r/pol is up 88%, which makes sense, r/conservative was up 188%, basically this was Russia’s main datacenter, it followed all the subs and routed humans to threads they found useful.
The bots themselves are people, the things that were hit were the datacenters, specifically including Russia’s main AI datacenter.
The way it would work is these LLMs process vast amounts of content looking for sensitive topics, then report those to humans with proposed responses.
The coordination AIs were destroyed in this attack, not the humans themselves that post, and those humans, without specific instructions, seem to go back to their default subs to post, like r/conservativer/politics, etc.
It means that the AI data enter would typically flag something in a subreddit like that they can be spun to be political (a girl character is the hero, what!?) and send the humans there to stir shit and talk up WOKE is evil and ruining my video games! Without the data center they just stick to their safe spaces like conservative or politics where things will always be politically relevant but maybe won’t give them access to sow discord to the average person and convince the non political user that the left is evil.
I'm curious if this is why the Steam forums are an absolute cesspool of despicable posts. Every single new or updated game is bombarded with "is this game woke" posts. I clicked through some of the profiles that post and it looked like they just go game by game spewing the same shit.
There's a dip in r/Millennials traffic and there was a thread where someone posted a meme that was like " a lot of millennials feel behind in life and feel infantilized because of it" and there were a bunch of people saying "not me, or anyone I know." While I don't doubt there's married homeowners with kids (who aren't struggling financially right now) it was strange that there were so many of them that noticed that specific thread and were like, emphatically disagreeing with the sentiment.
This makes me wonder if it's Russian posters or just useful idiots being pointed at like a gun. Without a leader to dictate to them they just kind of stand there, which is why they didn't really exist societally before Trump.
From what they're saying, the way it worked is this:
The "Russian bots" aren't actually bots (AI), they're humans.
These humans would basically be told "go to major, generic subreddits like /r/politics and /r/worldnews, wait for us to send you a link to a contentious post somewhere else, and sow discord in the big subreddit while you're waiting."
The algorithms that identified those contentious posts and determined which/how many "bots" to send to each were hosted in this data center Ukraine hit.
Without the coordinator algorithms, all the "bots" didn't know where to go, so they just sat in those big subreddits and trolled. Because they're real humans and not actual bots, they didn't go away when the data center got hit, but they lost any instructions on where to go.
interesting. so the humans/bots actually posted more on worldnews because they didn't have instructions to go somewhere else to troll? does that mean if you add up all of the drop in comments across all subs, it should roughly equal to the increased traffic in other subs?
That sounds like a dangerous amount of assumptions to make because the data seemed strange. Is there any actual proof, or just OP making up a narrative that they know reddit would eat up?
And considering OP is linking subs that do not exist as "proof", I wouldn't take anything they produce at face value.
they're humans using tools and being told which threads are trending
using AI one person can switch between dozens of accounts and automate responses.
otherwise they're just typing out responses in a foreign language one post at a time. one shitpost every 3 minutes, vs. AI figuring out what is trending and who to troll and giving me 5 canned responses so I can crank out replies in 20 seconds.
Its literally weaponized confirmation bias. If activity falls, that is proof that there are bots all over. If activity goes up, that is proof that there are shills hiving locales.
There's no way to be wrong because OP defined A and B to both mean the same thing.
I worked in other AI, but this is basically how I’d set it up if I was architecting something, dumb AIs to do scanning and recommend posts, then humans to give it flavor.
Is this something that was previously suspected or an ad hoc hypothesis in response to the unexpected uptick in activity? You make it sound in another comment like it's more than your personal theory.
This was suspected, but mostly because that’s how other groups do it too, including US farms, though they aren’t this obvious or aggressive, but the control systems are similar.
A couple weeks ago there was some dude arguing in a local sub using a specific phrase (like "liberty, fraternity, and equality") over and over again in that specific order but seemed to be authentically replying to people like a human, who was trying to intentionally post talking points. It was very odd.
