Ukrainian strikes on Russian data centers silence bot networks amplifying Reform UK
Russian bot accounts powered by Yandex collapse after drone strikes, cutting social media engagement for UK far-right figures by orders of magnitude.
What to know
- Ukrainian drone strikes destroyed Yandex and Russian data centers, collapsing bot traffic from Russian-hosted accounts to 0.4% of peak levels.
- Reform UK figures' social media engagement fell dramatically: Farage's posts dropped from 100,000+ views to 35,000-60,000; Tice and Yusuf saw similar collapses.
- The collapse suggests Russian bot networks had been artificially amplifying far-right UK political content alongside narratives from German AfD and French groups.
- The disruption affected Russian information operations beyond the UK, including the Storm-1516 group's narratives across France and Germany.
Farage and Reform UK lack substantive policy and rely on dishonesty.
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“Nigel Farage is genuinely one of the worst politicians I've seen in my life time, the policies usually have very little substance and just pull figures out thin air.”
Charming_Bing_3802 · Reddit ↗
“As Zelensky himself said after the strikes on the data centres, it's suddenly become a "little easier to breathe" on social media.”
The London Economic · The London Economic ↗
Nigel Farage Reform UK leader
Richard Tice Reform UK deputy leader
Zia Yusuf Reform UK politicianUkraine Military actorDavid Colon French information operations researcher
How it unfolded 2 developments, newest first · click a bar or a number to jump postscomments
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Russian information operations group Storm-1516 narratives disrupted across Europe
French information operations researcher David Colon documented severe impact on bot-driven narratives from Russia-linked group Storm-1516 in France and Germany. Far-right German party AfD also saw dramatic activity drop following the bot collapse.
“Nigel Farage is genuinely one of the worst politicians I've seen in my life time, the policies usually have very little substance and just pull figures out thin air.”
— Charming_Bing_3802, Reddit commenter · source -
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Reform figures see social media engagement drop after strikes on Russia data centres www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/ref... Reform figures see social medi...
2 more of the top 3 · 3 posts in this stretch
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Nigel Farage is genuinely one of the worst politicians I’ve seen in my life time, the policies usually have very little substance and just pull figures out thin air. Farage doesn’t even seem to know his own policies and just blatantly lies a lot.
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You really think Putin would give his greatest weapon to his competitors? China is not Russia’s friend in any sense of the word
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Russian bot networks amplified Reform UK figures' content
Analysis shows Reform UK figures experienced sharp engagement drops on X after the bot collapse. Richard Tice's posts on October 11 failed to reach triple-digit comments or reposts—typical for his 400,000 followers previously—while Zia Yusuf's policy clips dropped from 100,000+ views to 8,000 in three hours. Nigel Farage's content fell from easily exceeding 100,000 views to 60,000-35,000.
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first by Mastodon, 1d ago
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background
Bot traffic from Yandex network drops to 0.4% of peak — Tom's Hardware bot analysts documented that traffic from the Yandex network fell to just 0.4% of the maximum HTTP requests recorded in the preceding two weeks, effectively eliminating automated activity from Russian-hosted accounts on social media.
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background
Ukraine strikes Russian data centers, decimating Yandex — Ukrainian forces carried out coordinated drone strikes against major Russian data centers over the weekend, completely destroying Yandex, which controls over 70% of search traffic in Russia. The strikes resulted in a dramatic collapse of bot traffic from the Yandex network.