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
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u/ArgentineBeauty 18h ago

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

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u/Pkrhett 17h ago

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

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u/roamingandy 16h ago edited 16h ago

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?!

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u/APRForReddit 14h ago

/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

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u/Strange_Dust7128 12h ago

The computer-generated posts got better.

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u/Shapes_in_Clouds 11h ago

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.

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u/insanococo 10h ago

>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.

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u/DigNitty 7h ago

I distinctly remember a YouTube short where a Fox News host responds to his two coworkers laughing away Trump. He says “careful now, Trump may be the frontrunner of the Republican Party.” They both belly laugh at him because it was so ridiculous. The end of the video was the it’s always sunny theme song with the title “Trump becomes the frontrunner of the Republican Party.”

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u/Halo_cT 10h ago

the_donald started off as satire making fun of Trump. It very, VERY quickly became home to the people who didn't know it wasnt serious.

Conservative spaces always become increasingly far right because they can always create a new 'other' and facts just genuinely do not matter.

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u/Gymflutter 11h ago

Its a much different subreddit when you click the new content. Their post on Ilhan Omar isnt even as spicy as expected.

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u/minin71 11h ago

Republicans rally behind any figure.

Democrats eat their own.

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u/UpperApe 15h ago

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.

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u/roamingandy 15h ago edited 15h ago

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.

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u/MaritMonkey 15h ago

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. :)

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u/Mr_Quackums 13h ago

Just a reminder - conservatism is NOT a rational, coherent belief system and therefor would not organically attract large numbers of people. Conservatism must be held together by constant reinforcement of fear, FOMO, and out-group demonization.

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u/Dubious_Odor 13h ago

Based on family members of mine that are maga as well as some friends who have maga family, reddit is not high on the list of social media/media. Maga skews older, facebook still regins supreme as their social media of choice followed by youtube. Huge numbers also still watch fox news. Reddit doednt really set the agenda, just a mouthpiece supporting narratives that originate elsewhere. Podcasters and talk radio is where maga narratives are workshopped before wider dissemination.

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u/UpperApe 15h ago edited 15h ago

...you don't understand conservatives.

Conservatives aren't brainwashed sheep, filled with love and kindness but only waylaid by some sinister force exploiting their benevolent ignorances.

They are society's worst and these forces are just the excuse they're looking for. If they don't find it here, they'll find it on the radio. If they don't find it on the radio, they'll find it in church. If they don't find it in church, they'll find it in secret meetings with hoods and crosses.

Conservatism is fundamentally about social hierarchies and amoralism. It's why conservatives have always been on the wrong side. Literally always. ALWAYS. Every country, every era, every movement. Against civil rights, women's rights, gay right, trans rights, worker's rights, marital rape laws, age of consent laws, access to education, access to healthcare, vaccination standards, etc.

"Fiscal responsibility" is just a mask for cutting social spending. "Law and order" is just a mask for circumventing accountability and regulation to fast track consequences they want to see. "Strong borders" is just a mask for blatant racism and closing the middle class. "Traditionalism" is just a mask to stand against science and progress and enlightenment and equality for the sake of social patterns that kept violent and exploitive structures that benefit the few.

Again: every country, every era, every movement. Conservatives are ALWAYS the monsters. Always.

There's good people and there's "nice" people. The latter don't have principles. They want civility and choices. The former have principles. They don't have choice because their principles have made their choice for them; they are required to follow through. They aren't civil, they're disruptive. And their choices ALWAYS lead to sacrifice. Something that all conservatives are vehemently opposed to.

Just because you're nice doesn't mean you're good. And nice is often used to circumvent good. You're confusing nice conservatives with good people. They are not good people.

They are the shittiest and stupidest people in the room, house, town, city, and country. Conservatism gives them the political banner they can rally under. That is the whole point. From Burke to Trump.

I think what you want to reach are the imbeciles. You are mistaken if you think they will suddenly discover empathy, transform, and become valuable members of society. They're just going to wait for the bots to come back online. Even if takes months.