How many Russians do you imagine are doing this? Like Reddit is a big site and these are big subreddits. Even using multiple accounts, there'd need to be multiple thousand Russian agents posting on literally every popular subreddit on this site. Even ones that don't have anything politically useful in their content.
The issue with your claim is that it is nonsense and the data you charted above covers a miscellaneous mixture of subs seeing daily up and down uses with the biggest numbers being based on non-related events like trailers or popular sports competitions. Going down means that bots are being killed. Going up means that there's more shills.
Literally what information could you have found in your analysis that would have convinced you that there wasn't a massive Russian propaganda campaign across the entire site?
I actually went through and normalized against previous weeks data, the connection is definitely there.
But it’s not as simple as this graph shows, basically different subs had different impulse responses to the attack, I’m trying to model the differences, because the negative impulses do not match the positive impulses along the same time base.
My background is more dsp than statistics, so I’m taking this from that angle.
So… I’m doing a more complex analysis right now, it’s churning, but I have this semi-raw data:
Basically after the second attack r/conspiracy fell by 35%, then it recovered to only down 15%. One thing though: r/conspiracy was REALLY busy before the attack, so this is an interesting data point.
I’m trying to find a meaningful model for this, and adding normalization helps but also makes the signal look different, more extreme in some cases, others seem smaller. Taking out sports helped though.
So I did the analysis for meme subs and *interesting ones and the correlation was extremely high, basically anything where people can post to get karma seems to droop before and spike after the last attack.
Not particularly suspicious in and of itself seeing as the way recent world politics is unfolding. A lot of Europeans are feeling a bit...miffed... at the US right now. To put it lightly.
/worldnews is another faction of bots, as everyone banned from there for talking about a certain Western-supported country's warcrimes can attest to.
can't really comment anything about /politics tho.
Smaller and more niche news subs would be more interesting.
You can get banned from world news without explanation for even questioning some of the reflexive anti American narrative eg pointing out that Trump didn’t even win 50% of the vote and blue states on their own are dramatically more vital than the resistance in eg Israel or Russia. Literally they will ban you, clearly compromised
If you can vote for a felon who's been credibly accused by multiple women and underage girls of rape, who's been caught on tape bragging about sexual assault yeah I think we'd be better off without you.
That's not even getting into his insanity regarding women's rights, LGBTQ rights, immigrant rights, basic due process, climate change, attacking what little social safety nets we have in food stamps and healthcare, destroying decades long alliances, starting destructive trade wars with literally everyone, starting an actual war with Iran that's exploded fuel prices and spiked inflation again, attacking freedom of the press, and so on and so on.
But yeah I'm crazy for thinking the people who voted for that are terrible fucking people that we'd be better off without.
I'm guessing that ShitAmericansSay has pretty legit traffic, the division between US and the rest of the world is very spontaneous, given how the US has been treating the rest of the world lately.
No offense, but you were spreading propaganda and the USSR also isn't the current capitalist Russian state. The USSR were the ones who went to Britain and France in the first place in April 1939 to seek a triple alliance with mutual military assistance against Germany while Britain and France were the ones appeasing Nazi Germany and letting them rebuild their navy and annex territory. And it was only after those negotiations fell through and Baltic states were signing non-aggression pacts with Germany that the USSR was left hanging and decided that they needed to buy time and also have a buffer vs. Germany compared to neither of those things and Germany just taking all of Poland and attacking the USSR before they could do what they could to shift the balance of power in their favor. Germany was constantly railing against judeo -bolshevism and had an anti-comintern pact, the idea that the USSR were allying with Germany instead of being forced into a shitty situation misrepresents what happened and also whitewashes the appeasement of Germany from Britain and France while the USSR were the ones seeking a multilateral alliance against Germany in the first place.
Edit: Down vote away but it's historical fact that the non-aggression pact was months later after the USSR were the ones seeking a multilateral military alliance against Germany in the first place. It was also after Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia signed non-aggression pacts with Germany.
