People are rejoicing about the removal of Russian bots from social media – but the truth is far more complicated

[u/Adventurous_Row3305]

https://www.the-independent.com/tech/bots-russia-x-facebook-meta-bluesky-twitter-b3065172.html

[u/albany1765]

"erm, akschually 'bots are used for plenty of good or morally neutral purposes, too.'"

Lame article

[u/kristamine14 → u/albany1765]

“The truth is more complicated” and then it’s just that hahaha

[u/MultiGeometry → u/kristamine14]

I would argue that even if that’s the case we’d do just fine without that. Any bot that doesn’t identify themselves as a bot is a massive problem.

The only bots I see are the ones that convert Celsius to Fahrenheit (or similar). If there are bots injecting good information about vaccine hesitancy, well, cool. But I’m completely blind to that because they don’t identify themselves.

[u/Memerandom_ → u/MultiGeometry]

Same for all AI content. It all needs watermarks and an easy to follow digital trail.

[u/horst555 → u/Memerandom_]

the funny thing, even the AI companys want the watermark. because without it there ai would train on ai slop and would loop into even more slop and don't become better like they want XD

[u/Memerandom_ → u/horst555]

Ya well, let's see how well they police themselves, now that it's been made a 'moral obligation' by the highest IQ president in the history of the "unites states".

[u/petmama → u/Memerandom_]

All of this happens through regulations, the thing all republicans and MAGAts are always screaming about how it’ll restrict their freedoms.

Regulations are designed to keep the dumb-dumbs safe but they, lacking the capacity to formulate their own thoughts, fill their heads with the propaganda the right pushes that it’s the liberals trying to take their rights, freedoms, guns, religion, so on and so forth, blah, blah, blah, away. Fear propaganda has worked and I’m tired boss.

[u/Memerandom_ → u/petmama]

This is absolutely why tRump only recently moved from zero regulations to let them regulate themselves. Disinformation only stands to benefit him as long as he is in control of the rule makers. Tech needs to be resigned in, like yesterday, like 30 years ago. Like back when we went after Microsoft with antitrust suits just for bundling IE with Windows.

[u/Ok-Care-7132 → u/petmama]

waiting for, "ai are people too, my friend" from these scumbags

[u/gooblaka1995 → u/MultiGeometry]

This is why I like UraharaBot in the Bleach subreddit. At the end of every comment it always says something like, "Beep boop, I'm a bot!"

[u/Inf229 → u/gooblaka1995]

Would love to see all bots on here clearly marked as one. Like an icon next to their name. Reckon it'd be enlightening just how many there are

[u/Broadband- → u/MultiGeometry]

It doesn't matter anymore. Broadcasting yourself as a bot and following specific site rules hampers your end goal.

Same way the "do not track" option has been removed from most web browsers because sites didn't honor it whatsoever.

Goes both ways I guess.

[u/RollingMeteors → u/MultiGeometry]

Any bot that doesn’t identify themselves as a bot is a massive problem.

Any human that doesn’t have a public key pinned to their profile and use it to sign comments semi regularly is a solution to that problem.

Bots signing their own keys will leave footsteps to the fact they are a bot, and can be blocked.

I hope this is the incident that causes block lists to not just be a thing but be the default thing.

People claim you’re building an echo chamber by silencing individuals not legitimately contributing to the conversation.

I simply disagree.

[u/robisodd → u/kristamine14]

However, bots are used for plenty of good or morally neutral purposes, too. One of the key contributors to such bot traffic is “crawlers”, which scan the internet to gather up data. That can be used to update search engines or to collect data that can be used to train artificial intelligence systems

and that's it. "plenty"

[u/windowpanez → u/kristamine14]

Gotta give both side's a fair chance to give their opinion! /s

[u/SweaterSteve1966 → u/windowpanez]

A bot farm has 10,000 of the same opinion.

[u/polarbearrape → u/albany1765]

Basically "but now we can't scrape marketing data and train AI with crawlers" Oh no... what a disaster... 

[u/fingersonlips → u/albany1765]

Really struggling to understand why bots are a critical or important part of the internet - seems the world is a substantially worse place given online discourse, and I refuse to believe this is the pinnacle of performance and desired outcome we can expect from Al Gore’s internet.

ETA: Guys, I understand the general concept of why bots exist and the menial types of tasks for which they can be beneficial.

Given that bot farms are being utilized to direct and sway social discourse as a means to generate and consolidate geo-political power, drive election outcomes, and prop up literal fascism, perhaps my original comment should have specified why this particular form of bot use is not being held up to the light as the nefarious shitstorm we have all complacently allowed it to become.

[u/cakemates → u/fingersonlips]

Bots are a critical tool for those trying to obtain and maintain power. The billion bots out there arent for helping the average joe.

