Russian bots and influence operations 'weren't disrupted by Ukraine strikes'
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's claims that last weekend's attacks on Russia 's Yandex data centres led to a drop in Pro-Russian bot operations is causing debate. The situation highlights the need to differentiate between bots, social media trolls and sophisticated influence operations , experts say. Prof Olga Belogolova , director of the emerging technologies initiative at Johns Hopkins…
The Ukrainian President's assertion that strikes on Russia's Yandex data centers led to a reduction in Pro-Russian bot operations has sparked debate. Experts emphasize the need to distinguish between bots, social media trolls, and sophisticated influence operations. Olga Belogolova, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, clarifies that people often misinterpret data from network and cloud infrastructure company Cloudflare.
She points out that bot traffic on Cloudflare's network includes automated scripts and crawlers, not necessarily social media activity. Cloudflare's data indicates that while search crawling ceased, malicious bots simply moved to different networks after the strikes on Yandex data centers. However, Belogolova suggests that kinetic strikes on Russian technology infrastructure might still disrupt Russia's digital economy and cloud services, even if it doesn't directly stop foreign influence operations.
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