People are rejoicing about the removal of Russian bots from social media – but the truth is far more complicated

Social media is busy with claims that something dramatic just happened to the online environment.Huge numbers of posts claim that that Russian bot traffic has fallen dramatically across the internet. And, with that, so has the number of posts and replies from automated accounts on sites such as X, formerly Twitter, and Facebook, the posts claim.It has led to something of a trend on X, in which users post what they call a “bot test”: an opinion or claim of the kind that would ordinarily lead to an influx of automated responses. Some users do indeed claim that they have seen a substantial reduction in the number of replies of a certain kind, and use that to suggest both that the previous responses were from automated accounts and that those accounts have reduced in number.It follows attacks on data centres run by Yandex, the company often referred to as Russia’s Google. They are part of a broad effort by Ukraine to attack the country’s internet infrastructure.It is true that, in the wake of the attack, traffic from automated systems has fallen. Data from internet infrastructure company Cloudflare shows a small reduction in “bot traffic” over recent days, for instance.That is particularly pronounced for traffic from Yandex, which typically accounts for a large amount of automated traffic within Russia. Cloudflare’s data shows the effect of the attack dramatically: on Sunday morning, after the attack, it drops to nearly zero, and is yet to recover to normal levels.That is in line with statements from Yandex, which says that it is working to restore access to its services. Some of them are still entirely offline, it said in a statement on Sunday.But it does not necessarily suggest that bots of the kind that post on social media have reduced their activity, or that there has been any meaningful result in the amount of misinformation or general posts from such accounts. While some users have reported that they are seeing less of those posts and accounts, that is not necessarily broadly true and may have nothing to do with the attacks on Yandex.That is because Cloudflare’s “bot” data measures traffic from non-human, automated sources in general. And those kinds of bots can be used for all purposes, both good and bad.That bad activity is well known, and various. As well as automated accounts being used on social media to quickly spread misinformation or other problematic posts, they can also be used to search the internet for personal information or launch more specific cyber attacks.However, bots are used for plenty of good or morally neutral purposes, too. One of the key contributors to such bot traffic is “crawlers”, which scan the internet to gather up data.That can be used to update search engines or to collect data that can be used to train artificial intelligence systems, for instance. Both of those activities are done by Yandex, in much the same way they are used by Google and other rivals.As such, those widely shared charts do not in themselves suggest that there will be any less activity from automated systems that post on social media. And there is nothing necessarily to suggest that the attacks have had any impact in that way at all.