No Evidence of Decline in Pro-AfD Social Bots After Attacks on Russian Data Centers

• Claims suggesting a decline in social bot activity supporting the AfD party due to recent Ukrainian attacks on Russian data centers remain unproven.
• While Yandex (AS13238) experienced significant infrastructure issues, data from Cloudflare indicates that overall Russian bot traffic remained stable.
• The narrative, spread by figures including a local politician and an EU representative, relies on unverified or potentially AI-generated charts.

Understanding Bot Activity

• The term "bot" covers diverse activities, including search engine crawlers, API requests, AI tools, and security scanners.
• Non-human traffic accounts for more than half of global internet activity.
• Unlike standard automated traffic, social bots are specifically designed to masquerade as humans, making them difficult to track via general network monitoring tools.

Critiques of the Allegations

• Experts, including Professor Raphael Wimmer and the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMAS), have challenged the validity of the claims.
• Josef Holnburger of CeMAS noted that there is no observed drop in inorganic interactions and emphasized that disinformation campaigns often follow patterns related to the standard work week.
• Developer Michael Paulauski presented data showing that engagement on the AfD’s official X account did not drop between October 7 and October 9, the window following the strikes on Russian infrastructure.