Reform figures see social media engagement drop as bot accounts 'fall silent'
www.thelondoneconomic.com
The social media engagement on posts from Reform UK figures appears to have dropped in the wake of Ukrainian strikes on Russian data centres.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11858823

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Over the weekend, Ukraine carried out a co-ordinated drone strike against several major Russian data centres. This completely decimated Russia’s Yandex, … which controls more than 70% of search traffic in the country, and has reportedly resulted in a dramatic fall in bot traffic from the Yandex network.

As per the bot analysts at Tom’s Hardware, bot traffic from the Yandex network has dropped to just 0.4% of the maximum number of HTTP requests recorded in the past two weeks. That means activity from automated, Russian-hosted accounts has been virtually eliminated on social media.

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As a result, the social media engagement on posts from [far-right] Reform UK figures appears to have dropped in the wake of Ukrainian strikes on Russian data centres.

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There has already been a strong and significant impact on bot traffic in countries such as France and Germany.

David Colon, a French information operations researcher, has noted a huge difference in the performance of narratives generated by the Russia-linked information operations group, Storm-1516.

The silencing of the bots also appears to have caused a dramatic drop in activity around Germany’s far-right AfD…

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Amongst others, the article is citing Britain’s Reform politician Richard Tice. Three posts on X from the Reform deputy leader to his almost 400,000 followers on Monday, 11 October [hadn’t] hit triple figures for reposts or comments, with one not even reaching 10,000 views … Before the Ukrainian strikes on the Russia data centres, Tice’s posts got considerably more engagement, consistently hitting triple figures for comments and reposts, whilst racking up hundreds of thousands of views.

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A similar pattern can be seen when it comes to other far-right figures such as Nigel Farage [the linked article is given evidence about that].

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As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky himself said after the strikes on Russian data centres, it’s suddenly become a “little easier to breathe” on social media.

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Archived

  • dtx@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2075·
    1 day ago

    This is misleading. Those HTTP requests from the Yandex network are mostly Yandex search engine crawlers. There is no reliable link to numbers about social media bots. source

    • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldEnglish
      689·
      1 day ago

      Thank you, nine-month-old .ml account with one comment, for your input – input which refuses to engage with anything in this article in favor of a strawman.

      • Glide@piefed.caEnglish
        116·
        23 hours ago

        Purely anecdotal, but I also feel like I’ve been seeing far fewer random .ml accounts defending fascist dictators in the past few days. Normally, a thread like this would be overwhelmed with them, and anyone who disagreed would have 5-10 downvotes. Today there’s exactly one, and the people shitting on him are “winning” the votes.

        To be fair, this is also not Lemmy.world, or any of the more “mainstream” Lemmy communities.

        • archwaycurl@piefed.socialEnglish
          74·
          23 hours ago

          Well, while the bots are quiet, it is worth mentioning that y’all should ignore the downvotes and say what you want to say. The whole voting bullshit has a chilling effect on speech and it’s clear that ‘they’ know that and like it.

          • Glide@piefed.caEnglish
            53·
            23 hours ago

            This is why I put “winning” in quotes. It’s meaningless, but it’s useful for specific observations about things like brigading.

        • Honytawk@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          85·
          20 hours ago

          100% yes

          They got some weirdos, sure. Every group of that size would. But they aren’t mostly weirdo’s that spew Russian propaganda like .ml

          Also, is their account 9 month old and only have a single comment? No. You pick one aspect and make it seem like your arguments are the same.

    • tardigrade@scribe.disroot.orgOPEnglish
      685·
      1 day ago

      The http requests are only one point of information, the article links more sources and investigations in addition to that. All point in the same direction.

    • Denjin@feddit.ukEnglish
      379·
      1 day ago

      Oh look, an ml denies Russia are the bad guys. Everyone scratch that off your daily Lemmy bingo card.