[u/Electrical_Name_5434 → u/cakemates]

I was reading this noticing every claim was padded with a “not necessarily” or “could be” or other versions of allegedly. Making me think…

Man this is a propaganda piece.

Then I looked to see who published it…the independent.

If you don’t know the majority shareholder is Evgeny Lebedev. “He derives his wealth from his father, Alexander Lebedev, a Russian oligarch and former KGB officer.”

Wikipedia article about him:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evgeny_Lebedev

And his 42% ownership of the independent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Independent

[u/humid_pajamas → u/Electrical_Name_5434]

can we just like ban Russia from the internet? they've had enough internet.

[u/allknownpotato → u/humid_pajamas]

Maybe if we pool our money and give it to Ukraine they will cut off Russia from the Internet.

[u/humid_pajamas → u/allknownpotato]

should we start a gofundme / petition? how do we crowdsource removing russia from the internet?

[u/RemarkableWish2508 → u/humid_pajamas]

We can't, but Putin could:

• Russia disconnects from internet in tests as it bolsters security

[u/Bengineering3D → u/Electrical_Name_5434]

Their mask got pulled off a bit, they have to flood the news cycles before conservatives start thinking for themselves.

[u/Teledildonic → u/Electrical_Name_5434]

That doesn't sound very independent.

[u/fingersonlips → u/cakemates]

100% - I’m just waiting for the day the majority of people everywhere acknowledge and accept that because this whole article is the online equivalent of pissing on all of our heads and trying to convince us it’s raining.

[u/NauticalCurry → u/cakemates]

Exactly. It's a force multiplier for dictatorial efforts.

[u/overlordjunka → u/cakemates]

In fact, the one average Joe who did leverage a billion bots got arrested and charged for "fraud"

[u/YouCantKillGrool → u/cakemates]

Indeed. Most bots aren't serving a purpose other than to create fake traffic and activity which looks great on investor reports. Nearly all the click bait, rage bait, over moderation, censorship and general interactions are largely bot driven rather than user driven. All of which skews the algorithms allowing the propaganda to proliferate more and the animosity to rise. When over 50% of the interactions on the internet are auto replies and content scouring then we users aren't really realistically driving the discourse anymore are we?

[u/takumidesh → u/fingersonlips]

The problem is that any automation gets misconstrued as the same type of thing as a disinformation bot account on reddit.  

Automation is effectively the backbone of modern infrastructure. Automatically requesting a new ssl certificate to ensure that traffic to your website remains safe and encrypted is very different than a comment bot, but it's still a 'bot'.

[u/EddieVanzetti → u/fingersonlips]

Bots are important because it allows the Epstein class to divide and conquer with culture wars and flood the internet with misinformation, from vaccines safety to inflating reviews of keysmash Chinese drop shipping furniture on amazon.

[u/fingersonlips → u/EddieVanzetti]

Important for nefarious purposes and as a cover for crimes seems like a good reason to revisit and reassess how we utilize and implement this technology.

[u/justbunnies → u/albany1765]

“I’m totally not a paid shill for right wing politics!”

[u/Bencetown → u/albany1765]

Right? Like... "Oh no! The companies might have to hire PEOPLE to do things if they can't keep the bots spamming!"

[u/InfamousEvening2 → u/albany1765]

The Independent are owned by Alexander Lebedev (KGB), and family. They've always been sketchy.

[u/AJDx14 → u/albany1765]

“The torment nexus has legitimate use”

[u/NorwegianOnMobile → u/AJDx14]

People say "dont make the torment nexus" but this is peoples JOBS we'fe talking about here!

[u/thecarbonkid → u/AJDx14]

Tormenting my enemies for one

/s

[u/charlytune → u/albany1765]

The Independent is owned by Russians haha. It ceased to be a 'proper' newspaper many years ago. 

[u/Dark3lephant → u/albany1765]

Yeah, bots are pretty good when they are clearly labelled that they are bots.

Telegram, for instance mandates having the word bot or any bot you create. Reddit also uses a ton of bots that do not hide their nature or function and they are very useful.

What is not useful is a bot set to spread misinformation or some digital mercenary from India pretending to be someone in Europe or US to push political agendas.

[u/broken_kickstand → u/albany1765]

Perhaps I’m misunderstanding, but I think the point the article is making is that there isn’t actually a ton of evidence to suggest a widespread drop in Russian bot activity.

It seems a lot of experts are also agreeing with this, the disrupted services aren’t necessarily automated propaganda bots, but probably search engine crawlers and other routine automation.

I don’t even think the article is really saying anything partisan at all. The statements about decline in social media bot activity seem to be mostly anecdotal

[u/I_Autumn → u/broken_kickstand]

People greatly underestimate how many of these propaganda "bots" are actually just humans on alt-accounts. Underestimate how easy it is for one individual to manage several dozen accounts simultaneously, and how profitable it is for an oligarch to run a troll farm or two or three, filled with individuals willing to do that.