You are waiting for shitty people to discover they're shit. They won't

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u/HeyCarpy 15h ago

Top post over there right now is a federal raid on the home of Ilhan Omar. Reactions range from “oh she’s fucked now” to “nah, she’s had plenty of time to burn all of the evidence”.

Why are they so constantly obsessed with this one politician with everything else going on all around them?

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u/UpperApe 15h ago

Why are they so constantly obsessed with this one politician with everything else going on all around them?

You know why.

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u/seams 15h ago

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.

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u/rebbsitor 14h ago

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.

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u/Spaser 15h ago

I check it out a lot as well. I've noticed it's very different based on time of day - if you're over there in North American evening (late night/early morning in Russia) it tends to look a lot more like you've described as well.

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u/thegoodbadandsmoggy 15h ago

Someone needs to post a Ukraine thread abd see if blacksciencemantyson is absent

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u/genreprank 15h ago

Turns out we shouldn't lurk over there because it'll just piss us off because it's just bots. Even the real conservatives aren't that insane mostly.

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u/loppsided 13h ago

And that's a huge part of bot disinformation- convince us other Americans are the enemy. Divide and conquer.

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u/Fine-Solid9892 13h ago

Is there a quick way to tell a bot from actual person posting?

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u/asyork 13h ago

My parents say the same things as the facebook and youtube bots (I assume nothing has changed since I stopped talking to them), so I don't think you can tell a difference unless the person in question actually thinks for themselves.

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u/sphinxofblackquartzj 14h ago

Chinese bots will take over soon. lol.

I want to say Israel too, but their relationship with Russia is complicated, they're not exactly an ally of Russia.

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u/Bandicutie314 15h ago

Are we looking at a same place? Still look like an actuve cult to me.

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u/Space-Turtle88 15h ago

The hatred of the oil deal and trash talking about russia was happening before the data centers were hit. It's a very unpopular topic with most people in their sub. Very few were defending it, and got little to no support in the threads discussing it.

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u/akaJimothy 14h ago

Remember when Simba asked Mufasa about that shadowy place just off the horizon that he must never go to? Must have been talking about that subreddit where their teeth and ambitions are bared.. just worded differently in their "about/what we're not about" section. proudly admitting their comfort seated deep down in their echo chamber

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u/King_Chochacho 13h ago

What's really disappointing is you know the admins could prevent a lot of this of they wanted to, but nobody wants to admit how much of the site's traffic is bots at this point.

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u/Monterey-Jack 17h ago

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

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u/f_crick 17h ago

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

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u/MaybeLithiumFlower 16h ago

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.

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u/jeefzors 16h ago

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

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u/ItalianDragon 15h ago

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

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u/big_trike 14h ago

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

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u/digiorno 14h ago

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

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u/MaybeLithiumFlower 13h ago

Ukraine might just save the world.

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u/youngishgeezer 14h ago

I'm sure they know this.

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u/kent_eh 15h ago

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

And not only during USA's election season.

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u/Atomic235 14h ago

They should keep it up for their own sake. A lot of the poison flowing out of Russia is intended to disrupt support for Ukraine's defence.

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u/yeahburyme 15h ago

Ukraine has hit 3 so far. If it's anything like Wildberries, they will keep at it.

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u/RupeThereItIs 15h ago

It's extremely expensive and difficult to source the parts to build a data-centre now.

Do they NEED to build one.

Are they not able to weasel into standard IaaS providers?

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u/DuntadaMan 17h ago

They'll just spend money to offshore the work to a friendly African country where money is scarce but tech is plentiful.

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u/Typohnename 16h ago

How many poor african countries with an abundance of data centers are there?

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u/Longjumping_Poet7897 16h ago

Ghana - Accra seems to be like a tech / fintech new area for that type of thing. probably not data centers yet but I could see it happening.

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u/d3ssp3rado 16h ago

Thanks for adding them to Drone Map.

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u/iconocrastinaor 13h ago

Nigeria has a LOT of bots. They're human and working scams, but they'll do whatever the money tells them to.

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u/ZealousidealLead52 16h ago

The rampant corruption in Africa tends to make it very difficult to make any kind of large infrastructure project work there. It's not like Africa ended up in the state it is by complete coincidence - there are reasons people don't like doing business there.

