Some.
Keep it up, dude.
Blowing up data centers will not stop troll farms. Troll traffic is not coming from Yandex.
Some of the claims appear to conflate data centers with Russian “troll farms” such as the Internet Research Agency (IRA), which became well-known following a 2015 expose. The IRA operated out of a St. Petersburg office building, not a datacenter operated by Yandex. Nor does there appear to be any particular reason the IRA would require an inordinate amount of network resources.
That’s one instance of a troll farm from 11 years ago.
Surely nowadays these troll farms are LLM powered instead of human powered and of course need compute power.
Where the humans sit that orchestrate these bot networks is another topic.
Yeah the idea that they would just route their traffic from a regular office network connection is truly stupid.
Surely
Trust me bro, it’s the vibe
There’s been a spike recently in australia of people paying Indonesians to post right wing content, half the time a company is using AI they’re actually just paying people in the third world pennies for posting
a lot of this stuff is propaganda on behalf of ai companies, ai is scary! Ai is evil! Ai is powerful! lol
Surely nowadays these troll farms are LLM powered instead of human powered and of course need compute power.
Where is the lion’s share of LLM compute located?
I don’t know about that.
Feels like there’s a high risk of the LLM going off script and going against the points they are trying to make.
Just like Trump’s AI site saying the 2020 election was not stolen.
Do you not see that daily? There’s nothing internally consistent or coherent about 3/4 of what bots post, it’s just garbage that sounds plausibly human.
Blowing up data centers will not stop troll farms
I didn’t think that is their goal. I thought their goal was to get Russia to leave their country.
I thought their goal was to get Russia to leave their country.
Well… it’s to debilitate the Russian economy until Russians can no longer force-project across the border.
But anyone who believes Yandex was the soft underbelly of Moscow is going to be disappointed. Russian troops aren’t going to leave because a data center got lit up. On the contrary, this becomes further agitation within Russia to spend an increasing amount of domestic wealth and civilian lives flinging firebombs at Ukrainian infrastructure. With the intended goal of debilitating the Ukrainian economy until Ukrainians can no longer force-project over the border.
This is purely a war of attrition. There’s no target either side could hit that would end it, prior to a national political realignment or a wholesale economic collapse. Even if one side managed to dome off Putin or Zelensky, the war would drag on under their immediate successors.
And yet /r/conservative went silent. Just like the last time Russian bot farms were targeted.
/r/conservative went silent
The sub has purged itself so many times, I don’t even know who still has the rights to post there.
Nevertheless, I’m seeing new content as recent as 47 minutes ago. Plenty of posts in the last two hours. The same meager activity from a community that has kicked itself in the dick so many times that it no longer has a user base to speak of.
I’m not opposed to blowing up data centers in general, just saying…
I assume that includes the ones in which Piefed, Lemmy.world and Gizmodo are hosted?
I respectfully disagree, more data centers should be destroyed, the Russian one currently should take priority
“stop” …
… and I suppose arresting a Russian soldier will not “stop” Putin? … and eating one apple will not “stop” cancer? … and pressing your brake pedal will not “stop” the US rate of road accidents? … and doing a single push-up will not win you an olympic medal?
… and posting one lame comment will not “stop” others from indentifying reliable sources?
🤣
To be clear four days later there is still zero evidence this is true.
From how it was explained to me by colleagues that work with this stuff for us is that those data centers were links in a chain of vpns that many bot swarms used and when they went down their ip addresses were reveled and on many platforms that resulted in automated bans and THAT is the subjective experience of the bots being silenced
There is also zero evidence for this
That’s not how any of that should normally work. And I doubt it that your colleagues have insight into Russian operations unless you’re either in the NSA or in the FSB.
This garbage analysis got deleted for a reason.
People downvoting this inconvenient truth the same ones who accuse others of being propagandists.
As though somone blaming Ukraine for “refusing to negotiate peace” has any room to speak on “inconvenient truths”.