The behavior of the "bots" was basically identical 12 years ago. Large-scale bot campaigns weren't at all practical back then. Even today, human troll farms are very often the best way to go.

[u/bigbrentos → u/I_Autumn]

There are bots, but they aren't usually google sized data centers. It's like a specialized shelf of cell phones plugged in to chargers running some automated posting scripts. These guys can like run it in a closet of a scamming call center.

[u/buttorsomething → u/albany1765]

Right like skewed data is not good data so it’s all bad.

Akschually

[u/IntelArtiGen → u/albany1765]

Articles claiming it's disinformation bots have 10k upvotes so if this one being more factual is lame I wonder what the conflating articles are.

[u/copperblood]

RIP r/conservative 🤣

[u/SciFiPi → u/copperblood]

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

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

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

[u/3FingersDown → u/copperblood]

Nobody posted there for 8 hours following the attack. No joke, go look for yourself.

[u/fkenned1 → u/3FingersDown]

This is actually insane and absolutely needs to be looked at both by reddit (and all the other platforms), and our government, after this POS admin is gone or neutered obviously).

[u/MultiMidden → u/fkenned1]

SM companies don't care, the bots create/drive engagement statistics which in turn drives the value of advertising space which in turn drives income.

[u/Ulrich_de_Vries → u/MultiMidden]

Not to mention many of the companies' owners are absolutely aligned with the fascists politically so there is a good chance they'd even want this even if they had no direct financial gain from the bots.

[u/BussyPlaster → u/MultiMidden]

I believe Reddit not only wants the bots on this platform but even engages in deploying them. When the new-ish automated username suggestion system rolled out for new users some years ago I suspect this was in part to make bot deployment easier while also having the effect of better hiding the bots. Instead of bots just spamming keys for usernames like "djri3ihdqm2" and explicitly spamming ads and promotions, now they just take given name offered which has the effect of blending them in better with "normal" users, allowing them to engage in higher level subterfuge.

[u/boughsmoresilent → u/BussyPlaster]

This combined with being able to hide post and comment history makes identifying bots borderline impossible. I've been on Reddit for 15 years and have seen the steep decline in comment quality correlated with those two decisions, and I absolutely believe Reddit made those decisions to deliberately hide bot and other manipulative activity.

I don't know why I'm even on here anymore tbh. Habit, I guess. Even the hobby communities I used to love are getting flooded with poorly-disguised advertisements.

[u/BussyPlaster → u/boughsmoresilent]

I don't know why I'm even on here anymore tbh.

I only browse during my downtime at work. If I retired I would probably never look at reddit again because there are 1,000 other things I would rather be doing 😂

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

Exactly why, ironically, capitalists love communist propaganda bots. It makes money.

Preserve what little sanity American consumers have left by stopping state run propaganda... BUT THINK OF THE REVENUE?!

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

As Lenin supposedly said "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them" another variation is "When it comes time to hang the capitalists, they will vie with each other for the rope contract"

[u/ice_up_s0n → u/MultiMidden]

My company does not advertise on high bot platforms like X largely because of the insane volume of bots there. We don't want to waste our marketing dollars on robot eyes

[u/Stargost_ → u/ice_up_s0n]

I used to work for a co-op which also decided to pull advertisement from several sites after I compiled strong evidence of the high bot traffic on said sites.

I'm surprised more companies don't do that considering how expensive running those ads can get.

[u/Bagline → u/MultiMidden]

Bots don't buy things. Bad ROI will lead to lower price for those ads or just pulling them altogether, and we'll be left with only political ads because your vote is still extremely valuable.

[u/renaissance1977 → u/MultiMidden]

Reddit stopped caring about where their content comes from and started caring about restrictign content that didn't inflate their wallets as soon as they went IPO.

[u/roamingandy → u/fkenned1]

If Reddit banned those accounts and got better at blocking new ones from the same source.. the Trump admin would demand they remove those blocks immediately.

US companies cannot fight this. The world needs alternatives to the US social tech hegemony.. and no Tiktok isn't any better, just different lies.

[u/chemicalclarity → u/roamingandy]

Tiktok is a US company for a lot of the users here. They sold, remember

[u/Rope_slingin_champ → u/fkenned1]

Reddit doesnt care about bots. It feeds off of it.

[u/moddsblow4fun → u/Rope_slingin_champ]

gotta keep those fake user numbers up.

who else remembers Musk complaining about this issue and trying to get out of buying Twitter as a result, only to completely flip on the issue once he owned twitter?

same shit

[u/GiganticCrow → u/moddsblow4fun]

Remember him promising transparency and releasing the nothingburger 'twitter files' then promptly going completely opaque

[u/DontCountToday → u/fkenned1]

Just a year or two ago r/conservative posts were analyzed and found that just 5 account made up something like 90% of all threads, and a small number of commentors made up the majority of engagement. And they then tied at least those 5 accounts making the posts to a Russian bot farm.

