The developers have created a script for tracking the Kremlinbot in the comments on YouTube

The expansion for the browser marks the comments in red as suspicious.

The developers from the Observers community on VKontakte created the Metabot script, which marks the comments on YouTube and the placing accounts, which the participants consider to be pro -government. One of the authors of the script, 20-year-old student, Roman Smolin, who is filling the database of suspicious profiles, told TJ that the script has just begun his work and uses a small database.

Who are the "observers" and how they are fighting with "Kremlinboat"

“ Observers ” are a community of VKontakte users who track youtube accounts with the same comments in support of the Russian government. The developers have created a database with user profiles, which are considered “Kremlinboat”: there are nicknames, links to accounts and registration date.

According to the authors, pro-government bots began to appear massively on YouTube in June-July 2017: at the same time about 100 accounts were introduced into the base. In the same period, video blogger Dmitry Ivanov, known as Kamikadzedead, complained about blocking the opposition channels and wrapping rollers with criticism of power.

According to the “observers”, suspicious accounts primarily participated in the wrapping of dislets and left comments with the praise of the authorities and criticism of the opposition on the channels of Navalny, FBK, Vyacheslav Maltsev and Kamikadzedead.

As a date of the attack of the bots, the participants of the “observers” chose July 2017 also because this month the Dislikemeter.com statistics service, which tracks the wrapping of likes and dislets. In the same period,the Picabu and Dvach users suspected the authors of the Dylaikmeter in working on the Kremlin and the opposition due to improper statistics.

By the end of December 2017, 216 suspicious accounts had already accumulated in the database of developers. According to Smolin, after that he and another developer decided to create a tool to track suspicious accounts and check the registration dates.

The developer Andrei addressed me with a proposal to create a script that could show the date of registration of accounts right on the page with comments, as well as allocate the calculated accounts of the so-called web-brigade or “Kremlinboats” among them. We discussed the concept, I was assigned the role of the moderator of the database, and he took up the implementation.

Roman Smolin

The bot works in desktop browsers and marks the Kremlinboats red

Using a list of accounts from the database, Metabot marks comments under the videos of three colors: red (“Kremlinbot”), yellow (“unknown”), green (ordinary user).

The Reds include those who registered after June 1, 2017 and whose comments the authors consider it suspicious. To the yellow ones - those who also registered after June 1, after they undergo manually verification of the authors, and to the green - those who registered before this date. To check the comment, you need to click on the question sign above it - the date of registration will appear on the right.

Metabot installation instructions to the browser:

• Download the extensions of Violentmonkey or TamperMonkey for the browser - links in the description of the video ;
• Go to GitHub and set a script with a database of pressing the RAW button;
• Mozilla users will have to manually copy the script code and insert into the extension.

To track suspicious accounts, developers check the day of creating the profile in the “On channel” section with the latest statements under the video. They formed their own criteria by which they define profiles in the database:

• The constant appearance of an account in the comments under the rollers of the opposition with Dylaiks and under the video with the support of the Russian authorities, which fall into the trends in YouTube;
• The appearance of the same accounts under different rollers at different times;
• Account comments receive instant dozens of likes from other users;
• The emphasis in the comments about Navalny on the Donats, Criminal Cases and Schoolchildren in his team.

To check the comments that the account leaves, the TOP 30 service is used, which tracks the statements on social networks and on YouTube. Smolin said that he would not want to give other users to fill the base, since sooner or later they will begin to “suspect everyone in a row”, so he is doing this himself.

Others can send him references to suspicious profiles in personal messages of the observers communities.

I carefully check each suspicious account, and in accordance with all the criteria, they are added to the database. If at least some doubts remain, then I am separately leading a list of suspected accounts, which I periodically observe the last comments left.

Roman Smolin

The bot does not work well and takes into account too few accounts

TJ checked the work of Metabot with about 15 videos and noticed that due to a small database, he does not always cope with comments under rollers with Putin's position support. The script notes the most noticeable examples of suspicious comments, but misses less obvious fake profiles.

At 19:00 Moscow time, in second place in the Russian trends of YouTube was the video of “ The 5 most interesting performances of the presidents ” - in it Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama and others perform songs on the stage. The bot marked in red about 20 comments out of more than 600 - mostly those that were in the top in likes.

At the same time, the bot copes with the comments under the rollers of the Putinteam channel without complaints, since there are quite a lot of accounts from the database.

Another Metabot problem is that many comments are marked in yellow and belong to the category of “unknown”. This can be seen under the video about Putin, criticizing the power of Krasnoyarsk.

Due to active advancement on YouTube, not only Putin, but also other presidential candidates, bots can also be agitated by them. In the comments of the last issue of the Vedud show with Pavel Grudinin there are many statements with agitation in his favor with a large number of likes. Yuri Dud himself in the video said that he was offered an advertisement with an appeal to go to the polls, there are also a lot of such comments under the video.

In both cases, Metabot does not marry them. Smolin added that he could not yet confirm if there are bots campaigning for other candidates.

#russian bots #hackers #technologies #youtube