Tick-current, stomping the baby

To whom and why needed "bots" bots on social networks

The inconsistent shares with an appeal to release Alexei Navalny was announced by the politician himself and his supporters after it became known about his arrest. All last week, the actions of the bots, one way or another related to possible rallies and the arrival of the opposition, have been seen on social networks.

Already on Sunday, even before the arrival of Navalny, dozens of the same type of photographs occupied the Red Square geoteg. These were images of persons generated by neural networks. As a result, because of the pictures themselves, finding real photographs of Red Square became almost impossible. By the middle of the week, the situation has changed. Instead of fake persons, geots occupied hundreds of images with an appeal to go out. Some of these posts are created by real users, at the same time dozens of pictures are distributed from accounts under the names such as svobodu_navalnomu , navalny.svodobu , etc. At the same time, there is no such anomaly in the geotags "Pushkinskaya Square" or "Senate Square", where the politician called for exit.

On Wednesday, thousands of empty accounts began to subscribe to a number of media and supporters of the politician Alexei Navalny on Instagram. The bots attacked the accounts of Novaya Gazeta, MBH Media, Cards, a press secretary of Navalny Kira Yarmysh, an employee of the Corruption Fund ( the organization was included in the list of NPOs performing the function of a foreign agent. - Ed. ) Georgy Alburov and lawyer of the organization Lyubov Sobol. About 5 thousand accounts signed up for the “New Gazeta” per day, many of them are “empty” . Their accounts were created on the day of the subscription or for a day on it, and the names of all users are indicated on the Latin.

On Wednesday, the Russian Marketing Telegram channel noted that bloggers began to upload the same type of video on social networks criticism of Alexei Navalny. The author of the telegram channel Semen Efimov published videos of several bloggers: Violetta Chikovani (3.1 million subscribers on Instagram), Arai Chobanyan (1.3 million), Vitaly Okherenova (190 thousand) and VI_AMELII blogger (the profile with such a nickname is now closed, he has about 40 thousand subscribers). Many of them collaborated with Wildjam and Wow Media agencies. In the videos on politics, it was said that the return of Navalny to Russia will lead to new sanctions. As a result, the Wildjam advertising agency stopped cooperation with bloggers, and also stated that it was not related to what was happening.

After supporters of the opposition policy announced a protest campaign, videos began to appear in Tiktok in support of Navalny. Schoolchildren began to record how Putin’s portraits are removed from the stands and replace them with portraits of Navalny, some users published recommendations for taking with them to the rally, while others imagined what they would do in the police department when they were detained. After the distribution of several flash mobs, Roskomnadzor sent to Tiktok the requirement to delete "materials with calls for minor users of the social network to participate in illegal protest mass events."

Tiktoke, on the other hand, began to appear in the same type of video, where bloggers warn that some protesters can accidentally kill, as well as a video where Navalny is called a traitor to the USSR. &

The New Gazeta asked experts to comment on what was happening on social networks and explain to whom and why such an attack was required.

Mikhail Klimarev

Director of the Internet Protection Service

- There are quite a lot of signs by which you can understand that the account is a bot. Usually these are pages that are almost not filled with anything. They have almost no friends (if any, then these are other bots), there are almost no subscriptions, and the photos are generated by a neural network. In addition, these pages have been created recently and exist only to subscribe to specific accounts.

The goals of the bots can be different. It can be assumed that, firstly,

At the IC hour, all these five to six thousand bots will begin to simultaneously file complaints about the media and bloggers for the spread of unacceptable content.

If there are many complaints, Instagram algorithms can suspend the account of the account. Secondly, the same situation can occur as on the day of Navalny's arrival, when the Red Square Tag on Instagram was filled with generated photographs. This story is quite old, before they have already tried to do this on Twitter. It is possible that both scenarios are implemented.

The calls to go to the action along the tag "Red Square" without specifying the venue of the action may be a continuation of the same campaign as with persons generated by the neural network. In fact, they mislead users of social networks. People who are not particularly versed on the Internet may not go to Pushkinskaya Square, but to some other place.

The appearance of different sites is also no coincidence. It is clear that now the opposition operates in various social networks, and in order to mislead users, [the authorities can] create a “white noise”, working with certain hashtags.

Social networks are usually trying to foresee the possibility of mass registration of bots: some introduce verification according to Imale, mobile phone, and also make sure that the mass creation of accounts does not occur from one IP address.

