r/technology • u/ArgentineBeauty • 18h ago

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

https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/ukraine-struck-yandex-data-centers-russian-bots-went-silent-now-questions-are-mounting-23339
37.9k Upvotes

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u/PrizeSyntax 18h ago

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

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u/JMurdock77 18h ago

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

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u/SciFiPi 15h ago

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

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u/Intelligent-Half-620 11h ago

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

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u/Affectionate-Ad-6255 11h ago

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

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u/KimisChoker 10h ago

Break down the posts on /r/worldnews and you'll see some very pro-Israel posters that post a LOT.

A bit harder to see it with post history private nowadays, but it still happens.

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u/Syphe 10h ago

The difference between worldnews and any other sub is quite stark when it comes to a post about Israel/Palestine, you'll find more balanced commentary on pics of all places

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u/modest_merc 18h ago

This has been known for a while now

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u/__Yakovlev__ 17h ago

Not by the people that need to hear it 

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u/Basilbitch 16h ago

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 ?

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u/InsuranceToTheRescue 15h ago

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.

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u/a_shootin_star 14h ago

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

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u/howlin 13h ago
  • Boenhoffer, 1951

uhh.. Boenhoffer died in 1945 and this link doesn't actually point to this quote. Are you making some sort of meta-point here?

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u/a_shootin_star 13h ago

That's when the quote was posthumously published, but he wrote it in Letters and Papers from Prison, during his captivity in Flossenbürg concentration camp.

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u/Telesto1087 14h ago

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.

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u/InsuranceToTheRescue 13h ago

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.

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u/ImYourHumbleNarrator 14h ago

true but they sure as hell weren't trying to get biden or clinton elected, and sure they have jill stein in their pocket but look at the lobbying groups and GOP politicians compared and they're obviously tipping the scales on groups like NRA and southern strategy reps

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u/Special_Bus5283 11h ago

Meh, I hear what you are saying and it's certainly true that they are pitting people against each other, but...

A huge part of the problem we have is that these bots seem to be able to convince a large subsection of our population of things that ARE truly nonsense. And no amount of contradictory evidence seems to ever sway those folks.

It's a whole 'nother issue that it does indeed cause us to fight internally, but if people here were all equally capable of critically analyzing posts, the issue would be far less likely to cause the major issues that they do.

I'm skipping lines here because this part is especially relevant... If a large amount of these posts truly ARE creating MAGA and AFD posts, there is simply NO WAY that major social media companies could NOT KNOW that these accounts are bots/of Russian origin.

Which means they are complicit in all of this. If everyone was truly capable of critical thinking, they'd be able to quickly realize that none of those billionaires are good for America. Are they capable of seeing that as true? Probably not, because they're so far down Musk's hole they can't see daylight anymore.

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u/BattlepassHate 13h ago

They love to think “lol it’s just da dumb conservatives!!!!” Not understanding that the left too is being manipulated into this bullshit.

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u/WhereBaptizedDrowned 15h ago edited 14h ago

This both siding shit is retarded, man.

Democrats have been trying to be progressive. These bots are hitting the most easily manipulated people: republicans.

It is true Dems can be manipulated but they are being manipulated towards progress. Which is innately good.

>Academic consensus heavily points to an asymmetry, indicating that Republicans are generally more susceptible to political misinformation and share it more frequently than Democrats.

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u/AFoolishSeeker 15h ago

The manipulation is toward anger and other high intensity emotions. The manipulation is toward chaos. Don’t be arrogant.

What that commenter said has nothing to do with “both siding”

Come on now

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u/New_Contract6331 14h ago

No it is definitely happening to everyone and it’s not just about politics. Any social issue is being amplified by bot farms. They will be commenting view points you agree with and view points you disagree with, they will be fighting with you while also agreeing with you. It’s about dividing us and causing civil unrest

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u/Zalack 13h ago

Yup, bot farms are even inflaming disagreements over non-serious topics like video games, movies, books, the best practices for cooking, etc.

