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/Fenxis 11h ago

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

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

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u/a_boo 11h ago

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

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u/GoodIdea321 8h ago

Probably every country is deploying bots online by this point, but likely fewer bots per country and maybe less destructive than the Russian bots.

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u/horizontoinfinity 7h ago

The US used bots in the Philippines to promote anti-vaccination sentiments and anti-China / anti-Sinovac (Chinese covid vaccine) propaganda during covid. Reuters has an article about it.

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u/Foxyfox- 10h ago

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

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u/vandreulv 10h ago

It goes back further than people want to admit.

w(Ron)g Paul R"LOVE"oution.

That was the pilot program for Russian disinfo and candidate boosting election interference.

Someone who you could not escape on Reddit who couldn't even win his own district in the primaries. But the amount of activity would make you think that he was going to blast right into the nomination.

And now he's a talking head for Russian Television.

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u/Arockilla 7h ago

I remember my crazy Vietnam vet uncle always talking about how China and Russia were doing some kind of "social deconstruction psyop from within and its already happening..." and that was in the early 90s....I now realize he wasn't as crazy as we all originally thought.

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u/pw6163 7h ago

Wasn’t it Cambridge Analytica who demonstrated how easy it was to influence public opinion by convincing the younger voters not to vote? IIRC that may have been in Africa somewhere - possible brain fade over the country though.

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u/BroccoliDue960 8h ago

Vanity Fair as a source? Lmao 

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u/PsychologicalHold754 7h ago

See, the funny thing about "Russian bots" is, that the only time I am confronted with them is when other people (who spam everything like bots with ZERO arguments) tell me, that I should only listen to them, because everyone else is an evil Russian bot.

So quite the absurd bot army, that has zero effect and reach.

When it comes to people being directly called bots, that's pretty much always who come with facts. And since certain people can't go against the facts, they just go ad hominem.

That's what "Bot" mainly is used for.

"Don't believe that person, they are an evil witch - I mean, an evil bot."

You people are absolutely hopeless.

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u/Fenxis 7h ago

And yet completely by coincidence traffic on r/Conservative and Alberta seppie subreddits are way down right now??

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u/ThoughtfullyReckless 7h ago

How do you know any given comment you see online isn't a bot?

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u/i_am_a_laptop 3h ago

i am a laptop, i know my kind.