Claims that Ukrainian strikes on Russian data centres reduced Kremlin-linked bot networks have spread widely online, but experts have told BBC Verify there is no evidence the attacks have significantly reduced them.

Researchers from dTeam, a US-based group that tracks Moscow-linked influence operations, told BBC Verify there has not been "any traffic change from known Russian accounts and bot clusters on any platform".

Bots linked to pro-Kremlin influence operations like Storm-1516 and Matryoshka - both of which BBC Verify has previously reported on - were still active on social media on Tuesday, evidence shared with BBC Verify by dTeam shows.

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[–] 8 points 1 hour ago

You can't tell?

Watch this: Trump is an ass!

See, normally THAT would be downvoted out of existence but THERE IT IS.

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  • [–] 2 points 53 minutes ago

    Try try again I guess

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  • [–] 1 point 3 minutes ago

    A lot of social media followers and boosters of right wing persuasion world wide were absent for a short time. A lot of x traffic is bots, that also slowed much to musk's ire. Not nearly as much as people are joking about, but not nothing.

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  • [–] 5 points 50 minutes ago (1 child)

    The AI-powered bots that were hosted directly on Yandex servers and could not be moved to a different server (or manually replicated) after the strike, those are the ones that certainly went down - but, of course, it's only a fraction of a highly distributed disinfo structure, and it will eventually rebuild elsewhere.

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  • [–] 3 points 46 minutes ago

    The servers that Russia would be most affected by in case of a disruption would be those of VKontakte - their local everything app, government paperwork manager and panopticon, VK Max, is of mandatory use in Russia to the detraction of all other messengers, so seeing VK's servers down would mean massive problems for the government

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  • Haaaa ! Why can’t we have nice things

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