ANY comment section with disagreement will be targeted by bots that make rage-bait comments on whatever the two sides of the argument are. The goal is to erode social cohesion in as many spaces as possible so that people feel as alienated as possible from their fellow countrymen. They want us at each other’s throats over any and every subject.

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u/PolanskyDMymy 14h ago

I’m gonna go out on a limb and say progress should probably involve not using the R-word

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u/InsuranceToTheRescue 14h ago

This both siding shit is retarded, man.
Democrats have been trying to be progressive. These bots are hitting the most easily manipulated people: republicans.
It is true Dems can be manipulated but they are being manipulated towards progress. Which is innately good.

The kneejerk, "No! My side is right and the other side is wrong!" is the whole point. You can't even accept that manipulation of the causes & people you agree with is bad. In a single comment you went from "bots are hitting the most easily manipulated people" to your side being manipulated is good because you're being manipulated towards "progress."

You're the evidence my comment is pointing at.

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u/waiting4singularity 15h ago

"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

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u/__Yakovlev__ 15h ago

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

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u/_MrBalls_ 15h ago

A US citizen really said that to you?

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u/waiting4singularity 13h ago

actualy an european espousing the qualities of free speech and digging themself in on it, mainly using gab and repeatedly spamming babylon bee to their contacts.

i should contact them again and ask if their favorite dreckposters are still active.

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u/_MrBalls_ 13h ago

Ah, sounds like a Kremlin FSB poster.

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u/waiting4singularity 13h ago

dunno. ive known them for close to 30 years now and noticed them becoming weird after going to gab.

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u/Apart-Zucchini-5825 16h ago edited 13h ago

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.

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u/ElectronicTrade7039 17h ago

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

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u/Usernamenotdetermin 13h ago

lol

There is a world of difference between theory and knowledge. “I think a lot of posts are bots” versus the sudden lack of posts being noticeable are going to help people understand how some of the bots have influenced their lives

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u/Talon_08 16h ago

A lot of the people on this platform need to hear it too but unfortunately think they’re better than those on Facebook. Same shit different smell.

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u/Jiveturtle 15h ago

Both sides, hur dur.

At this point in America you’re sitting in a restaurant. The menu has two items. One is chicken, the other is a plate of shit with broken glass in it.

Do you really need to know whether the chicken is free range organic and how it’s prepared?

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u/Noselessmonk 15h ago

Yeah, to take it further:
America used to be a fancy restaurant(or at least presented itself as refined). But you go in and the options are a plain boiled hot dog on the most basic bun or a plate of horseshit with used, HIV-contaminated hypodermic needles. Most people, you'd think, would know the obvious choice.

But then you overhear other people in the restaurant talking and they're ordering the plate of horseshit and AIDS-needles because hotdogs are street food or they don't like that the hotdog is boiled or the bun is too plain.

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u/thetwopaths 13h ago

Great analogy except you forgot about the people who only eat shit for generations and condemn everyone else.

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u/marr75 14h ago

Both sides are being influenced by propaganda != Both sides are at fault. Your reading comprehension is letting you down.

I'm a liberal/progressive. I'll vote every election for the most progressive candidate on the general ballot and I don't miss an election. The both sides arguments are usually stupid but I'm also a technology professional and an experienced media consumer and can tell you with certainty: there are bot influence operations targeting both sides.

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u/AFoolishSeeker 14h ago

Both sides don’t have to be the same in order for it to be true that foreign governments are attempting to manipulate supporters of both sides into chaos and anger.

To be so defensive about this idea is odd to me

It isn’t “both sides”ing anything

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u/bqbl1969 15h ago

Are you comparing reddit to a succulent Chinese meal?

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u/evandena 16h ago

And they're still not going to hear it

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u/RaoulRumblr 14h ago

It's easier to fool someone than convince them they've been fooled, the old adage goes.

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u/Leody 18h ago

Not by the people being influenced by them, unfortunately.

