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

  • tardigrade@scribe.disroot.orgOP
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    1 day ago

    The previous post is an ml propaganda account.

    Where did the recent drop in social media engagement of European far-right party members come from? I posted an article yesterday with examples for that, and everyone can go these accounts looking it up.

    • boonhet@lemmy.zip
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      18 hours ago

      Can you prove there’s even been a drop? The article did not. It compares old posts to new ones when old ones have had more time to accumulate views and retweets. Would need access to historical data to actually know anything e.g average retweets after first 24 hours or something like that

    • Majoran@feddit.org
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      1 day ago

      The previous post is an ml propaganda account.

      Yes, I looked into the persons account. A 5 year old account which is repeatedly looking for better evidence regarding this topic while asserting that this given data does not meet the proper quality standards. Also strongly investigated in open source products and a stand against AI code. As I just said: Everyone who isn’t exactly following your rhetoric is a Tankie and a propaganda account.

      tbh I believe you are a Tankie. By undermining western discourse culture you are a false flag operation payed by Putin to discredit European ideals. Makes sense, right?

      • TanteRegenbogen@feddit.org
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        1 day ago

        Gonna stop you right there. Arthur Besse is proven tankie and tardigrade is proven to not be one. Both of em tend to be campists though. Arthur being the anti-west kind. Tardigrade being the pro-west kind.

        • Majoran@feddit.org
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          1 day ago

          I’m not going to stalk through another persons complete user history, but judging from this comment chain, I remember times where tankie meant ‘defending unapologetically the terrors of Stalin’ and not ‘pointing out deficiencies in western journalist standards’, but I guess words and meanings are quite fluent these days.

          • TanteRegenbogen@feddit.org
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            1 day ago

            Arthur Besse isn’t called a tankie because of this thread, but because it has been already substantiated for more than a year that he’s a tankie. For people who can see who deleted what in the modlog, Arthur deletes comments for rather mild critiques of the CCP and Marxist-Leninist figures all the time. Dessalines is a lot more present on that though.

    • Arthur Besse@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      The previous post is an ml propaganda account.

      imagine thinking this is a propaganda account, lmao 😭

      Where did the recent drop in social media engagement of European far-right party members come from? I posted an article yesterday with examples for that, and everyone can go these accounts looking it up.

      This post? That is the same article as is linked in this post, and exactly what I did look up to verify in my comment at the top of this very thread.

      I admittedly only checked their first example, to be fair, but given that the fascist who’s lack-of-retweets they’re saying is evidence also had just 6 RTs on a tweet before the strikes… I expect to find the similar non-evidence in the other two also.

      To be clear: I don’t doubt that those chuds have lots of fake followers, and they probably do buy twitter engagement, and sure they could be buying it from Russia… I’m just saying the narrative about these yandex strikes causing a drop in inauthentic behavior appears to be bogus as far as I can tell.

      • TanteRegenbogen@feddit.org
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        1 day ago

        You are just as convinced that you don’t blatantly spread propaganda as tardigrade. You two calling the other propagandists when you both are reminds me of the spidermans pointing at each other meme.

        1000073888

        • Arthur Besse@lemmy.ml
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          1 day ago

          i assume you’re probably saying i “spread propaganda” because i posted something you disagreed with elsewhere, but do you actually think i’m spreading propaganda here in this thread? i am honestly, out of personal curiosity, trying to determine if there is any truth in this narrative about the yandex datacenter strikes. i think i’ve been clear that i’m not actually absolutely certain that there is not, but so far all of the “evidence” for it i’ve seen presented is falling apart.

          "is this a pigeon" meme showing TenteRegenbogen mistaking arthur pointing out bad reporting for propaganda

          • TanteRegenbogen@feddit.org
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            24 hours ago

            I am saying you spread propaganda because it has been proven time and time again that you do. Same goes for tardigrade. In this instance, tardigrade is more wrong, because the claims have been partially debunked.

            PS: Also nowhere did I say it was propaganda in this instance, but that you are known to spread propaganda in general.