So yeah, not remotely shocking.

[u/burnermcburnerstein → u/fkenned1]

Not much hope Re: USgovt. Hopefully Spain, France, the UK, Australia, or Canada take action though.

[u/paperman990 → u/fkenned1]

Reddit doesn’t want people to realize that most of their traffic is bots

[u/Sweet_Concept2211 → u/3FingersDown]

I went and looked.

You are correct.

Also, the number of pro-Russia comments in later posts after the 8-hour gap dropped to almost zero.

[u/Summer_Moon2 → u/Sweet_Concept2211]

I mean everyone already knew that entire sub was just Russian bots, but it's still wild to see just how dead it really is.

[u/jeffjefforson → u/3FingersDown]

Fuckin hell yeah it just blacks out for a full 8 hours

I expected a decrease in traffic but damn

[u/simpersly → u/3FingersDown]

And before that its pretty consistent with a system of 1-2 posts every hour.

[u/paws5624 → u/3FingersDown]

Someone posted on an article about the talerico thing that “we are weeks away from an election and this is the closest we have to election coverage? What’s wrong with us?”

If only they could think about that a little further

[u/Financial-Desk-669 → u/3FingersDown]

They panicked and flooded the zone this morning lol

[u/InsertCleverNickHere → u/3FingersDown]

A news story about a dawn raid on Ilhan Omar's house has 36 comments at nearly 9AM CDT. Fascist DHS goons knocking down the door of a suspected Somalian fraud grifter who married her brother (according to them)? That shit should have a couple thousand boot-licking comments by now.

[u/WorryNew3661 → u/3FingersDown]

Holy shit, from 11 hours ago, to 3 hours ago there were no posts at all

[u/moddsblow4fun → u/3FingersDown]

Even on a busy day, it's like 4 accounts are almost 90% of the posts.

[u/justbunnies → u/3FingersDown]

Even the post now have far less comments than usual. This is hilarious.

[u/LifeDynamo → u/3FingersDown]

I don't think actual people are even ALLOWED to post there.

I'm not kidding.

I've tried to engage with conservatives about Trump's policies, and the extent to which they are consistent with professed conservative philosophy.

My posts are never replied to and I doubt anyone can even see them.

R/conservative is actually r/russianbots.

[u/Apprehensive-Sea7120 → u/3FingersDown]

Get in there and downvote stuff!

[u/Dependent_Survey_546 → u/3FingersDown]

I didnt believe it, but that actually seems to be a thing that happened 🤣

[u/Year2020MadeMe → u/copperblood]

Holy shit! It’s a ghost town over there. Comments are almost non existent and the posts are so few and far between.

Im not ignorant to the fact that mass levels of bot accounts exist throughout all social media platforms, but it’s still crazy to actually witness an example live like this and not have to reference aggregated system level data to prove the point.

Wild.

[u/PornPedant76 → u/Year2020MadeMe]

OMG that is hilarious!

[u/odin_the_wiggler → u/Year2020MadeMe]

God, it's almost like the vast majority of social media driven engagement is bot related to drive investment.

[u/lil_poppapump → u/copperblood]

It’s funny how true this comment is, but no one from the folks that post there to Reddit will care or attempt to do anything about it.

[u/BoringPudding3986 → u/copperblood]

I literally made a comment in /r/conservative about Russian bots being down to someone asking why no articles about Talarico were coming out, that was 10+ hours ago. No one has taken it down nor replied. It really looks like Russian bots are indeed gone from Reddit

[u/iamtehryan → u/copperblood]

😂 it's funny how true this is

[u/Knownzero → u/copperblood]

The difference in the number of replies pre and post attack is astonishing. From 4 figures worth of replies on a post to 10’s and 100’s.

[u/Sweet_Concept2211]

It is not that complicated at all.

Bots are destroying public discourse.

Companies like Meta not only stopped fighting them, but are now actively embracing them, rolling out virtual people to interact with their user's pages.

There need to be strict laws against bots posing as "akshual humans".

The destruction of Russian troll factories in an election year is a net win for everyone who cares about democracy.

[u/hagenissen999 → u/Sweet_Concept2211]

Meta is directly interfering in the Brazilian election, right now. Instagram and Facebook is getting inundated with anti Silva propaganda.

[u/Didsterchap11 → u/hagenissen999]

As much as people point the finger at Russia, it conveniently leaves out just how much American social media companies are more than happy to facilitate this happening. Facebook was more than happy to rig Brexit as we saw under the Cambridge analytica scandal, and that’s not even getting into what they’ve done to Myanmar.

[u/GiganticCrow → u/Didsterchap11]

Russia and the US developed expertise in this shit during the cold war

[u/Longjumping_Win_7770 → u/Didsterchap11]

Arab spring and the interference in the Ukranian elections are two that come to mind. 

