Yandex outage didn’t wipe out Russia’s troll bot traffic
Recent Ukrainian drone strikes took Russian data centers offline and caused a drop in bot traffic, but the decline likely involved automated Yandex web crawlers rather than social media troll farms. A chart citing Cloudflare data circulated online, yet the data was specific to Yandex service activity. Cloudflare says overall bot activity from Russia remained largely unchanged around the attacks.
Ukrainian drone attacks recently disrupted Russian data centers, including Yandex systems. A widely shared Cloudflare chart showed a drop in Yandex-specific automated crawler requests, not social media troll activity. Cloudflare reportedly found Russia-origin bot traffic broadly steady during the strikes.
Separately, a chart shared by EU lawmaker Tomáš Zdechovský linked the outage to reduced AfD-related activity. Computer scientist Raphael Wimmer called it likely AI-generated, citing a future date and unclear origin. Yandex Pay remained offline, with users unable to manage funds or purchases.
The episode may affect how people interpret outage data and online manipulation claims. Journalists, policymakers, and platforms could be pressured to verify charts before sharing, reducing spread of misleading claims. Russian users relying on Yandex Pay may face practical disruption. Observers tracking disinformation could draw mistaken conclusions if they conflate crawler traffic with troll activity, potentially misdirecting attention or resources.