Well, on the other hand, users from .ml should be regarded as experts on avoiding inconvenient truths - their entire ideology is based off historical revisionism and “critical thinking” analysis of geopolitics.
Lmao, Stalin defeated the Nazis and beat the Americans to space.
Also beat the Americans at being found dead soaked in his piss
RIP
An .ml defending Russia …
Seems like they didn’t blow up the correct data center to silence you.
Sorry, your bot is in another data center.
Everyone here is a russian bot execpt for you, Привет от Сталина.
How is that, in any way, defending Russia?
0 comments… Checks out
Based on when you posted this, there were comments 3 hours prior?
It said 0 comments when I commented. I thought it wouldn’t need explaining.
They’re probably a self censored tankiephobe
“Thankiephobe”, is this a try at Donald Derangement Syndrome 😂😂🤣😂??!
I don’t know what that is. I could look it up but I won’t. It sounds like such a stupid term, *cringe
Wow your ability to understand words using context clues is pathetic, lmao.
Yup. Too stupid
Sorry to hear it :(
Based Zelenskyy!
Distrust what you’re fed by TV and the press, and to think for yourself rather than accepting any official narratives these days.
If even the US’ Cold War anti-communist propaganda station ‘Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’ states the drop is likely due to Yandex’s crawlers, what does that tell you about the credibility of Zelenskyy (having an obvious conflict of interest) and all Western outlets running with it, by extension? The Russian government might not even need bot farms at this stage, because the West keeps undermining their own credibility: with single-sided, unsubstantiated malinformation of half-truths at best. It’s so obvious to me they’re trying to pass off any critical thinker as being a Russian troll, and trying to escalate the proxy-war by attributing “hybrid-war” sabotages to the “aggressor” (that is conveniently in a weakened state because of it). Yes, Russia undeniably invaded Ukraine, but wouldn’t the US do the same to Mexico if it turned communist, following all of South-America?
Typical .ml user.
It’s so obvious to me they’re trying to pass off any critical thinker as being a Russian troll, and trying to escalate the proxy-war by attributing “hybrid-war” sabotages to the “aggressor”
Weak attempt at obfuscation. Nobody thinks “critical thinkers” are russian trolls; quite the opposite.
Weak attempt at obfuscation. Nobody thinks “critical thinkers” are russian trolls; quite the opposite.
Oh, some (very few, IMHO) people will definitely call others “Russian Troll” or equivalent if they point out that Russian interference has far less power than the very much local ultra-rich, politicians and News-media owners when it comes to the current state of most Western nations and that it’s more likely that loudly raging about “foreign interference” is a political propaganda tool of mainstream politicians - a scapegoat for the consequences of the pillaging of the West by ultra-wealthy Westerns (paralleling how “immigrants” are similarly used as scapegoats by other mainstream politicians - they’re both very much “blame foreigners”) that said politicians very much supported and still support.
Also, don’t get me started on how the interference of other nations is much larger and more open - for example both main parties in the US and UK openly have groups amongst their “parliamentarians” who are “Friends of Israel”.
Russia almost certainly interfered or tried to, because it makes sense for them to do so and it’s very much how they’ve always operated, it’s just that it stretches belief to blame them for most of what’s going on, especially in light of the explosion in inequality, crash in social mobility, collapse in job security (mostly in Europe, the US was always so) and so on in the last couple of decades of Neoliberal political dominance that are for more likely to explain growing discontent and the News-media owned by billionaires very openly pushing far-right ideations 24/7.
In bigger countries foreigners generally don’t have the kind of influence that locals do, especially the wealthy and well-connected ones.
As I see it, there are definitely multiple manipulation machines in operation out there nowadays and multiple muppets whose brains are only big enough for simple explanations and who have have fallen for the slop some of them feed and will gladly spout their simplemindedness here.
That said a person who writes “The Russian government might not even need bot farms at this stage, because the West keeps undermining their own credibility” (amongst other such “jewels”) like the previous poster did clearly doesn’t fall into the “critical thinker” category.