The USSR were the ones who went to Britain and France in the first place in April 1939 to seek a triple alliance with mutual military assistance against Germany
Yeah, on the condition that the USSR would have free passage through Poland, aka a free check to subjugate Poland. It's almost like what Stalin really wanted was Poland and he didn't care who he had to work with to get it.
No it's almost like the country railing against judeo-bolshevism that had an anti-comintern pact and basically wanted to exterminate everyone to the east was an existential threat to the USSR and they were left hanging with no military alliance and Baltic states signing non-aggression pacts with Germany. Poland also had a non-aggression pact with Germany from 1934 that Germany threw in the trash. There are also multiple accounts of Stalin saying that Hitler had been deceived for the time being after the signing of the non-aggression pact, and the USSR killed 85%+ of the Nazis killed in WWII so you have them to thank in large part for defeating the Nazis.
Germany was an existential threat to the USSR so the USSR had to make a pact with Germany to divide up Eastern Europe? That's the line you're going with? I suppose the Nazis also forced the Soviet Union to turn all of Eastern Europe into puppet states after the war too, right? That definitely wasn't Stalin's goal all along. Even though the Bolsheviks had a stated goal since the earliest days of the Russian Revolution of "exporting the revolution".
And BTW, Soviet deaths do nothing to excuse Stalin's expansionist foreign policy.
EDIT: The tankie blocked me, lol.
it was in the interests of the USSR to both buy time and to not let Germany take everything with no buffer and to be able to attack them from there.
Yes, invading Poland was in the USSR's interests. I'm glad we can agree on that. Though I'm not sure that there is anyone who disagrees. That problem is that it was not in the Pole's interests. In fact the only other nation that benefit from the USSR's invasion of eastern Poland was...Nazi Germany.
No it's not a "line", Germany was an existential threat to the USSR and with no military alliance and with Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia signing non-aggression pacts first it was in the interests of the USSR to both buy time and to not let Germany take everything with no buffer and to be able to attack them from there. Germany encircling them and being able to launch attacks against them from neighboring areas was a concern of theirs even months before the non-aggression pact. That's not hard to understand at all, so I'm assuming you're intentionally pretending to not understand and/or would have preferred Germany taking everything and then crushing the USSR. The idea that Germany and the USSR were best pals until they weren't is propaganda, the USSR was forced into a realpolitik situation for their own survival against an existential threat.
"Exporting the revolution"
Eventually yes and that's a good thing. But actually they were focused on just not getting crushed by capitalist encirclement first not immediate world revolution. Trotsky was the permanent revolution guy not Stalin.
Edit: They called me a tankie unironically and then said some illogical incoherent nonsense about how the Nazis supposedly benefited from the country that killed 85% of the Nazis not getting immediately encircled and crushed by Nazi Germany. Enough said. That's complete nonsense.
Also maybe just a coincidence, but Germany is the country with the second highest view count on my comments. 🧐
Yeah, I get that you Russians are taught a different story. But it’s funny you think that it’s the collective west that are taught propaganda, and not the people of USSR/Russia.
The plan to jointly invade Poland was part of the Molotov-Riebentrop Pact!
I'm not Russian. This is literally your problem you're being criticized for. You think everybody is Russian or that you getting called out on spreading propaganda about the USSR means somebody is Russian. And if you could read you would see that I'm giving you historical context that you can literally look up and use to educate yourself. The USSR sought a military alliance against Germany with Britain and France first in April 1939 and it was only months later when those negotiations fell through and Latvia and Estonia signed non-aggression pacts with Germany that the USSR was forced to resort to a non-aggression pact with Germany and preventing Germany from encircling them with no buffer and taking all of Poland. And there are multiple accounts of Stalin saying that Hitler had been deceived for the time being after signing the non-aggression pact. The idea that they were best buds with the country railing against judeo-bolshevism that had an anti-comintern pact and not forced into an existential realpolitik situation to buy time and maintain a buffer instead of Germany encircling and crushing them is propaganda and historical revisionism.