[u/ahac → u/Sweet_Concept2211]

And now "AI" is learning on those bot posts too...

[u/SeeMarkFly → u/ahac]

Yes, A.I. is learning to deceive.

Why are we teaching it that??? Ooh yea...MONEY!

[u/Mooch07 → u/Sweet_Concept2211]

Making a robot pose as a human needs to be a crime. 

[u/stamfordbridge1191 → u/Sweet_Concept2211]

Best the tech bros can offer is "age verification" measures that compile even more of your data that will somehow wind up feeding their bot profile engines more of your identity to impersonate.

[u/Proper-Coffee-3169 → u/Sweet_Concept2211]

Its amazing to me how Meta and tech giants just did an about face regsrding doing good and abandon doing anything about bots or misinformation.

I bet going forward they'll suck up to whoever in order to keep not having to regulate there services.

Disgusting.

[u/Striking_Assist_7715]

Nope, this is a win win for the entire planet. 

[u/Timmy-0518 → u/Striking_Assist_7715]

Not quite! There are some Russian puppets very whinny right now

[u/hiiiiiizev → u/Timmy-0518]

Like Elon complaining about data centers being attacked when his traffic lowered

[u/akhenatron → u/Timmy-0518]

Like they said, win-win.

[u/DataCassette]

A billionaire literally got on the phone and paid for this article. Exaggerating the prominence of Chud beliefs amongst the general population is part of the aristocratic "populist" playbook and they're trying to figure out how to explain away why it's suddenly 2012 again whenever Russia happens to be knocked offline.

[u/charlytune → u/DataCassette]

A Russian billionaire owns that paper. The editorial staff probably know what is expected without being told.

[u/GetsBetterAfterAFew → u/DataCassette]

While youre not wrong my friend, no billionaire got on a phone from his yacht in The Mediterranean to demand a story .The billionaires have built a sophisticated network of propaganda production that works without their micromanagement. This shit works like a bot works and teams of people work around the clock sending out talking points to outlets specifically designed to propagandize the masses. These people have plausible deniability that works just like their propaganda centers, theyre distanced from all of it to appear as though they arent legally involved. 

Every second of every day systems are telling media like Fox News, CBS and the neverending "news" outlets what to say, this even includes the shitty little am talk shows in my city in nowheres-ville with literally 1000 listeners.

This is why Hasan Piker has been the topic on both right and the left for a few months now, because he talks without the talking points.

[u/DjScenester → u/DataCassette]

That’s a bingo!

[u/mtranda]

"But the truth is far more complicated". Well, I went down a pretty shallow rabbit hole and looked into who owns "The Independent".

• Evgeny Lebedev. Ruzzian-British businessman. His father worked for the KGB and he arrived in the UK when he was 8 as his father worked for the ruzzian embassy - 41%
• Sultan Muhammad Abuljadayel - a saudi investor - 30%

[u/txyesboy71 → u/mtranda]

Trent Crim does not approve

[u/FriendToPredators → u/txyesboy71]

They fired Trent Crim for doing the moral thing

[u/Shot-Ad-8015 → u/mtranda]

Seems like its not that complicated.

[u/GiganticCrow → u/mtranda]

Yeah The Independent hasn't been Independent since the 2010s

[u/Crazy-Pain5214 → u/mtranda]

Well that makes it simple

[u/some1whosux]

Where did all the Republicans go?

[u/becauseiloveyou → u/some1whosux]

You say this as if they aren't going to vote as consistently as they have for the last century while most of the left will performatively show up because there's a Republican president while sitting out the midterms like they have nearly every time there's a Democratic one (see [most recently] 2010, 2014, and 2022).

[u/Thedrakespirit]

"The truth is far more complicated" --> no its not. There are knock on effects and now we can see which shit spewing corners of the net are starting to dry out because komrade-bot isnt there. not that hard at all

[u/VTArxelus → u/Thedrakespirit]

My thoughts exactly. Now we can see the real people that need to be avoided behind the bots.

[u/aStonedDeer]

I don’t understand how bot farms are a legal form of expression for the elite and it should be stopped.

[u/deeptechdegen]

I would argue the troll farms rather than the oil are more important to Putin

He is exploiting the asymetry to divide us since we have freedom of speech. Good thing Ukraine is also free to bomb his data centers. Good riddance I say

[u/BadgerValuable8207]

It’s not bots that worry me as much as paid troll farms

[u/WashedSylvi → u/BadgerValuable8207]

This is essentially the way bots were used before

“Russian bot farms” have been around since the early 2000s, people were reporting on them at hacker conferences in 2008. They’re just rooms of people running a bunch of accounts.

And if Russia has been doing it, I’m sure other global state powers have been doing it too.

Modern AI has just automated some of the process

[u/quick20minadventure → u/BadgerValuable8207]

Yeah, trolling is a ancient tradition, an activity done solo when you're on toilet or getting bored at work.

