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

  • Insekticus@aussie.zoneEnglish
    101·
    15 days ago

    Absolute masterclass from the Ukrainins. Out here playing 4D chess by gutting those data centres. Slava Ukraini.

    • lokalhorst@feddit.orgEnglish
      41·
      15 days ago

      I think is was actually 2D chess, Russia started attacking Ukrainian data centers first and Ukraine just countered with symmetrical measures lol

      • UiUiUiUiUi@piefed.nlEnglish
        44·
        15 days ago

        So either Russia was stupid enough to start bombing datacenters first risking retaliation and exposing massive Russian influence.

        Or the Ukrainians were cleaver to bomb the Russian propaganda machine bolstering right-wing fascists in Europe.

        I don’t care who’s right, I’ll just take it as an epic win either way.

    • rbos@lemmy.caEnglish
      7·
      15 days ago

      Sort of like a Dyson fan. Move a little air to multiply a large volume.

  • abc@suppo.fiEnglish
    10·
    15 days ago

    Are there any stats from what has happened in Fediverse? There must have some effect, especially when (afaik) the fediverse does close to nothing to stop them.

  • Miisha@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    10·
    15 days ago

    The lack of transphobia on Facebook now, even if only temporary, is a really nice change. People are suddenly so kind to each other, wth 😭
    More of this please 🙏

  • Taldan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    15 days ago

    That means activity from automated, Russian-hosted accounts has been virtually eliminated on social media.

    This seems an unfounded assumption. Why would the Russian government be wholly dependant on a single private company for all their disinformation campaigns? I don’t buy it

    Further, what’s with the assumption everywhere that the Russian government is entire incapable of basic disaster recovery? Every company I’ve worked for has DR plans for complete data center losses. We could fail over in under an hour, but Russia can’t? Russia is actively at war. There is zero chance that didn’t plan four this exact scenario

    I just don’t buy the narrative being pushed. Russia is responsible for a lot of disinformation. It’s their bread and butter. They wouldn’t be so unprepared for this attack that the average person would see effects days later

    • esc@piefed.socialEnglish
      23·
      15 days ago
      1. It isn’t really a private company.
      2. Because yandex had 3 of their main sites hit, can you do ‘basic disaster ecovery’ in such conditions? There are 100% chance that they weren’t prepared for such scenario, as we can see right now.
      3. Do you believe that compute is magic and you can always get more of it by writing terraform apply?