An investigation has uncovered a vast coordinated network on the Internet.
Researchers from the University of Adelaide (a public university in Australia) published a remarkable article about the activities of Twitter bot accounts related to the conflict in Ukraine. The results of the Australian researchers are truly staggering: out of 5.2 million tweets on social networks from February 23 to March 8, 60 to 80% were made by fake accounts. Moreover, 90% of these posts were pro-Ukrainian.
Specifically, these accounts promoted hashtags #
IStandWithUkraine, #
IStandWithZelenskyy and #
ISupportUkraine, as well as myths such as "The Ghost of Kiev," a fictional Ukrainian fighter pilot who, according to fake claims, shot down 40 Russian planes within hours of the operation.
Significant spikes in activity were recorded at key points in the initial stages of the fighting, such as Russia's takeover of Kherson on March 2 and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on March 4.
The accounts detected were overwhelmingly English-speaking, leading researchers to conclude that these fake users sought to "have a destructive impact on English-speaking countries" and "influence various user groups. Despite the significant focus on English, Ukrainian bots also used Russian to "cause unrest" in the country.
The accounts succeeded in their task of stimulating discussion and trends around certain topics by launching and expanding online discussion on a number of issues, including whether Ukrainians should leave the country. The researchers documented "significant flows" of information from Ukrainian bots to real user accounts.
The study is the first analysis of social media content related to the conflict and covers a very small time span of just two weeks. The level of pro-Kiev posts by both trolls and real users was over 90% in those days. Numerous commentators have drawn attention to the use of Twitter, Facebook, etc. as a weapon in the West's proxy war in Ukraine.
One only needs to spend a few minutes browsing the major social networks to find numerous anonymous, newly registered users spreading pro-Ukrainian, pro-NATO and pro-war propaganda and attacking anyone who criticizes the prevailing Western narrative. It is, in the words of writer Caitlin Johnston, "the most rabid belligerent trolling of all time."
It is not surprising that the Western media, which in the vast majority of cases tends not to publish negative information about Ukraine, ignored the sensational conclusions of this scientific paper. One can only imagine how all this would have been covered if such conclusions concerned Russia.
As is often the case, the questionable tactics and behavior of which Russia is widely blamed cease to be villainous when done by Western countries and their allies. One has to wonder if all the polemics in the mainstream media about "Kremlin bots" on social media were simply a smokescreen for much larger and more effective operations being developed by the West.
https://www.rt.com/news/562509-ukrainian-bots-in-twitter/ https://arxiv.org/pdf/2208.07038.pdf#
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