely on bot traffic to convince investors that they are experiencing user growth each quarter. Like they must know that a significant portion of their traffic is just bots. I feel this is also cheating companies who pay to advertise on these platforms.

[u/a-stack-of-masks → u/GoodMix392]

100%. They're all aware they're overvalued, but can't admit it or they'll be screwed when the bubble pops. 

Good thing they're selling all their shares to our retirement funds huh?

[u/xiaorobear → u/GoodMix392]

I feel this is also cheating companies who pay to advertise on these platforms.

Yeah, that is a big part of why they don't want to crack down on it. A similarly bad precursor to this that shows their history of scamming advertisers, back in the 2010s Facebook was found to have inflated its video viewership numbers by 150%-900%, by including things like the video being loaded as someone just scrolled past it. Adam (formerly of collegehumor) wrote that those numbers caused sites like collegehumor and funny or die to massively pivot into trying facebook content and paying to promote it because it seemed like the viewership numbers for it over linking to their external site would be massively worth it, but it just resulted in CH's ad revenue going way down and helping them go out of business. Facebook got a 40 million dollar fine, which is nothing.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/facebook-pay-40-million-under-proposed-settlement-video-metrics-suit-1245807/

[u/Opie59 → u/xiaorobear]

RIP Cracked.

[u/jl2l → u/GoodMix392]

This is underpinning the entire digital economy spending. If you say this out too loud, I think the entire digital advertising economy collapses.

[u/mikki-misery → u/GoodMix392]

I can guarantee you that it's pretty much all of them. And it's not just social media, it's basically everything digital that has advertising and/or investors. I have no idea how everything hasn't collapsed yet, but it's surely imminent.

It doesn't even have to be bots either. They'll do anything to inflate the numbers other than outright embezzling them because it's not strictly illegal. Look at Microsoft's Copilot as an example, it's installed on every Windows device, and they paid LG to install it on the TVs a few months ago, all so they can say that they have 250+ million users or whatever the number is.

[u/Netheri → u/potatodrinker]

I think we all need to take a moment of silence for the real unspoken victims of war; bot farms feeding you propaganda on social media.

Such a terrible waste, those bot farms could have gone on to manipulate elections. War is truly hell.

[u/Brandoe → u/PrizeSyntax]

I think we actually got a lot of questions answered to be honest.

[u/GravitasFailures]

They’re not mounting, I’m starting to see posts that this was illegal interference in US elections by Ukraine.

I want you to take the time to try to walk through the logic of that, I cannot.

[u/fcking_schmuck → u/GravitasFailures]

Elon Musk already posted that Zelenskyy went too far with those strikes. Already three datacenters destroyed.

[u/Graymarth → u/fcking_schmuck]

Only three? Dude needs to pump those numbers up.

[u/6xvd6 → u/Graymarth]

They are working on it, it’s only been 3 days. What have YOU accomplished in the past 3 days? :) (Don’t answer, that was a joke).

[u/GravitasFailures → u/fcking_schmuck]

Sending Russia back to the Stone Age before social media was not on my 2026 bingo card.

But then again, I was never an optimist.

[u/Aarxnw → u/fcking_schmuck]

Fucking of course he would say that.

That guy would fuck a motherboard if it was renamed a mommy board, bro cares more about technology than people dying in cold ditches with limbs blown off.

[u/StormBlessed07148 → u/Aarxnw]

He just knows that traffic on twitter is dropping precipitously, as well. He loves his bots.

[u/therossboss → u/GravitasFailures]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report

The report states that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was illegal and occurred "in sweeping and systematic fashion", and was welcomed by the Trump campaign as it expected to benefit from such efforts.

You mean the people that benefitted from the election interference and continuous propaganda from Russia are angry that their election interference and propaganda have stopped? Yeah that checks out.

[u/LevelFix83 → u/therossboss]

If the Russian data centers were operational, you'd have at least one bot screaming "nothingburger" at your post.

[u/Practicality_Issue → u/[deleted]]

Holy cow. I went over there myself to have a look-see and there’s nothing. There was one post up about Talarico’s flu and here’s the top comment:

“Metafx • 10h
Conservative
I don't know what is going on with this subreddit, there is a mid-term election a little over 3 weeks away and this weird article on Talarico is the closest we're getting to mid-term coverage and discussion on this subreddit.”