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u/BigLlamasHouse 17h ago

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

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u/Morgannin09 17h ago

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.

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u/GoblinGreenThumb 17h ago

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

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u/DarthArtero 16h ago

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.

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u/Morgannin09 14h ago

The irony is that the Red Scare/McCarthyism probably did more to benefit their propaganda machine and infiltration schemes than counter it. Everyone was jumping at shadows and accusing each other that it gave a powerful smokescreen to their real efforts.

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u/12Theo1212 14h ago

I find it ironic that US made platforms being used by US enemies to destroy it from within… and immigrants Musk and Murdoch doing their best to destroy democracy

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u/ThePirateDude 17h ago

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

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u/VagueSomething 16h ago

They explicitly said they'd rather be Russian than have empathy.

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u/wytewydow 17h ago

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.

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u/BraveCowardCat 17h ago

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

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u/misterwizzard 18h ago

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

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u/Lostmyvibe 16h ago

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.

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u/Elizabeth-WildFox886 18h ago

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

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u/Python_07 17h ago

I didn’t need that MAGA heads up MAGA asses visual this morning. Truly frightening.

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u/Aarxnw 17h ago

Yeah but it’s easy to bury your head in the sand until the proof is undeniable, data center goes down and certain opinions get noticeably quieter, there’s no way sand deep enough to bury your head from that.

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u/explosivelydehiscent 17h ago

Ever since anonymous propaganda pamphlets were handed out at the first ever election in the US

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u/hobbycollector 17h ago

Labels were handed out in England before that. To some extent we owe our republic to propaganda.

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u/Thannab 17h ago

Plausible deniability fuels a lot of ignorance

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u/VF_Miracle_ 17h ago

Even if you know that something is happening you may not know exactly how much it is happening until it suddenly stops.

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u/SputnikDX 16h ago

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?

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u/Classic-Bird-4526 17h ago

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.

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u/Ill-Jellyfish6101 17h ago

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.

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u/AuntRhubarb 16h ago

Horrifying when our 3 major networks talked scornfully about Bernie like he was some kind of wild-eyed dangerous radical. And people bought it hook line and sinker and stuck with the corporocrats. And here we are. Foreign propaganda is easy to spot but domestic is more dangerous.

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u/SuitableBlackberry75 15h ago edited 15h ago

Bernie Sanders subreddits went silent when Russia was cut off from the internet briefly, in 2022.

The bots are not only on one side. Anything Bernie Sanders related was heavily, heavily bot infested. Of course, the goal in the above case was to twist Bernie Sanders's words into something anti-NATO, pro-Russian and anti-Ukraine (even though Bernie Sanders isn't anti-Ukraine at all), on subreddits that would ban anyone criticizing Russia's war as spreading "imperialist apologia". So it was a weird, twisted type of propaganda that presented millions of people on reddit with a very skewed picture of who Bernie Sanders is and what he is/isn't about.

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u/Ill-Jellyfish6101 15h ago

It's easy when they are all owned by rich Republicans.

What hurt the most is how critical NPR was of Bernie.

Like, what?

He's objectively the best thing we've had since sliced bread.

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u/Journeyman42 17h ago

A day or two after the 2016 election, I had to go get gas for my car. The gas pump started playing an ad for Russia Today and I'm like wtf is this shit?!

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u/SuitableBlackberry75 15h ago

RT is Russian state-controlled media, so of course it was full of Russian propaganda. That's the whole point of it. Propaganda, as well as finding Americans with nominal "respectability" who are willing to spread Kremlin talking points and disinfo for cash.

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u/PrizeSyntax 18h ago

I mean,. it's been in the news the last 10 years, bots, algorithms, dark patterns, all kinds of crap states and corporations pull on is just to manipulate us. I don't think it's somekind of news

Edit, if ppl think this is somehow a unique Russian thing, yeah I have got news for you

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u/shackelman_unchained 17h ago

It all stems from Cambridge Analytica. Once you read the reporting on that. You'll see how everyone just copied what they where doing.

