You should have herd by now that Ukraine has been striking Russian data centers as a retaliation for Russia striking Ukrainian data centers.
Well, this got more than they bargained for, or perhaps Ukraine knew exactly what they were doing with the help of E.U. intel.
We may never know but the data centers hit in Russia were like no other.
They were owned and or run by Yandex, which started out by being the Russian version of Google, but became much much more as it became the heart of many Russian operations by the government and part of that has been in full display for over a decade now in the form of sowing disinformation and discontent in the populations, first in Europe and then in the US after providing proof of concept. I always wondered where the bot phams were located in Russia, and here they were in plain sight. In the early 2000’s, I had only noticed that a lot of web hacking seemed to originate from Yandex servers. But this was later turned on it’s head once they learned how to spoof IP addresses and appear to come from anywhere in the world through various methods still in use today. And that is how a bot person can appear like a legit person on social media. I’m sure Facebook and Elon Musk’s Twitter are taking a traffic hit from this, costing them ‘MONEY” from advertisers. And it was all fake. Can you see a re-calibration on monetization in the future ? Just a bit of Justus since they did nothing about trimming a known bad commodity. They had no incentive to do so. But now ? Public pressure may help.
“BOTS” are a automated version of computer generated people that simulate a real person with real opinions shaped by the creator. And they have been everywhere.
I happen to do a lot of YouTube searches and I have to tell ya, I have seen a lot of news disappear entirely from sources that seemed to be generated by India but were obviously taking the side of Russia in it’s war with Ukraine and that would not be all. Just the first most pronounced visual effect I noticed from the 3rd Yandex data center strike. And I have no use for social media to begin with and don’t use it with exception to looking at trends to see what the ‘bots’ are promoting. Hence someone is trying to shape public opinion.
So, as this is early in this story, perhaps you will as well notice people you may have followed or just noticed in social media suddenly disappear ? They were not real people to begin with. They were designed to strike a nerve in favor of something you dislike and begin leading you in a journey a inch at a time to shape your opinion to what they desire or to just keep you fighting as a distraction to ignore larger issues and mask them.
If you look back, I warned of this many many years ago right here in these posts. But even as I spoke on it publicly, nobody actually believed in what I was warning of as they don’t see how it is possible and don’t understand the methods. It comes down to one phrase I have used repeatedly.
Human behavior is a finite science and it is going to be exploited at the speed of light with a computer. And yes, you are a player.
So much for re-hashing that old stuff…. again. But perhaps now you better understand what these data pharms are doing compiling your profile. Bought sold and traded. And I know after having many years experience in trying to explain this, you don’t think you are susceptible to it… NOT ME ! ? And I find that funny. For some time even I found myself being lead into some of these rabbit holes. Both from a consumer selling technique and political selling for a idea. But I, unlike most, have limited my exposure to what those data phams have been collecting for nearly 3 decades. Even when that costs me money in the near term. While not 100%, I do not have the profile of most Americans. It’s just not as complete and while I will not go into detail on how I stopped or slow it, I also provide dis-information on occasion to confuse computer algorithms in looking at my profile. Is it enough ? I don’t know but it’s all I have to what may be hundreds if not thousands of unknown uses yet.
If you don’t believe any of it, just make a mental note and you will start to notice just how true this is over time.
No word yet after all this disappearing bot traffic, just when it may come back online. And I am sure Europe’s intel chiefs and gathering info that might be shared with Ukraine since they have noticed quite quickly a lowering of discontent in social media in their respective countries that was BOT generated. So just maybe there is some benefit the rest of the world gets from this war. An end to the Russian BOTs. I can only hope that Ukraine is able to target this whenever it is rebuilt. And I am sure it will be. There are 3 Yandex data centers hit and 6 to go and there are likely many that are not under the roof of Yandex.
I am quite certain this will not be the last post on this subject as it’s public awareness is just now starting to unfold. GREAT ! And I seem to post on it once or twice a year.
Some extra background
https://www.the-independent.com/tech/russia-bots-offline-facebook-instagram-x-yandex-b3065614.html