[u/DrunkCorgis]

If you read through to the last paragraph of this bullshit article, you finally get to their “point”:

“[bots] can be used to update search engines or to collect data that can be used to train artificial intelligence systems, for instance.”

So, these assholes are claiming that the benefit of destroying disinformation bots is “complicated” by also losing bots that scrape the internet for training AI?

Clearly, the world needs to be bombing more data centers. These writers are either morons, or AI.

[u/linerva]

I think it's probably true that Russia has more bots abd other data centres.

But any removal of bot slop and interference is a positive development.

[u/marx2k]

Watching right wing subreddits die out temporarily is revealing. It reminds me when twitter banned thousands of Qanon members and Republican representative started complaining that so much of their followers got banned.

https://www.businessinsider.com/gop-officials-lost-most-twitter-followers-qanon-purge-2021-1

Shit was hilarious

[u/things_U_choose_2_b]

I'm not going to take any information at all from The Independent, knowing it is owned by Lord Lebvedev. You know, the dodgy son of a KGB agent who Boris Johnson ditched his security detail to party with, before making him 'Lord of Sibera' specifically against the advice of our security services.

It's prob hard to notice if you weren't reading their output before Lebvedev bought it, but it's very subtly anti-Labour now, and much more click-bait-y. Telegraph-lite. His father paid £1 for it, totally above board purchase.

If you think Russian oligarchs / 'ex' KGB agents are buying our newspapers for ethical or journalistic integrity reasons, I've got a bridge you can buy.

[u/williamgman]

Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, Lauren Chen, and Dave Rubin just entered the chat.

[u/OnePointSixOne8 → u/williamgman]

Didn’t they all get Russian money?

[u/shitty_mcfucklestick → u/williamgman]

This is the problem. The Russian bots were just seeds. The seeds have sprouted into domestic propaganda machines. All the far right / conservative “news” publications these fucking MAGA and Maple MAGA’s consume on social media are locally driven (originally inspired and trained by Russian troll tactics.) This shit spreads like a virus.

[u/tc100292]

However, bots are used for plenty of good or morally neutral purposes, too. One of the key contributors to such bot traffic is “crawlers”, which scan the internet to gather up data.

Ah, so they also shut down data-scraping, and the author treats this as a loss. What a weirdo.

[u/CelticSnakes]

The truth is, there’s bound to be plenty more such troll-bot farms. But this was great to hear.

[u/Cancel_Still]

I think we should remove all bots from all social media. I think this could be done pretty easily in a way that doesn't really sacrifice privacy via a combination of biometrics and cryptographic encryption. I think. But there is a strong financial incentive not to do this because users would see their feeds get a lot more empty and it would b harder for the corpos to algorithmically lock us into the feeds.

Edit: someone in the comments shared this link, which seems highly relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof

[u/fractalife → u/Cancel_Still]

Privacy

Biometrics

Pick one.

Yes, it's technically possible. No, we should never trust them to maintain our privacy.

[u/SoggyMattress2 → u/Cancel_Still]

Governments would never ever do it, that's how they win elections.

Look at the Cambridge analytica scandal with the UK and pushing public sentiment to leave the European union.

It's a tool to push narratives.

Corporations would also never do it because it would tank 50% of their traffic, and advertiser's would pay them less.

[u/Mayonaigg → u/Cancel_Still]

I've been seeing "ai created profile" in Instagram comments a lot lately. Just bits with fake pictures randomly leaving totally idiotic irrelevant comments on posts. What the fuck is the point of that? Literally how does that benefit humanity in any way? 

[u/garlopf → u/Cancel_Still]

It seems the Ukraine solution is very effective. why change a working system.

[u/AnonymousCapybara72 → u/garlopf]

Because nobody wants to drop bombs on the Iranian, American, British, Chinese datacenters doing the same thing.

[u/TyrannasaurMan → u/Cancel_Still]

Biometrics and Cybersecurity. It’s possible to be done the way you think.

Should it happen?

FUUUUUUUCK NO

You think the tech companies that sold your personal and consumer information won’t do the same for your biometric data. Holy shit if your personal information is silver, your biometric information is gold.

[u/greenskye → u/TyrannasaurMan]

They are going to get identity verification to accurately determine who is and isn't a bot (so they can get more AI training data) AND not actually do anything to stop bots either.

[u/eventualist → u/Cancel_Still]

What about just having a wholesome feed with family and friends post and other content that we deem acceptable? Like it used to be before the bots got here.

[u/0bsessions324 → u/Cancel_Still]

Piling on, we have so many examples to provide that tell us exactly how much more of a problem giving up biometric data just to access the Internet than bots could hope to present.

As it stands, Discord has already fucked up twice with securing ID information that governments have required them to compile to keep kids off of social media, and that's just the hackers.

