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Dave Troy
@davetroy.com

🟢 LOW CREDIBILITY: We find that viral claims that drone strikes on Yandex data centers in Russia have impacted coordinated inauthentic social media activity are misstated and unfalsifiable. Treat such claims with skepticism, and bookmark this tracker. russianbots.america2.news

russianbots.america2.newsThe Russian Bot Collapse Report: did Russia's bots really go quiet?A sourced, live check on the viral claim that Ukraine's strikes on Yandex data centers silenced Russian social-media bots: what the data measures, what it doesn't, and who is spreading which claims.
Dave Troy
@davetroy.com

We will assess new claims as they come in. Russia’s information warfare operations are heterogeneous and distributed, often entrepreneurially, and generally operate in other countries. To the extent Yandex strikes may impact such operations, they would likely be...

Dave Troy
@davetroy.com

in the area of toolchain dependencies: email, payments, AI, translations, etc. which can generally be swapped out for other solutions. Strikes on Yandex overall are good strategic moves for Ukraine as they impact domestic operations and state information processing capacity.

Dave Troy
@davetroy.com

However any value such strikes may bring to information warfare operations is speculative and unproven. Our assessment is to not diminish the threat Russian information operations still pose, and to continue fighting on both of these fronts as if they are separate, if interrelated, concerns.

5 reposts26 likes

Dave Troy
@davetroy.com

Just spoke to the Kyiv Independent and they are also sorting through these claims. Expect some informed coverage from them soon.

Bernd Porr
@berndporr.me.uk

It's depressing how many here have blindly amplified it. Chadbourn has now deleted his viral post and others who have amplified that. As a German I was curious if there was any effect on AfD activity. Ironically a guy in Germany who runs a few AI slop pages debunked it first.

Bernd Porr
@berndporr.me.uk

ps: fact-checker Rohtext is literally a single guy in Northern Germany who runs a few AI slop pages but the fact check rings true. I haven't fact checked that! ;) In real life he sells spare parts for excavators.