Millions of MAGA comments crowding everywhere, especially on X certainly diminish. Zelinsky did a great job there. I'm sure Trump and his minions are not happy especially close to midterm wipeout!
et’s talk about disinfo noise reduction.
Specifically, the MASSIVE drop in online bot activity over the last 72 hours after Ukraine knocked three major Russian data centres offline.
The effect on social media was immediate and dramatic: bots almost totally disappeared.
Disruptive accounts on ALL major topics, from climate change to vaccines to political weasels and even Alberta separatists simply… went quiet after Russian’s internet services failed.
Even I was surprised by the sheer SCALE of the sudden silence.
Having become used to Blocking such accounts, I and many other pro-science, pro-democracy folks have been blinking at the sudden appearance of the sun after a decade of clouds, to use an analogy – the clouds being Russia’s disinfo dominance of online spaces.
I’ve popped some observations by several large pro-science pages in my replies below, some of which ran experiments yesterday trying to ‘bait bots’ as tests to see if their posts would attract the usual swarms of anti-science accounts mere minutes after posting.
As they discovered, social media has remained a calm, quiet place for the entire weekend.
Which goes to show just how MUCH of our online experience is shaped by Russia’s disinformation dominance tactics, using troll farms to puppet armies of bots 24/7. Yet for the last three days after Russia’s internet was mangled, millions of their accounts are now inactive, and the effect is startling in how NICE it’s made online interactions.
Of course there’s regular jerks and longtime trolls still doing their thing, but they’re FAR fewer in number without Russia’s digital legions amplifying their noise. From MAGA to Alberta’s whiny white separatist minority, such right-wing groups are suddenly finding themselves shouting into the dark without support, which is music to the ears of decent people everywhere who just want to enjoy social media without the stress of bot noise.
Unfortunately, it won’t last, as Russia is scrambling to bring backup internet assets online and shift loads to other data centre locations, though it’s unknown how successful they’ll be.
Also remember that Ukraine can hit some of those other locations as well, if they’re within range. Russia hosts 88 data centers across 23 cities, operated by 69 distinct operators, with Yandex being the largest operator – which is why Ukraine hit three of their largest locations over the past weekend.
During this unexpected lull in bot activity, I’ve been encouraging people to take notes.
Specifically, to browse and bookmark accounts suspected of being Russian bots across ALL social media platforms, ones who regularly post disruptive content and disinformation.
This will only work for actual posts, not replies, as some platforms (looking at you, Farcebook!) don’t let people browse the replies when looking at profiles, while others like Twitter (‘X’) have that as a main feature.
Speaking of Twitter: Elon is TICKED that his paid-for bot armies are suddenly useless!
He and other billionaires rely on bots to push their agendas while disrupting opposition, and it’s a great ROI: a few million a week for millions of bot ‘supporters’ to do billionaire’s bidding and give the illusion of far more influence than they actually have in reality.
Now that curtain has been drawn aside, and we can see the empty truth of it:
Bots are the means to gain real-world power, and this weekend that switch hit ‘OFF’ -hard!-
It’s a beautiful thing, really, to see the vile infrastructure of hardline right-wingers come crashing down thanks to a few precision drone strikes by Ukraine, exposing the house of cards that fascists, Republicans, Big Oil and the wellness industry have for years insisted is ‘real and representative’ of actual public opinion.
Apparently not, and the silence of reality is deafening, folks.
So what can we do while this brief lull lasts?
As I said above, take notes: do all you can to locate social media accounts AND pages that have pushed disinformation / propaganda about important issues like climate change, vaccines, political hot-button topics and the like. Call out accounts which have been vocal proponents and pushers of same in replies, to see if they’re still actively doing the same.
There’s a window of opportunity here to IDENTIFY and DOCUMENT their lack of activity.
Let’s not let that slip by, because sure as sunrise, you can bet they’ll be back in their usual numbers as soon as Russia duct-tapes their data centres back together again.
Which may not happen at the same scale as before Ukraine’s strikes, though.
Some sources inside Russia have said that due to the current ongoing chip shortage (thanks to the AI industry) the damaged data centres may not be fully back online until at least 2028. Which is probably the ONLY good thing about AI sucking up resources I’ve heard.
That inability to operate at scale for a good long while ALSO means that the midterm elections coming up in America in a few weeks should be a VERY different experience, at least in terms of online disinformation and propaganda noise. Russian interference in US politics over the last decade has been well-documented (see link in replies) despite the protestations of MAGA and the Republicans (essentially the same thing now). So we’ll see how that pans out – hopefully democracy can get its breath back in America this year without the constant clouds of bots disrupting public attention and focus.
The bottom line is that for the first time in years, I’m hopeful that the skies have cleared.
By that I mean that ‘inauthentic interactions’ online have dropped by a HUGE percentage, giving real people an opportunity to sit and examine how we can choose to use our time going forward.
My recommendation is that when you interact with accounts you suspect are fake (sock puppets or bots) to go examine their profile’s timeline: is there a GAP in posts / replies from Oct 8th to 11th this year?
If so, they’re VERY LIKELY a Russian account, and you should Report then Block them.
If millions of us do that, we can tidy up a large part of social media in a short time.
Then we can ALL work at KEEPING it clear of inauthentic Russian accounts going forward
Topic: Zelinsky bombed Russian Data center and certainly MAGA online traffic go poof! (Read 479 times)