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u/FlyingRigatoniMonst 17h ago

More bots than people in the us right now

https://radar.cloudflare.com/bots/north-america

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u/ShutterPriority 17h ago

And those are just the ones that actually choose to be counted as bots, not the ones trying to appear as a human.

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u/FlyingRigatoniMonst 15h ago

So this is kinda interesting. A huge slice of the bot traffic in the US is from Virginia.

I can’t put an image here but you can look at the link and see it yourself. 28% in the last week.
Next closest is Cali at something like 11%. What’s in Virginia? Govt shit?

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u/Bob_A_Ganoosh 14h ago

I'm intrigued as well.

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u/Blacktip75 17h ago

It goes in grades, legally accepted influence, starts with engagement profiling, what videos you are more likely to click on to keep you on the platform. Then Marketing, they shape which ads you see and which products you are offered when searching, to which news articles you see. Then on the extreme end you have Heritage Foundation and Russia.

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u/Financial-Dog-7268 17h ago

Absolutely, not uniquely Russian, in fact they're just among the easier ones to spot.

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u/TR_Pix 17h ago

Its one thing to know about it, its another thing to feel the difference personally

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u/extra_croutons 17h ago

Poor babies. Wouldn't want to make them uncomfortable

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u/DunAnOir 17h ago

They knew. They welcomed it.

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u/I_AM_FROM_BEYOND 17h ago

They won't recognize it now, or ever.

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u/KennyFulgencio 16h ago

are you serious? Those are exactly the people who DON'T care. it only matters to other people to finally see the proof/validation of this particular theory about right-leaning online toxicity and stupidity. still no explanation for the left, who aren't as stupid but these days match or exceed the toxicity.

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u/mm0nst3rr 17h ago

Yandex just tolerated things other cloud providers wouldn’t and everyone could open an account there. Most bits are just a marketing spam.

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u/diurnal_emissions 17h ago

It's as if actively agreeing with and spreading the messages of a nation's enemies is bad or something.

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u/Zakluor 15h ago

They should feel uncomfortable with it. If this is what finally opens their eyes, so be it.

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u/Zulmoka531 15h ago

R/conservative actually had massive downvotes if one was so morbidly curious to take a peak!

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u/Glum-Breadfruit-6421 15h ago

No no, I swear I got this information from Jimmy from Jersey on Facebook. 🤣

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u/atlasdreams2187 15h ago

Very Philip K Dick of you!

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u/TheG00dF1ght 15h ago

and yet they still watch fox news

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u/dewhashish 15h ago

you mean for the last decade or so?

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u/Waschaos 15h ago

I did notice a significant drop in activity on some of the edgy subreddits this weekend.

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u/SadlyNotPro 15h ago

What's also uncomfortable is that this may well be the reason why most governments are so hellbent on having data centres built (US, UK, EU, China etc) despite them being of 0 value in terms of production/improvement of quality of life.

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u/TimSylvester_ 15h ago

Maybe these are the evil spirits that religious people believe are constantly tempting them and deceiving them?

Nah.

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u/Sped_monk 15h ago

Do you think it was just one side or the other or the nation as a whole? Not flaming just a genuine question. Or what “some” are you referring to?

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u/Chastain86 14h ago

The most far-gone of the chuds will simply say that THEY had the original idea, and that having the bots gone simply amplifies THEIR OWN voices. They never needed the bots, don't you see? It just mirrored up with their own ingenius line of thinking!

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u/OutrageousThought646 14h ago

What's uncomfortable is for how long.

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u/TheWesternMythos 18h ago

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...

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u/Consistent-Car6226 17h ago

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.

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u/hobbycollector 17h ago

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

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u/Mysticmooods 14h ago edited 14h ago

The Plantin-Moretus museum in Antwerp is amazing to see how effective it was historically. 

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u/lizagnadish 17h ago

This is a really good analogy. 

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u/likwidkool 17h ago

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.