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u/Intellectual-Hamster 17h ago

With the costs of tech, I imagine this will be an expensive fix.

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u/Allegorist 16h ago

Good thing the US is giving them an infusion of billions of dollars then

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u/theBoobMan 16h ago

Bro we've been trying to do the same thing in the US for the last few years and most of it still has years to go before it'll even get close to comparable with Tiawan.

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u/GB10VE 16h ago

saudi arabia is right there. india is also right there.

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u/psmgx 15h ago

its a short list bro: it's Nigeria, or maybe S Africa. Nigeria also has a ton of direct undersea fiber.

most of their (Russian) offshore propaganda is out of Nigeria or India

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u/Keemo-Sabe 15h ago

Cambodia is a big spot, India too

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u/UsoppIsJoyboy 17h ago

so lets not do anything about it?

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u/big_duo3674 16h ago

Kinda... the big ones are, but setting up millions of bots and getting them established isn't exactly a lightswitch that can be flipped. Some may not even have passwords or ability to access anymore, they were just left to freely roam and comment. Those accounts were critical too, because they had engagement numbers and were pushed higher for visibility in places by the various algorithms. The damage done is very real

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u/OkCoconut3270 17h ago

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

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u/mleb_mleb_mleb 16h ago edited 11h ago

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.

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u/Allegorist 15h ago edited 15h ago

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.

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u/AvoidMyRange 14h ago

I got banned back then for "spam" when I pointed out every T_D user in the politics subs cosplaying.

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u/ShredsHardcock 16h ago

Reddit is an absolutely a toxic corporation. My favorite is the subs where attention seeking idiots post pictures of themselves at two points in time, or shaving off their hair, or a "glow up", to assist in the training of surveillance AI

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u/TheEldestNugget 13h ago

This site is directly responsible for Trump's election in 2016.

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u/Salihe6677 17h ago

When I heard about Biden's initiative to bring broadband Internet to more rural areas, my first thought was, "dear god, why, have you seen what they've done with it?"

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u/GetThePuckOut 16h ago

As someone who was on the "internet" before dial-up was even a thing, I can relate so hard to this.

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u/Hackwork89 13h ago

I got banned on /r/LateStageCapitalism for suggesting that Russian bot farms exist.

Do with that information as you please, but I definitely found it interesting at the time that they would ban for speaking against Russia.

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u/Odd_Wave_4541 17h ago

Wait until you find out that the call has been coming from inside our house the entire time

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u/roamingandy 16h ago edited 16h ago

Belarus would take over as soon as the busses got there. They probably already are, its just a capacity drop we're seeing.

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u/Mindless-Peak-1687 16h ago

yes, for many years now. Would make the world a better place to silence Russia.

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u/AulisG 16h ago

Next do the bots of the country in middle east which is expanding illegally and committing a genocide.

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u/d3ssp3rado 16h ago

We know which six-pointed-star country you're talking about, but Turkey is also a major hub for right wing bot farms.

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u/Monterey-Jack 16h ago

Only way to do that is to get them out of our government and stop funding their country.

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u/7-CC 16h ago

No, because the Qataris, Iranians, Israelis, and Chinese are still there with their bullshit.

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u/randynumbergenerator 16h ago

I'm sure most of them are using VPNs or proxies, but there must be a way to figure that out.

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u/earlyriser79 16h ago

Is this why Google and others want to make datacenters in the space? Is space treated like international waters, but with lower drone/missile incidence due to nobody wanting Kessler syndrome?

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u/janethefish 15h ago

Yes we absolutely should have over a decade ago. Democracy can't survive a hostile government constantly feeding us propaganda.

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u/6SixTy 15h ago

Russia is part of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a cheap copy of the EU. Even if Russia was cut off from the rest of the internet, the chances of e.g. Kazakhstan cooperating in CIS refusing to cut off Russia and actively working to proxy Russian internet traffic is very high.

This is the most overt option available, and the chances of Iran, Turkey, China, India also acting as a proxy is high.

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u/kikimaru024 14h ago

Imagine how nice the Steam forums would be...

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u/M0O53 14h ago

Time to drag some anchors across some undersea cables.

