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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  • TanteRegenbogen@feddit.org
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    13 days 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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      12 days 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.