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/nonlawyer 15h ago

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

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

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

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u/CvieYltidrekoof 14h ago

Reddit was better when default usernames were downvoted. 

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u/Sensitive_File6582 14h ago

Reddit was better when it showed IP addresses so you could see which governments were using it by how much.

But that’s one of the many reasons why Swartz was swartzed 

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u/shea241 13h ago

when did it show ip addresses?

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u/Bobthebrain2 12h ago

Well well well, what do we have here hey. Word_word and a bunch of numbers…bet if we were to show you 9 photos of the streets, you couldn’t find the crosswalks or bicycles in any of them.

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u/Sensitive_File6582 11h ago

Your posts are hidden, mine are not.  Bob I think you’re the bot.

Also because you did not address what I said.

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u/Bobthebrain2 11h ago edited 10h ago

Nyet! Mine are hidden, because bots like to scrap them to feed us humans targeted ads.

Time to send your bot-ness into overdrive. Slava Ukraini.

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u/Sensitive_File6582 10h ago

I use brave browser…. I haven’t seen ads since 2017.

As a side note tv advertisements also piss me off as until about 6 months ago I hadn’t had to see them either. 

Hell until 2014 I didn’t even know what Taylor swift looked like.

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u/KeyMyBike 4h ago

Bots use third party websites that aggregate your comments more succinctly, and you have no option available to you to stop it.

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u/Sensitive_File6582 4h ago

Idc if they use my posts. Consciousness is possibly a non local phenomenon 

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u/couldbemage 3h ago edited 3h ago

Your posts aren't actually hidden, they can still be easily scraped.

Hidden history is only a mild deterrent to human reddit users, and had no effect on bots searching reddit.

Edit: here's a reply from you several months ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/comments/1s1jdc9/hackers_exploit_security_testing_apps_to_breach/

Annoying to find for a casual human user, but right out in the open for data scraping bots.

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u/Acceptable-Fig2884 5h ago

Bots are better at capchas than humans. They don't actually test what they're asking, they test the user activity while answering.

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u/DanNorder 2h ago

Aaron Swartz swartzed himself because he was caught intentionally stealing on a massive scale and might have actually had to face the repercussions of his criminal activity. When spoiled rich kids get arrested and realize that they weren't as immune from consequences as they thought they were, it can cause a total breakdown. I wish more rich people would face justice for their crimes.

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u/Responsible-Offer724 14h ago

The signup process makes it really easy to accidentally accept the default name and as soon as you do there’s no way to go back. I’ve been using Reddit for 20 years most of my old accounts have been banned for various reasons and now I’m stuck with this one because you can’t create accounts without emails anymore 

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u/limbodog 13h ago

If you're making a new account, you can just delete it and start over having lost nothing, no?

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u/BasicMatter7339 12h ago

Well you can make new burner emails in like 5 minutes so if you want to keep on ragebaiting it doesnt take that much longer anymore.

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u/jackofslayers 12h ago

I am sorry for your mistake, but you classified yourself as a bot.

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u/Responsible-Offer724 6h ago

Many new users click through. And bots can easily set actual user names. I wouldn’t be so sure of your rule. 

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u/jackofslayers 6h ago

Says the default username on a young account

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u/Emotional-Power-7242 11h ago

You can still create accounts with a throwaway address from some 10 minute mail site. Most sites that require email for signup ban emails from those domains but reddit for now doesn't care.

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u/Primary_Engine_9273 12h ago

Yeah apparently my account is 6 years old. I don't even remember signing up, I think initially I just looked at Reddit when I saw a link to it in an article or something idk, and I guess for some reason I wanted to post and one thing leads to another, this account with my normal email has this word word number username and people like the other poster for some reason auto assume I'm a bot.

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u/jackofslayers 12h ago

you are a bot.

You can easily make a new account with a real username if you do not associated with bots.

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u/Primary_Engine_9273 12h ago

If username is your demarcation point between bot and human, you... do realize people can choose a non word word number username for a bot account... right?

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u/CvieYltidrekoof 12h ago

It’s more complex and depends on the person. 

You don’t seem like a bot to me. 

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u/LifeguardDry7372 11h ago

how can I change mine? I changed one but it won't let me change my display name, I think that's what it's called

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u/BasicMatter7339 12h ago

I've used reddit for 9 years and i dont remember a time like that

though i wasnt really particularly active before making my current burner.

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u/jackofslayers 12h ago

Begone default username. Humans are talking

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u/BasicMatter7339 12h ago

This is not robot teaparty sparkbags. This is robot war!