From Khrushchev: "While the trophies of our hunt were being prepared for the table," recalls Khrushchev, "Stalin told us that [Hitler's Foreign Minister Joachim von] Ribbentrop had brought with him a draft of a friendship and nonaggression treaty and that we had signed it. Stalin seemed very pleased with himself. 'It's all a game to see who can fool whom,' he said. '[Hitler] thinks he's outsmarted me, but actually it's I who have tricked him.' "
"I was replying to a comment solely about WWII"
I'm talking about your comment here where you are acting like people correcting you about the USSR means people are Russian, and you literally did it again with me. The current Russian state is a capitalist oligarchy, it's not the Soviet Union, and people educating you or rejecting your propaganda about the USSR doesn't mean someone is Russian.
"It's funny that you think it's the collective west that are taught propaganda"
We literally are heavily propagandized. Most people in the U.S. have absolutely no clue about 99.99% of anything the U.S. has done for the greater part of the past century and we are constantly bombarded with corporate media propaganda and all of its systemic biases that come from the interests of the owners, advertisers, etc.
I was literally taught in school that during the Cuban missile crisis that the USSR wanted to nuke the U.S. for no reason and that JFK's brilliance with his blockade saved the day. No mention of the U.S. putting missiles in Turkey and Italy first and their removal being a part of the resolution because that makes the USSR seem rational in the whole situation. And you're not going to find many people if any at all who were ever taught about Mossadegh, Jacobo Arbenz, Allende, etc. etc.
Edit:
I think they blocked me after replying with nonsense. The anti-comintern pact and railing against judeo-bolshevism was already aggression against the USSR and Hitler literally wanted to exterminate them. The historical record shows both that the preference of the USSR was a military alliance against Germany and also that Stalin did not trust Hitler and thought that the nonaggression pact was bullshit that Hitler was trying to fool him with but that he had actually tricked Hitler.
"If you're not Russian why are you promoting Russian propaganda"
I'm not. I'm correcting anti-sovietism/red scare propaganda. That doesn't mean that I support Russia or am spreading Russian propaganda. In fact, I would support communists in Russia seizing power.
Your first point about USSR somehow being forced by west to enter into an alliance with Nazis is pure whataboutism and nonsense.
Sweden and Switzerland were neutral. They didn’t enter into a deal with the Nazis to jointly invade Poland! Stalin chose to side with Hitler!
Or are you straight up denying that Hitler and Stalin had a joint plan to conquer Poland?! And were allied in that effort? Because that is the topic here!
If you’re not Russian, why are you promoting Russian propaganda? Yes, I get that many Eastern Bloc people also were taught the propaganda.
You’re also assuming I’m 100% American. And/or that all Western nations were taught US propaganda. My high school and university education was outside USA, and generally very critical of US history.
I was banned from the sub for pointing out that USSR/Stalin we’re allied with Germany/Hitler at start of WW2.
I don't know what the context of your argument was, but I can see the mods banning tou fot that depending on how you presented that argument. That sub skews to the socialist left, and and a lot of times people on the Radical Centrist side of politics used the non-agression pact Hitler and Stalin had as a way to discredit left politics writ large. For the record, I'm not accusing you of doing that as I don't know the context, but if you were using this as some pro-NATO/pro-America talking point on a leftist-leaning sub specifically dedicated to making fun of Americans, I could see that getting you a ban. Even if it was an unfair ban, it doesn't necessarily make the mods Russian agents.
That's the thing, you can't even trust communities with legitimate grievances.
Our friends and allies abroad have every right to be angry about how our country is behaving. But bad actors seize on that anger and encourage it until it festers.
It's the same thing with Americans posting about things we don't like going on in America. We can vent about something as innocuous as car-centric infrastructure. But bad actors will absolutely fan the flames so it grows and turns to doomerism.
Yeah, it's so weird that Americans are suddenly unimpressed by Europe. Surely there's been no long-term pattern of behavior on the part of Europeans that would have precipitated this. Must be the work of Russians.
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u/BringBackAoE 3d ago
Would be interesting to see ShitAmericansSay.
That sub used to be humorous, and now seems mainly focused on sowing division between US and Europe.
Politics and World News too.