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

  • Señor Mono@feddit.orgEnglish
    1352·
    1 day ago

    So. Just so the internet gets usable again, we need a gofundme-campaign for ongoing long range strikes on data centers.

    • Photonic@lemmy.worldEnglish
      20·
      1 day ago

      Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, there are still a lot of fucked up actual people around

      • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        2·
        13 hours ago

        The internet will never be “pure” or a utopian wonderland, but taking out significant sources of bot traffic definitely make it better.

      • Señor Mono@feddit.orgEnglish
        43·
        1 day ago

        Yea. But my ethics dictate not to use cruise missiles or drones on them, so I prefer hardware losses 🤷‍♂️

        • Photonic@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          1 day ago

          Same here, but I just don’t think this was enough to make the internet as a whole usable again.

          • GreyEyedGhost@piefed.caEnglish
            4·
            21 hours ago

            You can actually keep up with the misinformation, though, when it isn’t amplified a thousand times.

          • Señor Mono@feddit.orgEnglish
            12·
            22 hours ago

            See, instead of outing yourself as moron, you could have asked: I’m pro defensive actions, especially on Ukrainians ground. I’m pro long strike missiles on strategic targets. I’m against indifferent targeting of civilian life like the Russians do it.

            So… anything to add?

        • Photonic@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          21 hours ago

          This is just one facility three facilities. I’m sure there are loads of them scattered worldwide trying to destabilise western democracies.

          • trebach@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            1·
            35 minutes ago

            Those three supposedly are over half of Yandex’s compute capacity. The rest are in striking distance too.

            • Photonic@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              26 minutes ago

              I’m not trying to downplay the value of what the Ukrainian army has achieved!

              My point was about the hyperbolical comment that the internet would return to its normal usable form. I don’t want to sound too pessimistic, but Yandex isn’t the only one in Russia, nor is Russia the only country in the world trying to destabilise the west through the spread of misinformation.

    • GenosseFlosse@feddit.orgEnglish
      61·
      23 hours ago

      It would be trivial to just set up the operation on AWS or Microsoft servers in the US. I guess the reason the have not done it is that the US would have full insight in the software, users and social media accounts they’re using, which might be an issue if the government changes.