Bombing the bots

Here’s an interesting coincidence: at the end of last week, Ukrainian drones hit two datacentres belonging to Yandex, the “Russian Google”. Shortly after, Cloudflare radar, a service monitoring traffic across the internet, logged a 50% drop in Russian bot activity.

That’s not all. Users also noticed a sudden fall in activity around AfD, the German extreme-right political party, on social media at about the same time. Conversations on the pro-Trump /r/conservative subreddit fell off a cliff too.

So, when we scroll our feeds, how much of what shows up is organic and how much is manufactured?

This is the pattern: someone (a country, a party, a well-funded think tank…) spins up an army of automated accounts and gets them to cheer, rage, share, etc, in unison, making it all look like a natural groundswell of enthusiasm. Then all that artificial noise gets picked up by the algorithms that reward engagement, not authenticity, and they amplify it. Next thing you know, it’s all been laundered into everyday conversations.

As always, laws exist to fight this in Europe. The Digital Services Act mandates algorithmic transparency, audits, and a good deal more. What’s missing is the will to actually enforce them. What they technically are today are suggestions.

We should not be leaving public debate in the hands of companies who make money from distorting it. That’s digital sovereignty too.

Colin

Update (14th October): It turns out those numbers around bot reduction can't really be proven and look more like confirmation bias than fact. It doesn't take away from the conclusion, though.