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u/MrVermin 14h ago

At the beginning of Trump's second term, when doge was doing their thing, they dismantled cyber security protections from certain foreign countries(namely Russia). The influx of bots was entirely intentional.

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u/king_duende 13h ago

just cut russia off from the internet?

Why would world leaders & tech oligarchs do this? They'd have no support then

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u/Fallingdamage 12h ago

Or just start by cutting off non-ISP ip addresses. If your IP belongs to a datacenter, you cannot login to the social media site in question.

For security purposes, my workplace blocked ONLY datacenter IP addresses and suddenly we have almost zero security alerts week by week. 2,000,000 weekly access attempts automatically denied by our blocklist of over 400,000,000 IP addresses, and thats just the list for the US.

While at the same time, not a single user or customer is affected, since they arent shopping or using our services from datacenter providers or other data brokers. ISPs only.

So if social media sees no reason to prevent access to their sites and sign-in sessions from these data providers, makes you wonder what kind of site you're supporting.

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u/twoisnumberone 10h ago

we could have fixed this bot problem all this time

Yes, but "we" don't want to.

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u/WhereDaStonksBro 9h ago

It's the internet, it will always be full of shit.

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u/pasaroanth 16h ago

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.

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u/jiminyshrue 17h ago

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

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u/GoodbyeThings 15h ago

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

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u/Cryptoporticus 14h ago

Every post there requires mod approval, and they generally don't approve posts over night.

So far, every single one of these "the conservatives have disappeared!" claims either have no proof, or are easily disproven. I still haven't seen a single piece of legitimate evidence that shows a noticeable decrease in any activity, just a lot of headlines saying that it's happened.

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u/AWorldwithoutSin 14h ago edited 14h ago

A year ago there was an extended power outage in moscow that affected /r/conserative for the time frame https://www.reddit.com/r/visualization/comments/1p2iqlu/nearly_every_day_two_users_on_rconservative/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=technology&utm_content=t1_pf9365r

TL:DR Conseratives two most prolific posters were missing while Moscow was offline.

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u/Rush_Banana 15h ago

It literally happens every day, new posts need mod approval and mods are asleep in that time.

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u/MortalusWombatus 15h ago

Almost like it was night time in the US...
Germans doing the same thing right now talking about the afd bots are gone but I still see the same hateful comments and posts everywhere

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u/rangecontrol 17h ago

mods out too?

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u/GoldenPigeonParty 17h ago

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

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u/germanmojo 16h ago

I clicked, it said 0 online

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u/Next-Pass-802 16h ago

Does it only count people who have joined the sub or? Otherwise why didn't you count? lol are you a ghost?

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u/germanmojo 16h ago

1.2 million subscribers, 0 online.

Click it yourself.

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u/RedditJumpedTheShart 16h ago

6 things posted in the past hour. Must be a ghost

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u/ygg_studios 17h ago

omg literally

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u/Francesami 16h ago

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

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u/poopnose85 14h ago

I saw that as well

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u/GodSPAMit 16h ago

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

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u/FerrisYJ 16h ago

Holy crap, some posts are hours old with less than 10 comments

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u/History-Buff-2222 16h ago

That’s how it often is with that sub

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u/Melkor-The-Mighty 16h ago

So conservatives are just fucking clankers?

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u/Crumpled_Papers 15h ago

it used to be a real political ideology but anyone you see who is 'conservative' today is either a brainwashed moron or a devious asshole. Or, in the case of reddit and /conservative - clankers.

real people aren't as dumb as we have been made to believe conservatives are by their own behavior.

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u/Melkor-The-Mighty 15h ago

All conservatives are pedophiles, rapists, or clankers now

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u/laurel_laureate 16h ago

Where can you see that number?

On both old and new Reddit, I can no longer find the visitor count.

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u/Pkrhett 16h ago

on PC in the subreddit on the side it'll say "active users her now" or something like that (depends on the sub).

on mobile it'll show at the top how many users.

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u/laurel_laureate 16h ago

That's completely missing for me on desktop, on both old and new Reddit.

Though I found it on mobile, so thanks.