I wonder if he will ever figure out what’s going on? 😆

Slava Ukraini!

[u/sphinxofblackquartzj → u/Practicality_Issue]

lol, that poster knows what they're doing. Now the real test is if it will be removed and commenter banned

[u/Intrepid-Progress228 → u/[deleted]]

Waiting for Trump to denounce Ukraine's attack on Russian bot farms as 'election interference'.

edited to add: LMFAOLOLOL

[u/DreamDispenser → u/[deleted]]

We have a United kingdom Reddit and it’s absolutely teeming with immigrant abuse, not a word today. Brought back my sanity

[u/6xvd6 → u/[deleted]]

Can somebody smart PLEASE do their magic and show us stats of this?

[u/damontoo → u/[deleted]]

Time for Reddit, Inc. to explain this to investors, since they are certainly aware of how significant the bot activity is on the site and are allowing it to fake engagement numbers. Seems like someone should report it to the FTC. 

[u/Mother-Fix3271]

Pro-Reform groups have gone quiet.
uknews is a wasteland.

We all knew it.

[u/rolfraikou → u/Mother-Fix3271]

I want the old Internet back. I want old politics back. I knew Russian bots were a thing, but I had no idea it would be so much better without them. I guess they really were all over the damn place.

[u/Mother-Fix3271 → u/rolfraikou]

Honestly, it’s been a day of peace on Reddit.

[u/Melicor → u/Mother-Fix3271]

Reddit admins know and support it because they think it drives engagement and/or are fascists

[u/ACompletelyLostCause → u/Mother-Fix3271]

I know someone involved in Reform. After an internal investigation, they've concluded that the socialist Labour government is silencing good honest English supporters. What's more, they genuinely seem to belive it.

[u/Shinhan → u/ACompletelyLostCause]

That's how it works when you start from conclusion and then look for reasons why your conclusion is correct.

[u/win_awards]

What questions could possibly need asking here? Are there people who don't realize that Russia has been operating bot farms to influence foreign opinion in an effort to undermine other countries for at least the past ten years?

[u/-Saltfish- → u/win_awards]

What questions could possibly need asking here?

How about why is a sitting US president working with an archenemy to undermine domestic elections

[u/win_awards → u/-Saltfish-]

Ok, but we have been asking that since at least 2018.

[u/Chuhaimaster]

Ukraine did the world a real favour. And timed their attack during the final days of the midterm election campaigning in the US.

It might not be a coincidence. The outcome of the midterms could have a large impact on the outcome of the war. And we know which side Russia wants to win.

[u/BirthdayFull8675 → u/Chuhaimaster]

Also the Alberta referendum in Canada, there’s a large Ukrainian population in the prairies

[u/ChubbyPandaWifeHaver]

At what point are our politicians going to hold Russia accountable for their interference in social media? So many young people, mentally/physically vulnerable and really old people rely on social media to keep in touch with their friends and loved ones. Their minds have been violated by these Russians, they need to be held accountable for infringing on our most vulnerable citizen's lives. This is online terrorism.

[u/mrblahhh]

with this happening why cant someone make scripts to auto ID these bots on all the social medias so end users know they are bots.

[u/crash41301 → u/mrblahhh]

They easily could. Do you not remember when X / Twitter did this and walked it back immediately once it was clear their platform was mostly bot and foreign influencing parading as American? 

[u/Thefrayedends → u/crash41301]

There's a reason many subs made it against the rules to call out bots and shills lol.

[u/DidIJustWitnessThat → u/Thefrayedends]

Got banned yesterday from a sub for doing just that. Lol.

The Internet is dead, about the only thing we can do now is help accelerate it's downfall.

[u/BerryLanky → u/DidIJustWitnessThat]

I’ve been part of Reddit subs with two hundred people. Then overnight it jumped to thousands. And we got flooded with posts. Once you realize at least half the users on any given thread are bots you start to question why you are wasting your time. You might be the only human in a comment section

[u/Grow_away_420 → u/Thefrayedends]

Traffic and engagement go up, shareholders happy.

[u/Billy-Ruffian → u/mrblahhh]

And lose ad revenue? Think of the shareholders?