The cost of one empty account can reach one or two dollars,

They can sell it for ten (unfortunately, I do not know specific numbers). The first "bots attacks" began in the early tenths. They were also faced with “white -winged” in 2012. However, we cannot calculate how many people did not come to the action because of them. In turn, the Boto -Fores themselves earn on the fact that they are deceiving their customer.

Vladimir Perevosovchikov

Politthekhologist

- The arrival of Navalny launched the election campaign to the State Duma. Because of him, she began to go not according to the Kremlin script. Naturally, the authorities believe that one way or another it should “show teeth”.

The recent story with the blocking of the accounts of the ex-president of the United States Donald Trump [showed] that social networks are not states, and they belong to individuals; It became clear that they should also be considered with them. All this is the beginning of the struggle for the Internet space. Whoever wins on the Internet will dictate to the voter what is true and what is not.

The return of Navalny and the announcement of new rallies is also combined with the publication of the film about “Putin's dacha”. There is no confirmation of data published by the FBK, but the Internet acts on people so that a significant part of publications immediately begin to believe.

Now the film has watched 40 million people; If this is not a wrapping, these are most likely those voters who were dissatisfied with the change in the constitution.

Of course, the publication will have consequences. I would now be wary of the actions of the [both] sides, because they both manipulate. In any case, [this statement] that Navalny returned to politics. They can give him a real term, but from this he will not cease to be a politician.

Vasily Gatov

Mediaanalyst

- Mass front of the media accounts and Navalny's supporters on Instagram can persecute three main strategies.

1. Firstly, they may try to demand from the social network to block these pages, while sending in support of a complaint about the publication of unacceptable content-Facebook, in particular Instagram, uses artificial intelligence, which reacts to the number of blocking applications.

2. Secondly, they can arrange “defecation” in the comments. It can be assumed that a script was created, which, on any word spoken in the media or blogger account, throws a propaganda combination of words in a commentary on the side of the bot - this is not very difficult to do.

3. Thirdly, they can start not to complain about the contents of the account, about which they signed up, but on the fact that he has a lot of bots. A large number of bots in subscriptions are also the basis for investigation by Facebook in order to block the page.

In fact, bots acquire value when they can not only perform certain actions, but also fill their pages with various content, creating the appearance that they are behind a real person. The bots that arranged massive foloving media and bloggers, as well as filled the Red Square geota, look like the cheapest bots, which were most likely bought on Chinese or Philippine advertising Boto -Foards for a specific operation. Compared to operations that were arranged with the help of bots ten years ago (they assumed a large level of human involvement),

The current operation looks completely algorithmic. & it makes it quite risky,

Because social networks have a sufficient amount of tools to see the coordination of actions, especially if users pay attention to this. In addition, Facebook itself may notice that the same complaints come from the bots [and start blocking them]. It is quite difficult to say who ordered bots - for this you need to have an internal Facebook tool. However, this is most likely a state order, because the organizers are not at risk not their money.

Use bots in order to fill the summons with one message, in cost comes out cheaper than ordering bloggers of a video on a specific topic. But the difference in cost, in fact, is not very large. On the day at the Boto -Ferlas, you can buy a thousand bots and collect ten thousand in a week. This is not a lot, to arrange with such a number of DOS-Atak and completely adjust the agenda will not work. To block the objectionable tag, you need to have 50-60 thousand bots of similar type at the peak. It does not look like this scenario will be played.

In addition, such bots are created primarily for advertising. So that they are successful in politics, it is necessary that the bots have at least some consciousness and resemble real people. Now the "attack" is taking place too openly, and there are no resources to put real operators there.

Bloggers talked more about the sanctions on the sanctions that would impose on Russia due to the return of Navalny, and in Tiktok they threatened death at an unfinished rally, it is possible to difference in the audience of sites.

Probably, customers believe that Tiktok users are easier to intimidate so that they do not participate in the promotion.

At the same time, Instagram audiences offer political frames that have been exploited for years. Sowing doubts about Navalny's effectiveness, you can try to remove part of the audience from the events of January 23. As I think, the order for such paid videos comes directly from the Kremlin, because they already have established streams. Most likely this is done by Christina Podment ( according to the investigation of the “project”, a dungeon is one of the main contractors of the Kremlin for working with social networks and instant messengers - ed. ) And its clones. Here are involved people who have been working in this market for a long time and are going to stay on it.

(Vasily Gatov is an invited researcher at the Annenberg School of Communications and Journalism at the University of South California)