            • Arthur Besse@lemmy.ml
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              22 hours ago

              nowhere did I say it was propaganda in this instance

              you didn’t say it but you strongly implied it by saying in this thread that i “spread propaganda” without mentioning (until your later comments, thanks) that you don’t actually think what i’m saying here is “propaganda” (by which you mean, i infer, “incorrect”).

              I am saying you spread propaganda because it has been proven time and time again that you do.

              proven! lol ok, sorry i missed my trial 😂

              fwiw depending on the definition of propaganda i could actually agree with you - a lot of what i post is advocacy for something (as is some of what you post).

              eg, looking at a few of my recent posts: is this propaganda? or this? or this? i would say all three definitely are, in the sense that they are politically motivated communication, and i stand by them.

              but you’re obviously using the term “propaganda” in its pejorative sense because you disagree with (some) of what you’ve seen me advocating for (and/or agree with other things you’ve seen me debunking), which imo is intellectually dishonest. rather than say “i disagree with arthur about XYZ, but in this case the evidence is lacking for the claims being debunked in this thread” you just said that i “blatantly spread propaganda” and drew a spiderman meme equivalency between me and the other person who you now acknowledge (thanks) is “more wrong” in this case.

              • TanteRegenbogen@feddit.org
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                22 hours ago

                Honestly, this shit had been debunked like an hour after the original tweet. While there may have been a dip in some activity, the original tweet didn’t prove anything since http requests don’t prove user activity.

                And of course you will try to convince yourself you arent spreading propaganda in other instance and cherry pick stuff that obviously isnt propaganda.

                Additionally, removing this comment comparing Hamas with Republicans was you:

                1000073892

                Also you seem to like using PressTV, an Iran state-controlled outlet, in your posts on World News on lemmy.ml. You think there is no propaganda there?

                • Arthur Besse@lemmy.ml
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                  21 hours ago

                  Additionally, removing this comment comparing Hamas with Republicans was you

                  Indeed it was, and I stand by that removal! In context they were actually saying the Palestinian people deserve genocide because… checks notes Hamas won an election in 2006.

                  You must have noticed this was their previous comment in that thread:

                  screenshot of Removed Comment "I don't care what the term is, I haven't fallen for propaganda. Hamas will kill LGBTQ where they stand, it's fact. I'm sorry if this destroys your reality but come on. We already know how they treat women. If the people of Palestine actually overthrow hamasand show they want freedom for women and LGBTQ, the I will fully be on their side , but to me, wanting to help Palestine is like wanting to help southern evangelicals. Don't do that." by Nebraska_Huskers@lemmy.world

                  … but for some reason you decided to only show their second comment here? 🤔

                  Anyway, if you don’t think that is bigotry we’ll have to agree to disagree; I’m not interested in debating it. But icymi do see also the rest of that user’s modlog 🙄 (spoiler: this person claiming LGBTQ rights as their reason to support genocide was eventually banned by their own instance for transphobia)

                  Also you seem to like using PressTV, an Iran state-controlled outlet, in your posts on World News on lemmy.ml. You think there is no propaganda there?

                  PressTV is absolutely propaganda, and I am selective about what I repost from them - it’s usually something I think is news (or a newsworthy perspective) which is not being reported by western sources. Eg, this is the most recent thing I posted from there. The primary source for the story (the IRGC) is named in the headline; it isn’t like it is pretending to be something it isn’t. Do you think that post is not newsworthy? Is it better for people not to know that the IRGC is saying that? Or, what alternate source could I have linked to about it? I also post things from NYTimes, BBC, NPR, DW, etc, but I don’t think any of them covered that story. (Are those outlets all strictly not propaganda in your view?)

                  • TanteRegenbogen@feddit.org
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                    21 hours ago

                    The comment you links absolutely is shit with that last part. However the other comment wasn’t something worth removing unless it was a site ban + content removal.

                    And with the outlets and propaganda. NPR and DW aren’t good examples of western propaganda, as they tend to be less biased. NYT more. BBC is mixed.

                    And you seem to misunderstand something here. I am not a campist. Propaganda exists on both sides and it is important to keep that in mind. Though propaganda from dictatorships tend to be a bit more wild and obvious.