You seem to be creating this false dichotomy between “kremlin involvement” and “western oligarchs,” but you don’t seem to see how deeply the two are interconnected, and obscuring that connection only benefits both.
If you genuinely aren’t aware, pull some of the threads and you’ll see what I mean. Look into the connections between the kremlin and political movements like maga, reform UK, AfD, Fidesz, and other similar subversive right-wing extremist elements. As well as media personalities ranging from Fox News hosts to right-wing influgrifters.
Like I’m not trying to polish the turd that is homegrown western extremism, but denying the ties it has to kremlin influence would be as counterproductive as denying the influence that states like Israel have over establishment candidates through more official channels such as AIPAC.
In either case, writing that off as “blaming foreigners” is not a compelling argument. This isn’t like blaming hispanic and/or middle-eastern immigrants for the woes of the working class. This is about criticizing deliberate, orchestrated hybrid warfare techniques of an adversarial nation-state actor who doesn’t even try to deny that they’re doing it, and openly states that their goal is to destroy the west from within.
You can say “well the west deserves it for being evil,” but the fact is most western countries
havehad systems that were capable of improving themselves incrementally from within; what we end up post-dismantlement is practically an anarcho-capitalist financial olichary/kleptocracy similar to the current governing system russia has; in which all the worst elements dominate any redeeming factors that may have existed, and we end up with the resurgence of fascism that we’re seeing today.It already worked in the US. Europe got their shit together and it seems their fascist movements are petering out. Not entirely gone, but not looming like the dark clouds on the horizon before a tempest like they seemed to be doing before.
The irony here is that the “blame foreigners” parties are almost entirely all the very same extremist elements who receive funding and support from kremlin propaganda agencies. So again, framing this as “blaming foreigners” falls way short.
And your argument? You’re only disregarding me for using an instance with a reasonable policy, and for what you consider Russian bot traffic, which is exactly the point I’m trying to make; whether or not you consider that of a critical thinker.
My argument? Here it is: https://sopuli.xyz/post/53077260
Plus, everyone notices that whenever a post is about Ukraine, a flock of .ml’s always shows up to pedal kremlin disinfo talking points.
If that’s not you, move along, but if you’re going to defend that behavior by acting like it doesn’t happen, then that identifies your motive here pretty clearly.
I’m not really arguing Russia isn’t facilitating bot-traffic (nor here on Lemmy, regardless of instance), but I simply don’t agree with the framing of most articles on it. The claims are barely substantiated, or conflated with Cloudflare’s general traffic drop (including that of crawlers). Well that, and somewhat of a collation of not immediately related frustrations I have on the overall subject at the end… :)
Removed by mod
reads part of comment
looks at user
oh…it’s an ml account.
@wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz already made that “argument”, if you can call it that. How about meaningfully interacting, instead of disregarding based on something irrelevant?
I could do that, but what would I gain from such a frivolous expenditure of effort?
You’ve already spent time writing two comments. Could’ve also spent that writing something with at least some substance to it. If I’m supposed to value you your time and effort, how about you value mine too?
I’m under no obligation to respect the time and effort of someone who clearly doesn’t value their own.
Same goes for you it seems, since you wrote yet another comment…
Ugh. Pathetic.
And your argument as to why?
Привет от Сталина
If malicious bot traffic came-out of Yandex’s data centers, its legitimated traffic would be blocked everywhere and yandex wouldn’t have been able to operate such a successful business. There are hundred’s of services that track illegitimate and dangerous bot traffic, such databases are use to block malicious crawlers, bot nets, spam bots, email spams, phishing websites, websites distributing viruses … Yandex can’t afford to allow such activities from its networks.
Just because Ukraine is the victim it doesn’t mean we should spread fake news propaganda. They failed to produce any tangible evidence, and after many sources started debunking the claims and proving the base material to be AI generated. they brought in Zelensky to give it more credibility. it is disheartening to see such fake news rise at the forefront of social media sites. and be upvoted by the masses that on other occasions were championing the fight against fake news. But as long as it fits their narratives, it is good to pass.