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u/MultiSkillionaire 15h ago

Don't see it on old reddit on PC

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u/ThisSir5918 16h ago

Haha hardly any comments on anything over there.

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u/ShorelineStrider 16h ago

It's crazy how low the engagement numbers are over there. Hope some more bot farms get gone.

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u/dougmc 14h ago edited 14h ago

How are you determining that? Reddit removed the ability to see "how many users a subreddit had online right now" some time ago.

Is it possible that you're reading this from some dashboard somewhere that's not getting updated anymore, where it's just recording 0 for every subreddit now?

A figure of "zero" is pretty much impossible there -- looking at the /comments endpoint for that sub, I'm seeing 13 comments in the last 5 minutes, clearly it's got a significant number of readers online right now.

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u/Kalepsis 15h ago

I just looked at that dumpster fire of an echo chamber. It's too bad the Israeli bot farms' data centers weren't also destroyed, they're the only ones left in that sub.

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u/caustictoast 15h ago

Top post has 2 comments. All the popular ones are very low comments. One even has a top comment saying to not fall for Russian propaganda regarding trumps idiotic oil sanctions violation. Seems like there are a few real people still left

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u/MrNostalgiac 15h ago

That's astounding. I thought you were being hyperbolic but it's literally at zero for me as well.

Edit: something must be screwy because this sub has 20 million users and also shows zero online...

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u/dxnxax 15h ago

Now's the time to start posting then

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u/chrunchy 15h ago

Wow. Sort by new and there's a gap in posts - 23 minutes ago and then 2 hrs ago. Kinda telling.

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u/ZjY5MjFk 14h ago

not sure if you are joking, but is there a way to see active users on subreddit over time? It would be interesting to see a graph of active "users"

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u/jayecin 14h ago

What I find so ironic about that sub, nothing is ever about what the Conservative Party is doing to make America great again, it’s all just attacks on democrats and fear.

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u/ISuckFarts 14h ago

1.5m subscribers but most every post on the front page has like 14 comments.

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u/iconocrastinaor 14h ago

Still zero. Plenty of polemics, though.

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u/_commenter 14h ago

yeah it's interesting.... I went to checkout that sub as well. there's def a higher percentage of post criticizing the current administration.

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u/Responsible_Oil_2369 14h ago

And now all those principal conservatives the true "FREE THINKERS" Will not dare have a free thought about why everyone in their audience is a rival to their home nation.

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u/TornadoFalls 14h ago

You're not kidding. There's like a 9 hour gap between posts there lmao. Even considering their mods are quick to delete threads that are slightly critical of Trump, that's tough to explain.

It's more 'active' now (11:30am EDT) but it's highly unusual for there to be a total black hole for several hours like that. There are no coincidences regarding this.

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u/benjaminovich 14h ago edited 13h ago

Seriously. Went there and sorted by top --> week

Top post

Score: 4500. Comments: 1347

Second place

Score: ~3000. Comments: 1140

Third place

Score: ~2500. Comments: 41

Totally organic engagement there. It's so obviously fake.

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u/tempest_87 13h ago

Jesus christ, I just looked there and it's like, actual reality and some critical discussion of the actions of their party.

It's astonishing.

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u/Simmangodz 12h ago

I would absolutely love to see the New Post rate before and after.

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u/LLMprophet 12h ago

Someone who's not banned should post this article there.

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u/Undernown 11h ago

Props to the sub for even them recognizing the dela with Putin for diesel is absolutely the dumbest move ever. And it seems they're not falling for Trump trying to blame diesel prices on Zelensky.

There might be some hope left, lol.

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u/StonedRussian 11h ago

There's not even mention of the attack on Yandex centers. Tells you all you need to know

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u/narfoleptix 10h ago

They must-have removed that metric because I cant find it. Lol, though.

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u/happytree23 16h ago

You joke, but go look at the comment count on posts there from the last 24 hours - it literally has become a ghost town sub lol

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u/feketegy 16h ago

I mean from an average of 40 - 50 comments per post down to 15 - 20

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u/exerwhat 15h ago

Is that rare for middle of the night?

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u/celuur 17h ago

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

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u/AshundertheOlivetree 17h ago

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

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u/recurecur 17h ago

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.