[u/alueron]

Its like French aristocracy paying the town criers to explain how executing them won't help bring about a more equal system.

[u/illol01]

Did a bot write this article? Because I think the majority of humans who understand what happened are kinda happy!

[u/bcoder001]

I like this new firewall. I'll take six more (there are six Yandex data centres left).

[u/mayorofanything]

My life has never been improved by a bot pretending to be human, and OP needs to touch the grass before they build a data center on it.

[u/rufotris]

Anyone else notice a HUGE reduction in the reposting of the same 100 videos in the last 24+ hours?! Funny that the usual comments I see certain YouTube channels get just aren’t coming in today…

[u/watch_out_4_snakes]

Prolly not that complicated really.

[u/bizwebcopy]

No, it's not.

[u/ROMVLVSCAESARXXI]

Keep up the good work, Ukraine!

[u/HonestBobcat7171]

Good, now let's remove the rest. Ruzzia is just the tip of the iceberg.

[u/likewowser]

Each social media company is complicit.  They know exactly who and how many bots there are.  They can shut this down in a day.

[u/_ram_ok]

“However, bots are used for plenty of good or morally neutral purposes, too. One of the key contributors to such bot traffic is “crawlers”, which scan the internet to gather up data”

Bruh Russia is literally invading and massacring other nations. How the fuck can you justify any of its presence on the web as a good thing.

They’re using bots to meddle in elections and spread propaganda worldwide. There’s no “necessary evils” because of the “good” things you imagine come from Russia bots.

This article is pro-Russian propaganda. This authors statement is basically treasonous. “Our enemy does plenty of good”, dude what are you talking about?

[u/thwinks]

The person who wrote the article is an idiot who thinks everything automated is the same as everything else.

A bot is just an automated piece of code that visits a website and does something automatically.

Given that, yeah, technically there are good bots. Web crawlers ensure your site gets found and indexed on search engine. Technically web crawlers are bots.

But the vast majority of bot traffic is not helpful stuff like web crawlers. And when smart person uses the term "bot traffic", they are implying "nefarious" or "spam" bot traffic.

The person who wrote the article is equivocating on the term "bot" which can simultaneously mean "spam bot" and (much less commonly) "automated web services".

No one who knows what they're talking about is calling helpful web services bot traffic.

Shutting down a Russian bot farm is a good thing, and there's no silver lining to the bots they got rid of.

[u/hiimtoddornot]

Whoops looks like we missed one

[u/ShrimpleyPibblze]

Most folks aren’t even going to notice, they’ll be aware there are generally less posts but that’s likely to be it.

Then in a couple of weeks when they’re back at capacity there’ll be a massive uptick in racist shitposting again, and they won’t notice that either.

Anyone who’s ever spent any reasonable amount of time on the internet should immediately notice how shitty it’s become in the past 1 - 3 years.

[u/LuxInTenebrisLove → u/ShrimpleyPibblze]

I left facebook last year largely because all my fan and crafting groups seemed inundated with vitriol, to a level that didn't match with the reality of normal human behvior.  I don't want to go back to FB, but I would like to know what is happening in those groups today.

[u/AsteriAcres → u/ShrimpleyPibblze]

These data centers can't be rebuilt in a couple of weeks. They may try to outsource, but that infrastructure is decimated.

HOPEFULLY, Ukraine targets & destroys even more. 🙏 

[u/x86_64_]

However, bots are used for plenty of good or morally neutral purposes, too. One of the key contributors to such bot traffic is “crawlers”, which scan the internet to gather up data.

I guess the only discrepancy here is that Russian bots exist to destabilize the free world, spread propaganda and interfere with elections, not just gather metrics and search metadata. It's a nuanced difference I know

/s

[u/MeatImmediate6549]

"Let me tell you why bots are actually good for the world," ~ Signed, some bot probably

[u/MoBrosBooks → u/MeatImmediate6549]

Bots are Influencing your Opinions, and Here’s Why That’s a Good Thing

[u/Fallingdamage]

Amazing that just these specific targets made such a big difference.

Almost as if social media sites could proactively block the IP's of these buildings and solve the problem themselves.

Makes you wonder what kind of social media you're supporting.

[u/AccomplishedBrain309]

Russian bots are dragging down society, normalizing anti democratic fear and pushing eu countries to war. Fuck Putin the clown of the eu.

[u/Just_Section4489]

Wait, Musk is saying Zelensky has gone too far? Does that mean the voting manipulation strategy is also fouled?

[u/Misanthropic_Mutters]

Butthurt bot scared to get bombed by Ukraine wrote this

[u/peaceful_pancakes]

sounds like something a bot would say

[u/Broadband-]

The herd spent the weekend debating a Cloudflare chart, while rail investigations in three countries stayed open instead of landing on a likely perpetrator. Yandex lost its index, Russians scrambled for three days on the Cloudflare service, while Russian troll farms kept their hours on American hosting. That is what the data says, so far.

https://www.flyingpenguin.com/drones-hit-yandex-so-cloudflare-kept-the-russians-online/

[u/Sodacan259 → u/Broadband-]

It kinda misses the point. The only metric, out of all of the irrelevant metrics it goes through, that matters is current bot activity compared to previous bot activity.

