this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2026
621 points (96.8% liked)

Europe

12287 readers
873 users here now

News and information from Europe 🇪🇺

(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)

Rules

  1. This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
  2. No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
  3. Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
  4. No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism. We follow German law; don't question the statehood of Israel.
  5. Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
  6. If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
  7. Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in other communities.
  8. Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
  9. No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
  10. Always provide context with posts: Don't post uncontextualized images or videos, and don't start discussions without giving some context first.

(This list may get expanded as necessary.)

Posts that link to the following sources will be removed

Unless they're the only sources, please also avoid The Sun, Daily Mail, any "thinktank" type organization, and non-Lemmy social media (incl. Substack). Don't link to Twitter directly, instead use xcancel.com. For Reddit, use old:reddit:com

(Lists may get expanded as necessary.)

Ban lengths, etc.

We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.

If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 7 or 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.

If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the admin that applied the rule (check modlog first to find who was it.)

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
federalreverse@feddit.org
poVoq@slrpnk.net
anzo@programming.dev
EuroMod@feddit.org
621
European far-right parties see drop in social media engagement as Ukrainian strikes on Russian data centers eliminated Russian-hosted bot accounts (www.thelondoneconomic.com)
submitted 1 week ago by tardigrade@scribe.disroot.org to c/europe@feddit.org
140 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/11858823

...

Over the weekend, Ukraine carried out a co-ordinated drone strike against several major Russian data centres. This completely decimated Russia's Yandex, ... which controls more than 70% of search traffic in the country, and has reportedly resulted in a dramatic fall in bot traffic from the Yandex network.

As per the bot analysts at Tom’s Hardware, bot traffic from the Yandex network has dropped to just 0.4% of the maximum number of HTTP requests recorded in the past two weeks. That means activity from automated, Russian-hosted accounts has been virtually eliminated on social media.

...

As a result, the social media engagement on posts from [far-right] Reform UK figures appears to have dropped in the wake of Ukrainian strikes on Russian data centres.

...

There has already been a strong and significant impact on bot traffic in countries such as France and Germany.

David Colon, a French information operations researcher, has noted a huge difference in the performance of narratives generated by the Russia-linked information operations group, Storm-1516.

The silencing of the bots also appears to have caused a dramatic drop in activity around Germany's far-right AfD..

...

Amongst others, the article is citing Britain's Reform politician Richard Tice. Three posts on X from the Reform deputy leader to his almost 400,000 followers on Monday, 11 October [hadn't] hit triple figures for reposts or comments, with one not even reaching 10,000 views ... Before the Ukrainian strikes on the Russia data centres, Tice’s posts got considerably more engagement, consistently hitting triple figures for comments and reposts, whilst racking up hundreds of thousands of views.

...

A similar pattern can be seen when it comes to other far-right figures such as Nigel Farage [the linked article is given evidence about that].

...

As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky himself said after the strikes on Russian data centres, it’s suddenly become a “little easier to breathe” on social media.

...

Archived

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] TanteRegenbogen@feddit.org 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

So your proof is a nearly 20 year old article on a pro-Iraq war correspondence and interviewing a right wing pundit during Trump's first candidacy? It hardly says that NPR is a propaganda mouthpiece, but rather says they have made mistakes as all outlets have done. Additionally, you dont have to accept 100% of what an outlet reports.

And US was wrong to attack Iran, but that doesn't rule out both sides from doing bullshit reporting. It isn't that black and white when it comes to sources.

And I am almost certain that stuff in WorldNews@lemmy.ml is pretty biased because it is lemmy.ml. As long as Dessalines, Nutomic and davel are around, I am pretty sure it will stay pretty biased.

[–] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

So your proof is a nearly 20 year old article on a pro-Iraq war correspondence and interviewing a right wing pundit during Trump’s first candidacy? It hardly says that NPR is a propaganda mouthpiece, but rather says they have made mistakes as all outlets have done

If you just listen to (or read) their reporting about the current wars you'll see they're still doing the exact same things described in that (almost) 20-year-old article. These aren't mistakes, it's their standard operating procedure.

It hardly says that NPR is a propaganda mouthpiece

it does, actually. Even when they are being critical of the Trump administration (which they often are) they're doing it from the standpoint of the (to borrow a lovely term from UK English) loyal opposition.

And US was wrong to attack Iran, but that doesn’t rule out both sides from doing bullshit reporting. It isn’t that black and white when it comes to sources.

I agree here. Which reminds me that after you called me out for posting PressTV links you didn't answer when I asked you this:

PressTV is absolutely propaganda, and I am selective about what I repost from them - it's usually something I think is news (or a newsworthy perspective) which is not being reported by western sources. Eg, this is the most recent thing I posted from there. The primary source for the story (the IRGC) is named in the headline; it isn't like it is pretending to be something it isn't. Do you think that post is not newsworthy? Is it better for people not to know that the IRGC is saying that? Or, what alternate source could I have linked to about it?

These weren't rhetorical questions; I'm actually curious what you think.

And I am almost certain that stuff in WorldNews@lemmy.ml is pretty biased because it is lemmy.ml

Which news communities do you think are unbiased, though? You said earlier:

NPR and DW aren’t good examples of western propaganda, as they tend to be less biased. NYT more. BBC is mixed. [...] Propaganda exists on both sides and it is important to keep that in mind. Though propaganda from dictatorships tend to be a bit more wild and obvious.

Are there some news communities which you would consider "less biased" but which would actually remove (what you acknowledge is) propaganda from the NYT? (I doubt it, but, surprise me?)

I think every outlet has biases, and I agree some are more obvious than others. But allowing only the less-obviously-so propaganda from one "side" doesn't strike me as being less biased at all.

Fwiw if you look at !worldnews@lemmy.ml right now you'll see plenty of western propaganda outlets there amongst the Iranian and Chinese etc sources.