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u/Responsible-Offer724 14h ago

You can uncover people’s comments and posts by searching /u/ + username on Google with site:Reddit.com 

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u/Extolord111 14h ago

You can also use sites like Arctic Shift and Pullpush, though Reddit’s been pulling a lot of moves recently in an attempt to undermine these types of tools.

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u/BraveArse 2h ago

Or a firefox extension so it's right there on the page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/profile-unhider/

The good news is that bots are getting lazier because they think they are hidden.

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u/AccurateJerboa 1h ago

Watching then panic when I point out specific things from their history is such a small pleasure I enjoy 

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u/Individual_Bat_3310 4h ago

Uh you can also just do that in the reddit search bar

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u/Responsible-Offer724 4h ago

no you can't.

you could.

but that no longer works.

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u/Individual_Bat_3310 4h ago

I just did it with you by typing 'u/Responsible-Offer724'

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u/Responsible-Offer724 4h ago

damn i stand corrected! I used to do that a lot to uncover hidden accounts but then it stopped working.. now it works again. Also, didn't realize my account was hidden...

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u/KeyMyBike 14h ago

There are about 50 dozen different third party websites where you can enter someone's username there, and even if they have their Reddit profile history hidden, you can still see what they're up to, you can even filter by words or NSFW. 

There is no privacy option available to the user that allows them to prevent this from happening.

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u/Designer_Mud_5802 12h ago

You leave us TwoWords_bunchaNumbers alone

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u/Standard_Cup_9192 8h ago

I feel vaguely embarrassed about having a default username now

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u/Separate-Pickle9963 6h ago

Haha, yeah. I absolutely do love sprinkles—especially on ice cream🍦! The cold reminds me of Mother Russia in all her infinite glory.

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u/KotoElessar 2h ago

Especially funny as a mod on Reddit's advisory Council brags about their involvement in rolling out hidden profiles and low and behold they are a conservative ideologue.

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u/Illustrious_Sea_962 13h ago

looks at name. am i a bot?

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u/Starlord_75 12h ago

Are we all bots?

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u/kinkycarbon 13h ago

Should the criteria for spelling mistakes be added? I keep finding accounts with one word mistakes. How does that keep getting ignored?

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u/TheOutWriter 13h ago

the twoword_numbers one is the safe bet. no sane human would give themselves a username like that. always assume that the "person" that you are seeing with that type of username is a bot. ALWAYS

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u/Ecstatic_System3805 13h ago

I lurked on Reddit for years without ever making an account or comment. I did not give myself this name, rather I accepted this name when it was suddenly and without warning assigned to me by Reddit, and I've made a few comments since then. I'm flesh and blood, with an available comment history that will show the type of comments I've made. There definitely seems to be a correlation between "a username like that" and bots, but as a living exception I would hate for people to ALWAYS assume I'm just a bot.

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u/Ancient-Candidate-73 12h ago

I couldn't decide on my username, then I decided I was stressing over nothing and just went with what Reddit gave me.

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u/Financial-Craft-1282 11h ago

That's how Reddit names your account. When I deleted my old account last year and started a new one, Reddit gave me this name, and I DNGAF about the user name, so I just went with it. Everyone who makes a Reddit account now gets assigned a name like that unless they choose to change it.

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u/DependentShop3882 13h ago

Can confirm I am a Russian bot, I am here to psyop the American Football subreddits

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u/BeepBoopIAmACat 13h ago

I could write pages on how to spot these types of posts and comments. The biggest thing to recognize is there is a form of warfare going on trying to convince you to be depressed, to not participate in society, to feel like everything is hopeless.

The older forms were easier to spot, trying to boost Russian sympathy, trying to boost right wing talking points. But more and more they're trying to convince you of something subtle. Anything that might cause economic damage to the western world. What also isn't helping, is a lot of Western world content is being signal boosted by these groups, bot viewership for instance is a huge way to elevate people who normalize behavior, thoughts, etc that damage our nations indirectly.

tinfoil hat theory much of r/girldinnerdiaries is a psyop trying to lower the western worlds birth rate (not that we need the help).

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u/whatevers_clever 13h ago

Nah it got easier

If it's hidden it's a bot.

Like you will have a 1% miss chance with hidden histories on Bot or WeirdFetishAltAcct and you won't run into the second one with generic perusing

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u/PowderedToastBro 13h ago

Adjective-Noun-Number

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u/revarien 11h ago

I'd upvote this twice if I could :(

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u/MAGAtsAreSheeples 10h ago

Reddit did that because if people knew how many of their users were bots the ad revenue would crash and the stock would tank.

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u/thebuzzinyourear 10h ago

You can still spot pretty obvious anomalies, like thousands of contributions in a month.