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u/Psychobob2213 17h ago

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

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_LEFT_IRIS 15h ago

Mmm… I disagree with your assertion that cognitive warfare is particularly new though, it was just previously the domain of religions. Religious doctrine and ideology throughout history has followed much the same course, and it’s clear to see how deeply entwined the current fascist movement and Christian Fundamentalism have become. Secular thought has generally set religion aside out of distaste, and I’m afraid that that was a mistake. People thought that we could simply free ourselves of religion and educate our way out of its bonds, but instead we simply put a gun on the table for anyone to pick up.

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u/TheWesternMythos 7h ago

Certainly it's new compared to pathogens

And the scaling that social media and ML allows is in many ways a new beast 

Also the secular paths have their own versions of institutional warfare via doctrine 

But with that said I mostly agree with you 

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u/TestProctor 16h ago

I’ve obviously fallen to personal biases and a lack of research or self reflection before, like any other human. The following statement isn’t a brag about how rational and special I am.

I remember the first time I realized that some (most?) people take their own thoughts seriously, as a matter of course. Someone I knew was upset, clearly bothered by something, and when I asked about it they described a thought that had come to them that had them doubting some things about themselves at a fundamental level.

When we talked about it some more, it became clear the problem wasn’t that they found the thought absurd, had no external reason to take it seriously, and agreed that the thought was a net negative.

“So if you don’t want to incorporate that into who you are, don’t think it’s necessarily true, and wouldn’t like the person you’d become if you followed through with it… why take it seriously at all? Sounds like a trash thought, best thrown away, right?”

They looked at me kinda confused. “But… I had that thought, it clearly came from somewhere in me and means something, so I have to take it seriously.”

I had to pretend I didn’t find that concept completely alien.

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u/TheWesternMythos 7h ago

I have definitely had a similar realization but for me it took many  instances for it to stick lol

I will say I think it's important to have a back and forth approach. By that I mean, I aim to over shoot instead of undershoot meaning. Because meaning is essentially useful signal. I may not always know what the signal is in the moment but if I can keep enough context I may gain the insights in the future.

Yet, to your point , its very hard to get the signal if you waste your time time chasing every bit of noise 

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u/ididntseeitcoming 17h ago

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.

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u/DigDugged 16h ago

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.

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u/CulturalKing5623 15h ago

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.

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u/DigDugged 14h ago

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.

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u/croc_socks 15h ago

The enemy of my enemies are my friends. 

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u/quik69 15h ago

Do you have any actual data on this? Everything in the article about social media is speculation and everything I've seen is just people cheering for the rhetoric.

My understanding is that the kind of bots CloudFlare would monitor are mostly web crawlers/spiders along with with malware bots like port scanners and DDoS nets. Yandex servers may also host C2 infrastructure for social bot networks but CloudFlare wouldn't necessarily see the corresponding decline in social bot activity following strikes on this infrastructure.

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u/FlarkingSmoo 8h ago

Yeah, people are just running with this without really looking into it because it's a fun story. Yes Russia runs propaganda bots, but the idea that popping a few data centers had this huge effect doesn't really pass the smell test.

According to Mezha, the Rohtext project compared German-language posts on X across matching 18-hour weekend windows. Mentions of the AfD fell 19.3%, but mentions of the CDU fell 17.8%, the SPD 36.8% and the Greens 28.6%. The AfD showed no unique drop; the pattern looks like an ordinary weekend lull. A viral graphic showing falls of 30% and 56% cited no data source, account list, platform or counting method, and its timeline ran to October 15 even though it was posted on October 11. FactCheckRadar classified the causal link between the strikes and AfD-related activity as unsubstantiated.

https://ppc.land/yandex-crawler-traffic-drops-94-after-drone-strikes-on-3-data-centers/

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u/Halo_cT 9h ago

a lot of modern bot farms are racks and racks of old android and iphones each running a unique set of hardware addresses and official social media clients that look perfectly legitimate to meta, X etc. Those same companies also have a financial incentive to allow more users and engagement.