Which domains are still available, or how they are keeping those domains running, is utterly irrelevant.

[u/coporate]

It’d be a great news day if the internet research agency in Russia were to be decimated.

[u/damik]

I noticed John Smith from Asbury, Iowa hasn't posted anything new on Facebook recently.

[u/MrShigsy89 → u/damik]

Also Yuri, the "realist Ukrainian" is suddenly not posting about how Ukraine need to negotiate and be willing to give up territory anymore.

[u/SmarmySmurf]

Its not complicated. Less Russian bots is 100% good. Russia being hurt is 100% good. Anyone or any media that says otherwise is compromised.

No exceptions.

[u/TheFrontCrashesFirst]

My question is: is this why the US is obsessed with building data centers? To launch their own bots against the Russian/Chinese bots and attempt to sow misinformation?

Edit: what an impressive amount of responses. We're doomed.

[u/PseudoWarriorAU → u/TheFrontCrashesFirst]

No not at all. They the rich investors in all of this love Russian bots as they are pro oligarchs and anti democracy - something that all these powerful and rich people are interested in.

[u/ManiMaiz → u/TheFrontCrashesFirst]

Russia and China have the massive advantage of maintaining a censored internet. Our disinformation bots are much less effective than theirs.

[u/Urbanexploration2021 → u/TheFrontCrashesFirst]

Not sure why you think american bots wouldn't work with the russian ones

[u/Ur-in-a-tor]

How the fuck is Russia allowed to have outbound Internet connections??? They've been in one-sided information war against the civilized world for over a decade now.

Yes I know Russian bots give a tremendous boost to right wing inhumane rhetoric, but fuck them powermongers too.

[u/Angreek → u/Ur-in-a-tor]

They even broke off a division specifically for it. GRU. The logo is Batman logo over the earth.

[u/DataCassette → u/Ur-in-a-tor]

Cutting Russia off the internet needs to become the first order of business for the free world.

[u/DrifterWI → u/DataCassette]

Meta is an Internet virus. It needs to go too!

[u/AdministrativeTrain]

The independent is muddying the waters because it relies on those f*cking bot farms itself.

[u/coffeesnob7]

There are no decent use of bots on the Internet, maybe moderation at a push. Seriously people don't want to interact with shitty bot farms, can only hope the rest are taken down as well.

[u/FauxGw2]

It's not complicated at all, the people hate them the companies loves them.

[u/RichSavageMG]

Check out who owns the independent 

[u/ExplosiveBrown]

YouTube is utterly infested

[u/Splurch]

"But the truth is far more complicated" - No, it isn't, author is just an idiot.

[u/reddit001aa1]

Well, let's keep reducing Yandex as a "test" of sorts. There are 6 more remaining?

[u/helen269]

The bots will return in Avengers Doomsday.

[u/Mother-Fix3271]

It really isn’t “for more complicated”.

[u/basheworking]

Reddit traffic drops by 80%

[u/Bubbly-Treacle-4334]

Bots posing as humans should be banned from social media unless clearly flagged as bots and imo opinion should obviously be illegal.

Humans on social media who are being paid for their activity should be required to disclose that as well. Companies, political entities, governments, etc should not be allowed to pay people or bots to pretend to be regular folks in order to trick public opinion.

I feel like this is such an obvious thing

[u/Phewelish]

i just did a post on facebook and so far...it looks real.

I usually get tons of "trump supporters" saying some outlandish but generic things that seem pretty inhumane to say in the context of my posts.

this new posts has comments and nto a single one is in support of trump. not one is tryiing to defend it or calling me some names. Its all trump hate which tells me , the bot smust be affected

[u/rememberpianocat]

I'd be okay going back to 90's internet. Dont care if there are "good" bots...

[u/PyroIsSpai]

What complicated? What POSSIBLE good comes of Russian botnets?

[u/Narradisall]

I would honestly love a site like Reddit that banned bots and did everything active to stop them.

Reddit of old still had bots, but the site had very different discourse over a decade ago.

These days you have to really curate your feed and mute subs to get a half decent experience and still youre likely to end up with a lot of bot content.

[u/Gleebingloitch]

"however bots also do good things..." shaddap. the truth is less complicated. we need to drag our anchors near their fiberoptics.

[u/SubterrelProspector]

Evil flying monkeys: "Wicked Witch ain't so bad."

[u/marius_phosphoros]

Unmarked bots are the greatest online lie. Online should be people interacting and jerking with each other. That was the whole point of it. Not algorithms acting like people to deceive and influence opinions.