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u/Any_Cake2411 8h ago

Bot checking in here!!

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u/Leather-Hotel-7310 8h ago

I’m not a bot but I have one of those names you speak of and my account is less than a year old. At least I don’t think I’m a bot.

Anywho, how about that GOP eh?

But seriously I was just anointed this name when I made the account, and it’s less than a year old because on my old account (which also had the same name format) I got banned for calling a maga bot a maga bot so I got mad and deleted my account out of protest, but then I signed back up with this one. I don’t think the name format is a giveaway, nor is account age, although I suppose they can arouse suspicion.

The main thing I found is the accounts that relentlessly argue a point (usually right wing like you said) and just don’t explain themselves when you push back and hit them with facts that disprove their point. It’s just kinda like they’re programmed to push a certain point and won’t go outside of doing that no matter what you say to them because anything else is outside of their programming.

Some of them are probably just stupid people that bought into all the propaganda those same bots are spewing too I suppose.

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u/Smooth_Structure_173 8h ago

Hard this. I hide my comment history because I don't want people to see anything I'm interested in and draw stupid conclusions from it since I only really keep the one Reddit account or have bots scrape all my data (probably doesn't help), but hiding comment history also prevents people from seeing inconsistencies in viewpoints/typing/a bunch of other wack stuff which is a way to spot bots.

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u/Used-Lake-8148 7h ago

This is true. It makes it яeal hard for lazy people like me with default usernames to have an honest discussion.

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u/flyswithdragons 6h ago

If some's comments cannot be kept public then maybe they should not make those comments.

I am in favor of forcing public comments to stay public, bots can be spotted that way, easier..

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u/SuccessfulCat2195 3h ago

Rip me. I use reddit default names because I delete my account every few years as I dont like people seeing my history.

I guess it does make me look like a bot

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u/Mysterious_Cow_2100 2h ago

Hey, my name is this way because I fucked up when I was creating my username, the field cleared, I hit submit and boom. Then I was like “who gives a fuck what my name is” but apparently now the answer is a lot of people. Fuck me, right?

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u/maximumdownvote 1h ago

If be more civil if people could see my post history. No lie.

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u/Aegisfortress 14h ago

So anyone that isn't vehemently left leaning? It's so funny considering the DNC has literally funded this website and paid for bot farms. Yall are delusional.

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u/rzelln 14h ago

Hidden comment history is sus.

I love how apparently being opposed to most corrupt politician to ever hold power in America makes someone vehemently left-leaning. It's depressing.

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u/VvvlvvV 14h ago

There isn't evidence the DNC is using or buying bot farms, while the GOP actively colluded with foreign adversaries to use their bot farms. 

Both sides doesn't work when the evidence shows it isn't both sides. 

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u/nonlawyer 14h ago

I said that’s “usually” what bots do. Not that everyone who does these things is a bot.

There are plenty of organic idiots too, of course. And based on your reading comprehension…

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u/CvieYltidrekoof 12h ago

‘Fellow travellers’ applies across the political spectrum 

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u/CapableLab4473 12h ago

I have one of those generic 2 word number handles and I am not a bot. It's because I use random emails and accounts to post on reddit because I am constantly being banned, shadow banned, downvoted, etc. I mainly lurk and consume from reddit, but every now and then I feel like speaking truth. But people hate truth, and reddit hates truth because it turns people off and threatens their safe space profits, so in order for me to speak truth and tell people what they don't want to hear, I have to be anonymous and jump through reddit's hoops. Reddit and the internet in general censor people, white wash ideas, and generally just push capitalistic ideas that are detrimental to our society, all in the name of profits. But my history is not hidden. Go look for yourself. I hate this website and most people on it!

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u/Jumping-Spleen 11h ago

Good point. Pity many accounts are young because mods ban users for having an opinion they don't like. My last account got banned coz I badmouthed rap music.

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u/Brilliant-Road-7545 11h ago

Bugger. I have one like that because I was too lazy to change it. Not a bot, I repeat not a bot. I is too dumb to compute

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u/Relative-Chicken456 9h ago

Is this the reason people keep accusing me of being a bot? It’s not especially foolproof, I just took the first username Reddit suggested I take

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u/Forsaken-Brick-4466 9h ago

I’m just too lazy to change my username at this point :p

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u/SailPsychological656 8h ago

Yo don’t hate on us twowords_bunchanumbers accounts. Some of us are humans maybe

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u/PsychologicalHold754 7h ago

AfD is a cheap CDU clone to keep the system going, a fake opposition party. They got ZERO to do with Russia, that's part of the fake show.

Don't be stupid and fall for any crap they tell you.