The accounts of the propaganda bots in question are often accused of spreading disinformation or artificially promoting false content on social networks. In his speech at the traditional Warsaw Security Forum, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also suggested that the attacks on the Yandex data centers had reduced the activity of the bots. “Hatred, attempts at division and provocations have decreased, [because] bots have decreased“, he noted.
Have comments with provocations and hate speech decreased?
In response to a query from the department, Zelensky's office explained that the president was not talking about a specific decrease in bot activity, but “about the atmosphere on social networks“, adding that many social media users have noted “a decrease in the number of provocative and hateful comments“.
However, at present there is no clear evidence or significant indications confirming such a correlation. According to political scientist Josef Holnburger, managing director of the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMAS), there is currently “no decline in Russian disinformation activity”.
European MP shares graph without evidence
Nevertheless, the misleading graph is being circulated as alleged evidence of the impact of the strikes. It was, for example, shared by the Czech. His post on the social network X has been viewed over four million times. The politician suggested that the graph also shows a decline in “online activity” around the pro-Russian populist party “Alternative for Germany (AfD), although he did not specify what exactly he meant. In reality, however, this graph most likely does not prove anything.
The title of the graph in German is “Daily activity over a period of 3 months“. It appears to show that bot activity was relatively stable before experiencing a sharp decline in early October, roughly coinciding with the attacks on Yandex data centers in Russia. However, nothing in the graph itself suggests that this refers to online activity associated with the Alternative for Germany.
Lack of source and incorrect scaling
The same applies to the data the graph refers to. No source is given, nor is there an explanation of the process of their collection or the method of calculating the alleged “activity“, which initially varied between 6,000 and 7,000 units per day before dropping to below 3,000.
It is particularly doubtful that the graph covers a period up to October 15, and the last point in it corresponds to October 14 - a date that was still in the future, because the graph first appeared online on October 11. Data for a future date cannot be reliable.
The graph also contains scale errors on both the “X” and the “Y” axes. For example, on the “Y” axis, the distance between 2,500 and 3,000 is less than the other intervals of 500 units. Since the “Y” axis does not start from zero, the decline appears visually exaggerated. On the “X” axis, the same time periods are represented with different distances.
It is also unclear which platforms were analyzed and how the “activity“ variable was calculated. The lack of a known data source, the inaccurate scaling, and the inclusion of “future“ values strongly indicate that this is not a reliable graph and that it was not created using reliable statistical methods.
Is it possible that it was created with artificial intelligence?
It is unclear whether the graph was created using artificial intelligence (AI). Given the errors and the obvious “fiction“ in the presentation of future data, the use of artificial intelligence cannot be ruled out.
Such misleading AI-generated graphs appear regularly. The identity of the creator of the popular graph of bot activity on social networks remains unknown.
What does Cloudflare's data actually show?
, an American company that protects online content from bots, is also often cited in connection with claims of a decrease in the activity of malicious Russian bots after the Ukrainian attacks on "Yandex". However, according to CeMAS Managing Director Holnburger, there is a discrepancy as to what Cloudflare's data actually shows.
The company provides services to many websites that block traffic generated by bots. Automated traffic is common and includes agents that scan websites for recently published content. Search engines, including "Yandex", rely on them. Bots can also be used to generate artificially inflated comment counts. "The decline in bot activity on websites is something completely different from the decline in unnatural bot activity on social networks," Holnburger said in a statement to.
“When we look at the overall activity from Russian IP addresses on servers using Cloudflare services, there is no significant decline in bot activity,“ he added, citing data from Cloudflare. Furthermore, there is no reason to assume that the infrastructure used by the bots involved in spreading disinformation could have been hosted in Yandex data centers. “It is more likely that these systems are distributed among many different providers,” explains Holnburger.
This article is part of a joint initiative by the fact-checking teams of the German public media ARD-Faktenfinder, BR24 #Faktenfuchs and DW Fact check.
Source: www.dw.com