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u/Intelligent-Try-4738 15h ago

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

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u/illy-chan 14h ago

It's easier for everyone to just keep things ambiguous enough to let the money flow. The folks doing the ad-buys don't want to admit to their clients that most of the traffic isn't even human.

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u/Intelligent-Try-4738 14h ago

That's somewhat true. A big party of my point is that despite not wanting to admit it at some point advertisers will have to cut back knowing they're putting in money only for bots to be the majority of traffic.

Continuing to spend when you know your money doesn't go as far is how you go bankrupt.

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u/Albireookami 16h ago

Sounds like a win/win for everyone if the whole system crumbles.

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u/LevelFix83 16h ago

Not for the people running the system, which is the real issue. You have to take their power away, not ask them to give it up.

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u/Fuddle 15h ago

Problem is the people at those companies spending the money on social media advertising NEED it to be inflated, if the revenue people at these companies started asking the wrong questions “Hi Jerry, have you been spending $5M of our company budget to advertise to bot farms instead of actual people?” the whole thing would collapse, so they do zero research.

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u/King_Chochacho 13h ago

Make no mistake, Reddit is perfectly content to be overrun with bot traffic too. Platform owners don't want to address the issue because they know their site traffic/active user numbers would take a huge hit and piss off advertisers and investors.

So we all just live with a bunch of mediocre but profitable services.

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u/Republican-Snowflake 15h ago

Facebook loves it on their platform. They even have their own AI bots spreading bullshit, and have for a while. You can make a fresh account, and watch how fast they push these bots, that are marked "AI content," who just post rage bait, and culture war crap.

Now keep telling FB that you are not interested in these posts and snooze users.Then watch to see how they push it even harder after a few days to a week. Now join groups for smaller local towns, and watch how hard these people repeat what the AI bots have been saying.

They make it almost impossible not to get caught up in some sort of conflict, drama, culture war, whatever. Then they laugh all the way to the bank.

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u/HoldingForGenova 12h ago

Don't forget reddit. Spez has (most likely) known about this since 2015, and he's explicitly allowed it.

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u/InsertCleverNickHere 17h ago

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

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u/Sweetwill62 14h ago

Only because advertisers are being lied to about what is actually happening on the site. If they were fully aware how many of the accounts are bots, advertising wouldn't be worth shit.

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u/ACompletelyLostCause 17h ago

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.

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u/janethefish 15h ago

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

No, they fucking don't. Russia throws rich people out of windows. COVID didn't check bank accounts. Fascists and autocrats are bad for everyone except the one guy on top.

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u/ZestyTako 17h ago

Conservatives aren’t really known for fact based reasoning

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u/Woodcrate69420 16h ago

Because Twitter, Reddit and Facebook are owned by fellow Oligarchs wo support the foreign manipulation or straight up are the foreign manipulators.

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u/Andreus 17h ago

Because every right-winger is a traitor, and out of a mistaken sense of fairness, they were allowed access to power over themselves and others.

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u/Time-Result-767 14h ago

you underestimate the median voter and how much of them voting is just "are these people saying things that allow feel ok ignoring stuff?".

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u/Demurrzbz 17h ago

Also I assume it's pretty easy to obfuscate one's location. VPNs and such.

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u/GoldenRegister 16h ago

We could, probably can. The issue is owners and operators of those social media corps are part of it. Musk is actively interfering in german elections, literally, why would he stop free bot farm engagements in his favour? We need to take the root of the problem out, not the symptoms. Take on oligarchs and hold them accountable, than they will act, very fast.

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u/CaptainONaps 16h ago

Foreign bot influence isn't a bug, it's a feature. It's not only legal, but one of the most profitable products the United States business's provide.

Russia couldn't have an online influence campagin without US companies making it possible.

And Russia isn't the only country that does it. Saudi Arabia, Israel, China, and by far the most active, the US private sector, all have massive bot operations in the US.

You can actually see data about this, because some of the companies that sell the products that make it possible, are publicly traded. So you can read about it in their quarterly earnings reports, and in their annual letter to shareholders.