Cloudflare doesnt really monitor for this type of traffic. Other than the foreign IP it seems perfectly fine.

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u/TheG00dF1ght 15h ago

Can you cite your sources that show a decline in POSTING not in web traffic? I'd really like to see something more detailed than just http requests dropped.

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u/DrSlurp- 17h ago

Where do you get the information that traffic on these specific topics have decreased?

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u/[deleted] 17h ago

[deleted]

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u/PreviousCurrentThing 16h ago

If confirmed, this is telling

Great source.

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u/SufficientGreek 17h ago

There's no source for that graphic

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u/Agitated_Morning5005 17h ago

All the guy is posting is how bot crawler traffic is down, this is slop from people who don't understand how technology works

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u/DrSlurp- 16h ago

And where did that guy get that information?

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u/SirPseudonymous 13h ago

They made it up. The only actual facts here are that after a datacenter belonging to yandex (a search engine) was hit, traffic involving search indexer webcrawlers identifying themselves as belonging to yandex decreased.

It's already an established fact that most right wing astroturfing is from bot farms in Israel and the US, because no shit things that support the white supremacist oligarch ruling class in the US and that support the ongoing genocide in occupied Palestine are going to be pushed domestically by the local ruling class using local assets, not by a foreign power that's at odds with the ruling class this bullshit supports.

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u/Silly_Ebb_8745 16h ago

Yep, the takeaway is that what was mostly a meme with some truth to it is actually much, MUCH more prevalent than, really, anyone could have ever expected.

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u/Aranxi_89 16h ago

It's misinformation warfare. It's all in the Foundations of Geopolitics.

You can't kill America using external force. The only way is to make the people fight themselves.

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u/Orange_Tang 14h ago

I can't wait for the data analysis studies to come out on this. It will tell us exactly what BS Russia had been pushing. We all knew it was happening and I have a pretty good idea what it will be, but it will be nice to have some data proving it.

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u/Uncle_Istvannnnnnnn 13h ago

Do you have a link to any data on how much the decline was? I'm very interested in how big of a dip there was and where.

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u/FlarkingSmoo 8h ago

https://ppc.land/yandex-crawler-traffic-drops-94-after-drone-strikes-on-3-data-centers/

But the story about this is being blown out of proportion:

According to Mezha, the Rohtext project compared German-language posts on X across matching 18-hour weekend windows. Mentions of the AfD fell 19.3%, but mentions of the CDU fell 17.8%, the SPD 36.8% and the Greens 28.6%. The AfD showed no unique drop; the pattern looks like an ordinary weekend lull. A viral graphic showing falls of 30% and 56% cited no data source, account list, platform or counting method, and its timeline ran to October 15 even though it was posted on October 11. FactCheckRadar classified the causal link between the strikes and AfD-related activity as unsubstantiated.

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u/RedditJumpedTheShart 16h ago

"These measurements show a sharp reduction in automated network activity, but cannot establish whether Russian propaganda bots disappeared or whether damaged infrastructure stopped generating ordinary automated traffic."

Do you have anything actually factual that proves this?

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u/potatodrinker 18h ago

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.

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u/GoodMix392 17h ago

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.

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u/a-stack-of-masks 17h ago

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?

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u/xiaorobear 16h ago edited 16h ago

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/

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u/Opie59 16h ago

RIP Cracked.

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u/SamiraSimp 14h ago

rip, what a website. used to spend so much time there after school everyday, discussing posts with my friends the next day, it's a great example of the "older internet" compared to now. which is weird because at the time that was the "new internet" to me and it was already so different from what i considered the "old internet" at that time

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u/Xalara 14h ago

At least we got Dropout from the wreckage.

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u/jl2l 17h ago

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

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u/SMLLR 16h ago

Been hoping for this for a long while.

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u/Mr_Quackums 13h ago

As a small busness owner who relies on internest ads - the ONLY ads that are worth the money are ones targeting location + search terms.