[u/Final-Carry2090]

Questions like, how many more data centers does Ukraine need to take out to protect democracy?

[u/account22222221]

Fox News comment section is shockingly anti trump quite very very suddenly…..

[u/TyphonNeuron → u/account22222221]

They can't get drowned by the bots.

[u/knowledgestack → u/account22222221]

BBC news comments make sense again as well

[u/hot_space_pizza]

Maybe Ukraine hit them on purpose before the US midterms

[u/dreamrpg → u/hot_space_pizza]

It is actually way funnier. Russia hit Ukraines data centers before that, so this is just retaliation. But Russias geniuses forgot that their data centers are very few and super concentrated near Moscow. Thus easy to hit.

So in a way PutlerSS shot their own leg.

[u/oops_all_memes → u/dreamrpg]

forgot that their data centers are very few and super concentrated near Moscow

No-no-no-no, that's not the funny part. The funny part is Russia outlawed companies hosting data outside of Russia, so Russian companies can't even choose a data center outside of Russia. 5 years ago the impact of Ukraine's drone strike wouldn't have been as lethal as it is right now

They made the entire economy into a handful of sitting ducks and then started a campaign of bombing Ukraine's data centers

These people are imbeciles. Like I'm not hyperbolizing it, they are not just morons, they are developmentally challenged

[u/no1_vern]

The real question is: are sysadmins paying attention to which accounts are not logging in or making posts?Also, what are their plans going forward?

EDIT: How much traffic did Reddit see drop yesterday and today?

[u/whiskeytab → u/no1_vern]

they could easily cut Russia off tomorrow if they wanted to, any serious business that doesn't work with Russia is already doing that for security reasons

Reddit never will because they know this garbage basically prints money for them and they don't care about the consequences

[u/_litz → u/no1_vern]

Not as much as Twitter/X dropped, I'm sure

[u/slow70 → u/_litz]

I’d love to see the stories this data tells…

[u/redmongrel → u/no1_vern]

Reddit claims to care but it’s more important to them to show investors the “growing engagement numbers.” They’re not here to save the world any more than Meta is, they just happen to have a layer of chumps who work for free.

[u/Milesray12 → u/no1_vern]

The system admins are allowing the Russian misinformation because they’re under Elon’s direction.

Now the algorithm is somewhat normal before Elon’s takeover and the bot flooding that happened shortly after. I see actual people’s posts, no ai bullshit, no right wing bot propaganda, no conspiracy theory nonsense, no AFD, no MAGA.

This should absolutely be documented by democrats, used as a campaign highlight, and made into a legal reality on all platforms going forward.

[u/Ok-Weather-7332]

I’m curious if it is effecting subreddits.

[u/Vorpalthefox → u/Ok-Weather-7332]

hard to tell between the demotivated magults going quiet in embarrassment and russian bots out for a smoke break

midterms looking as deep and blue as our little blue marble, but let's not let that stagnate us, we still have a mission to do making sure our votes even count

[u/snuuginz → u/Ok-Weather-7332]

I had to check r/SpaceXBets , normally full of Musk simps: they've basically disappeared in the last day.

[u/RedditJumpedTheShart → u/snuuginz]

You can't be serious. That place hates Elon lol

[u/HeavyMetalDoug]

How can I spot bots? I've no idea how people can spot them so easy

[u/nonlawyer → u/HeavyMetalDoug]

It got a lot harder when Reddit started allowing hidden comment histories. 

But the misfires are still kinda obvious, usually a TwoWords_bunchaNumbers account that’s relatively young and making comments that sound very generic or off topic.  

Usually boosting one of the Russian-aligned rightwing parties like the GOP, AfD, Reform etc. Or indirectly by pretending to be a lefty with “concerns” about their opposition.

[u/CvieYltidrekoof → u/nonlawyer]

Reddit was better when default usernames were downvoted. 

[u/no1_vern]

The Cloudflare 'bot traffic' report is showing that nothing much has changed.

It's the number of 'human HTTP requests' has been greatly reduced, not so much the 'bot traffic.