The last report from reddit talks about bot influence and touches on how it effects their profits.

https://investor.redditinc.com/news-events/news-releases/news-details/2026/Reddit-Reports-Second-Quarter-2026-Results/default.aspx

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u/notforyoutoknow33 16h ago

Remember when twitter had their origination nation exposed a few months back and they shut that shit down so fast.

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u/OpenGrainAxehandle 15h ago

I think Txitter tried that, but had to disable it because everything was foreign manipulation, didn't they?

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u/ButtEatingContest 16h ago

One reason sites like reddit won't act on it is because then people will figure out just how long it's been going on and how big the impact has been. How much of MAGA support was entirely astro-turfed from the beginning, etc.

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u/psmgx 15h ago

who is "we" here?

facebook, google, tiktok, etc. all want to make money. it's their platforms and they're "free for everyone" if you can pay.

and the Russians will pay. Ditto for anyone else.

there could be laws about this, but ultimately those will require people to verify their ID -- and those have gone over about as well as a lead balloon.

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u/LowSkyOrbit 14h ago

Because we do it too.

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u/DrButtgerms 14h ago

All of those companies make a large proportion of their money a via ad revenue. It doesn't matter to them if the ad clicks and views are from meat humans or bots because they are still getting paid from the advertisers. Now if the advertisers wise up and stop buying ad space, that's a different thing. My speculation there is that the news cycle is so fast and advertisers move so slow, that this will amount to zero change in behavior.

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u/Turbulent_Gazelle530 13h ago

the people who are being manipulated have been trained to ignore the flagging.

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u/Effective_Olive6153 11h ago

real answer is that we can't "really" know where its coming from. At least individual companies can't. This could be known by government agencies tasked with cybersecurity. It takes real power and a lot of effort to gather and analyze info from many places to map this stuff out on global scale

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u/Danton59 6h ago

The powers that own these platforms are quite happy with culture war being promoted no matter the source.

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u/hot_space_pizza 17h ago

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

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u/JimiusRostock 14h ago

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

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u/Tbirkovic 12h ago

Do you have a source for that number, or is it more of a gut feeling?

I am not saying it is impossible, but 70 % is wild considering AfD's latest election results.

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u/PreviousCurrentThing 16h ago

How can we identify bots?

Do you think a 5 month old account with 2.5 million karma and a hidden post history might be a bot?

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u/shiddedandfarded69 11h ago

I mean I turn off comment history to prevent harassment, doxxing, and downvote bots from following me around. I also make new accounts every year or so.

But 2.5M karma with a brand new account would be a tell, yes.

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u/PreviousCurrentThing 9h ago

Check out OP's user page.

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u/coolaznkenny 15h ago

This whole time our politicians could of prevented decades of culture war shit if they had some balls.

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u/Zonianama 16h ago

They know their base is largely fake and their ideas don't have real support in a democracy, they aren't stupid, they are just evil assholes who try to gain as much power as they can for their masters.

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u/shiddedandfarded69 11h ago

The far-right nonsense and separatism rhetoric we've been seeing on r/Canada suddenly went quiet.

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u/nauticalfiesta 10h ago

it is insane how quiet Threads was yesterday. Like I was seeing normal posts from people that I want to see, and not just some republican anti-Biden BS post.

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u/MrBigglesssworth 14h ago

Its a good thing bots cant vote!

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u/DrButtgerms 14h ago

They won't have questions because they know who pays them

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u/EloeOmoe 13h ago

Trends on Twitter are showing a huge loss in "Free Palestine" posts.

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u/rafikiknowsdeway1 13h ago

i mean how long before they rebound from another data center?

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u/Booty_Bumping 9h ago

Social media bots are not coming from a Yandex datacenter

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u/RollingMeteors 9h ago

start wondering why no one is engaging with their posts anymore.

I’m wondering why that Just Gone Dark blocklist isn’t being made public yet.

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u/Kevin-W 7h ago

Now we know why Trump wants Ukraine to stop striking deep inside Russia.

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u/KimbaXO 5h ago

Perfect time to contact R representatives and let them know that the curtain has been pulled back.

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u/jar1967 4h ago

And that is going to cost them and the social media companies revenue

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