Once you pay extra for targeting ads based on gender, age, habits, history, etc. then the ads stop becoming cost effective. Maybe if you have a multi-million dollar advertising budget effectiveness stops mattering.

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u/mikki-misery 16h ago

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.

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u/Enygma_6 15h ago

That was part of apartheid-boy's argument about why he should be allowed to buy Twitter, because he claimed it was full of bots.
Then after he got his way, he immediately disbanded the internal teams that worked on preventing malicious bots from getting on the platform.

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u/pinkycatcher 14h ago

There's a reason Reddit started to let users hide their profiles, to cover up how many bots are active.

Go look at the front page, it's 90% sketchy accounts with generic names and hidden profiles. There's hundreds of small subs that have weird posting metrics too, once you stumble on one you'll start to recognize how fake it all is.

Lots of propaganda going around.

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u/Dull_Bid6002 14h ago

Advertisers would at least get to see what kind of return they're getting to see the kind of sell or click through rate.

I suspect that's one reason why you don't see the big companies on certain platforms all that much.

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u/Tee_zee 12h ago

Ads don't pay off views though, they pay platforms based on conversion rates. Bots dont buy anything. Marketers aren't stupid

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u/Netheri 17h ago

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.

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u/Journeyman42 17h ago

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

Legit, Russia could be using those data centers for something productive and economical, or for scientific research. But instead they use it for propaganda bullshit.

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u/orus_heretic 17h ago

They've manipulated every western election since at least 2016, that we know of. Cambridge Analytica was weirdly forgotten by people. From US, to Brexit, to EU elections.

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u/fs2d 13h ago

CA being "forgotten" about was 100% by design IMO

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u/Whatthegabriel 16h ago

Are there any serious sources for this?

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u/puzilla 17h ago

I love this stat if true, but haven’t found a reference to it. Any sources you could share?

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u/design_by_hardt 16h ago

Is there evidence those metrics are down? Not doubting you, just want to read about it.

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u/Brandoe 18h ago

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

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u/berlinbaer 17h ago

everyone with room temperature IQ already knew this.

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u/mrlolloran 18h ago

It’s about if the bots “lived” there or just used the networks established there

Also looking into the specifics of what kind of European political groups are suddenly putting out less (mis)info

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u/Eelroots 17h ago

Bota need social networks to spam - we must rule out them, next government has a mandatory task - filter out enemies propaganda.

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u/Chapoopiedoopiedoooo 17h ago

Now people's grandma's will have no idea what color/kind of people to hate

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u/dreamrpg 17h ago

Nothing complicated, rather interesting to note difference, since it is long gone since we could actually see difference.

On Russian reddit alternative it is same, sometimes bots are not spamming, and you see how platform chagnes drastically. When bots are back, it is all about Ukronaziaes again.

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u/semioticmadness 17h ago

That’s not the question they were asking in the article. They were asking: why did German Nazis go silent after Russia got hit?

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u/16_tons 17h ago

post hoc ergo propter hoc

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u/No_Elderberry_4712 16h ago

Hoping Ukraine will take out every other data centre in Russia they can find.

IMHO a genius move by Zelensky.

❤️🇺🇦

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u/tanrock2003 17h ago

Exactly, and what is the single largest push by tech companies right now in capex…building data centres.

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u/asdf4fdsa 17h ago

Silence is defening to some with no idea what to do with themselves?

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u/ReActive9499 16h ago

Fair enough

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u/NoHorseShitWang 16h ago

All those lost wages. Poor poor bots.

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u/whagwannin 16h ago

Let's see how quiet X goes... lol

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u/therossboss 16h ago

Where are all the word_word2413 accounts? Hmm must mostly be bots.

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u/RedditJumpedTheShart 16h ago

"These measurements show a sharp reduction in automated network activity, but cannot establish whether Russian propaganda bots disappeared or whether damaged infrastructure stopped generating ordinary automated traffic."