1. The graph only shows traffic from Yandex. You know, the company that got hit by bombs.
2. All traffic from Yandex is down, not just bots. Implying that it's only bot traffic is misleading.
3. The "bot traffic" in question is just automated requests, not social media/hacking bot farms as the title implies.
4. If measuring Russian bot traffic in general, Yandex being down has almost no impact, as others have pointed out already. So "Russian Bot Traffic drops to near 0 after strike" is just objectively wrong.
5. Even the linked Reuters story is wrong, because Yandex has now been hit three times, not twice.https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1x38uhd/russian_bot_traffic_drops_to_near_0_after_strike/pf93p27/

From a Reddit SysAdmin thread.

[u/Mr-Cheek-Clapper]

r/conservative just lost 95% of its user base.

[u/Endscrypt]

Give more missiles to Ukraine, they will sort the bot problem.

[u/iamtehryan]

What "questions"? Anyone with even one functioning brain cell understands that the world is overrun with these bots spreading propaganda, and the gop and conservative epstein class is the biggest benefactor.

[u/Seneca_Dawn]

Why are Ukraine fighting every battle for Europe and the US. And why are the US on the side of Russia against the US?

We owe such a huge thanks and even larger appology to Ukraine and the Ukrainan people.

[u/ThisIsMySpellingTea]

I'd love to see the metrics in the lowered activity in right wind subreddits and social groups.

People have already noticed in r/AskBrits apparently

[u/6xvd6 → u/ThisIsMySpellingTea]

Looks like it’s a global thing across various platforms. Ukraine is fighting on behalf of the all democratic nations in the world. Imaging the shockwave in drop of pro fascist propaganda after russia collapses.

[u/oh-delay]

Keep striking and we’ll significantly reduce the risk of Europe descending into fascism. Preferably we don’t have to deal with a Donald Trump character here.

[u/Melicor]

The West is at war with Russia, they've been attacking us for 10 years with cyberwarfare. Trump is a traitor that they helped get elected by amplifying the worst voices in the US and EU.

[u/Everythings_Fucked]

Thanks Ukraine! Keep it up!

[u/RedikhetDev]

So all the advertisements you pay for on Reddit is actual for bots. And Reddit gets paid per view?

[u/Future-Bandicoot-823 → u/RedikhetDev]

Oh yeah of course.

Reddit, Google, x, many more, they do nothing about bots because bots are engagement, and engagement is ad revenue.

I'm seeing weird conflicting news about this sudden decrease in bots. I actually frequent a sub of just bots, the person who made it said new API changes was closing out all his bots.

So, did the api rules change or was it a Ukrainian attack?

[u/Melodic_Side_9437 → u/Future-Bandicoot-823]

The API change is that server is now in a million pieces.

[u/jakenuts- → u/Future-Bandicoot-823]

My commercial website has been hammered by the same global bot swarm since early spring, thousands of dollars lost each month to search service bills before I got it behind CloudFlare. Same search from Brazil, Iraq, Singapore seconds apart and always new IP addresses, impossible to stop and relentless even after CloudFlare stopped them from reaching the site.

That all stopped October 8th. Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦

[u/acutelonewolf]

And Elon Musk is pissed at Zelensky because X traffic is wayyyyy down.

[u/DryBattle]

Ukraine wins Nobel peace prize for strikes on data centers and silencing the bots.

Future headline...

[u/kescusay]

Hey Ukraine? Could you, like, keep doing that? Please?

Sincerely,
The rest of the world

[u/drbeeper]

If America had a legislative body to help protect it's citizens there would be hearings on Capital Hill this week with tech leaders detailing the bot problems -- under oath

Sadly America doesn't, and so the people continue to suffer at the hands of the billionaire oligarchs

[u/homo_gschaftlhuber]

What questions are raised? It is crystal clear for everyone that is active on the Internet or that has read a newspaper in the last 10 years that the worldwide rise of the right and their attacks on democracy and equality are a product of russian botfarms, that was never really tackled by liberal governments.

[u/VerySuperGenius]

There's literally more people in this thread talking shit about /r/conservative than comments on /r/conservative today

[u/kdubz206]

So Musk's likes went away, russian bot activity dropped and the German AfD activity also took a big hit? Sounds like Ukraine found their next Wildberries, and one that does the whole world a solid. Slava Ukraini!