Highly likely the traffic is web crawlers like search engines use. Why would propaganda bots use a local ip address that is easily blocked?

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u/OdBx 16h ago

Who said it was complicated?

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u/Sanmonov 16h ago

Do you know how a search engine works?

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u/lostwisdom20 16h ago

Guess questions are about russian interference

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u/twoiseight 15h ago

The complicated part is getting entire online cohorts of US citizens to recognize that their views are driven by propaganda originating outside the country.

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u/ledhendrix 15h ago

Is this why there's been such a push for them this past year? They wanna completely reshape our reality.

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u/Tone-Bomahawk 15h ago

Drones come in, bots go out. You can't explain that.

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u/Chill_Panda 15h ago

Because the bots weren't labeled things like [Russian bot] they were labeled things like MAGA.COM and Reform.co.uk.

So people are questioning the groups that suddenly went quiet along with Yandex.

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u/Sulfamide 15h ago

Here's the prize for the dumbest cynical comment of 2026: 🏆.

Congrats!

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u/AlarmingAerie 15h ago

It's funny reading your arrogant take, when it is indeed more complicated. Bots do not run on yandex servers, most likely Yandex servers were used to scrape data and identify real time where to send bots which are located in their own bot farms.

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u/fdesouche 15h ago

Reddit won’t like the drop in traffic

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u/ElkImpossible3535 15h ago

its made belief... Nothing has changed. united24 is literally Z-mans personal propaganda channel invented for the purpose of pushing ukranian media points on the west

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u/Individual_Gift_9473 14h ago

You could have just read the article….

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u/VaporCarpet 14h ago

Nothing is complicated about it. But Russia accounts for less than 1% of global bot traffic, and this one data center was 7% of Russia's traffic. Total bot traffic decreased 7% of 1%.

Literally no one actually noticed a difference

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u/Staav 14h ago

Social media sites can feel free to investigate all the accounts that were posting daily and suddenly stopped after the strikes to Russian data centers.

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u/BigFuckHead_ 13h ago

Yeah, what are the questions?

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u/spacedwarf2020 13h ago

So r/ conservative is quiet now? Lol

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u/Evening-Crew-2403 13h ago

TheVerge is reporting the actual botnets didn't take much of a hit. What took the brunt of this was Yandex's (which is like a google/bing) indexing bots.

It's possible that with Yandex's indexing/search no longer getting new data that the bot nets can't pick up new things to astroturf or brigade.

I would expect the bots to be back to normal operation soon enough. I think what people don't understand is social media often needs a phone number. So the "bots" are in an apartment somewhere in the target country with specialized hardware that can manage hundreds of SIM cards. There's also stuff in the cloud, so I think more strikes on data centers are warranted, but we also have a game of whack-a-mole to play with operations on our shores.

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u/Huge_Leader_6605 12h ago

Who says there's anything complicated about this statement?

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u/WingsOfGryphin 11h ago

There is nothing complicated about it. Everyone knows about dead internet theory. But this brings attention to measurable metrics on how much bots are from very specific place. Which hits different than your average 4chan tinfoil theory.

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u/dodgyd55 11h ago

The barely internet literate won't even realise how their politics and opinions were shaped by these bots. These bots gave people a sea to swim in when the old internet you would have been booted off of a platform, shunned or dunked on. At this point in time you have people's grandparents with their full face out there on Facebook saying racist unhinged shit and nothing happens.

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u/Hautamaki 7h ago

Yeah it's not the questions that are mounting, it's the answers

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u/cornylamygilbert 7h ago

Likely which talking heads online went silent ELSE what was judged legitimate traffic has now also gone silent.

Worst case scenario, something US govt or DoD has mirrored that silence

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u/chubbysumo 1h ago

not all bots, and not all of russian bots, but some of them.

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u/reroll-life 48m ago

It's not directly true as these bots trolls use are usually racks of phones where Olga personally swipes around each device though much of it is automated through screen automation. That being said, datacenters are likely still needed to organize and orchestrate everything.

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