Look any video related to the war in Ukraine in English or German and you will see that the most upvoted comments are all pro russian. These comments pop up relatively fast and often repeat misinformation of the kremlins propaganda or are something like "haha advanced shovels". This happens with such a high amount, that an uninformed person may think that this is the common opinion and it has a high risk of influencing the opinion of real people.

There is a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rZiD8Z0gHQ that has references to big news outlets reporting about this as well.

The question is, what can we do to work against this ? What is actionable advice ?

by RandomDude_24

35 comments

  1. We can do nothing. Google could, on the other hand, detect bot accounts and prevent them from commenting.

  2. Nothing, it’s government-funded. Only the creation of a similar tool can help, but this will not happen

  4. bots and info ops I assume. And bots liking other bots posts. I know not everything is always going well with the war, but Ukranian sources are generally considered reliable. Of course, best practice is to not accept 100% as true from any source without research and validation. But my friend is a foreign correspondent with a major tv news network and they say the Ukranians government are generally trustworthy whereas the Russians live in La La land. Of course rigerous jounalism still requires more than blind trust.

    The fog of war is highly confusing. We still have debates about aspects of ww1 and ww2. Don’t worry, about it too much. I have deprogram Russian narratives at work all the time. And fall back on half a dozen foundational facts which are hard to dispute.

    1. The war has already been won in the grand strategic sense. Ukraine is and will remain an independent country. Russia has no pathway for victory and can only take bites at great cost.

    2. Russia’s economy is smaller than Italy’s. When they talk about space weapons, nukes and hypersonics tell them they should focus on toilets for their people.

    3. Support for Ukraine is INCREASING. Europe is awake now, production and logisitcs are increasing. Supplies will only increase. America passing aid 3-1 in the house and 4-1 in the senate is about as high level of support anything can get in these times.

    4. Russian equipment is generally bad and gets worse over time as they draw stockpiles down. Ukraine’s will only get higher quality stuff.

    5. Russian average daily losses have steadily climbed during the war reinforcing point 4.

    There are more, but you get the idea. We live in reality and so do the Russians but only one side is aware of that. This is the end of a dark few months for Ukraine, but the tide is turning. Time, technology, economics, morality and truth are on our side. Slava Ukraine.

  5. While I think google/youtube could and should do more to stop this, I don’t think many people above the age of 21 give much currency to comments on youtube FWIW

  6. I can confirm that Dutch news channels on youtube are also infested with z-propaganda. Wouldn’t surprise me if other european countries’ news is the same

  7. >Look any video related to the war in Ukraine in English or German and you will see that the most upvoted comments are all pro russian.

    Firstly, almost everybody knows the russians are meddling with bots and shit so I take everything “rated” on the internet with a grain of salt anyways.

    Secondly, upvotes don’t win wars. If the russians think they can beat us by upvoting their own propaganda bullshittery on the internet, then good luck with that.

  8. The story of Prigozhin’s troll factory (aka Patriot Media Group or Internet Research Agency)
    seems to end at some time in 2023,
    but I guessed last year it is now under control of a Russian government agency with a different name.
    An overview of the seemingly past activities can give the Wikipedia article for
    the “Internet Research Agency”:
    https://ru-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Агентство_интернет-исследований?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc
    Ukraine is not the only target of this company and successors.
    For me it seems that even Russia is a target for testing new strategies.
    So I have read in Russian news about the large number of anti-vaxxers and cases of measles
    for instance in universities.
    Kommersant reported about a lawsuit when administrators of telegram channels (run by Patriot Media Group) were sued,
    because they blackmailed the Russian state arms company “Rostec”.
    I’ve only heard that many Russians believe in the “big exchange”,
    replacing the Russian population by whoever.

    I just had asked google for “RIA FAN”, one of the mentioned troll factories
    and after a lot of a lot of articles about sanctions there was also an article with the title
    “Life After Death? IO Campaigns Linked to Notorious Russian Businessman Prigozhin Persist After His Political Downfall and Death”
    on google cloud. So here no direct link, because I have no idea how reliable this particular source is.

  9. The only thing you can actually do is ignore the channel.

    If enough people do this, the algorithm will be confused because RageBait will no longer work.

  10. I would challenge your premise that Russia “won” because all they have left to do is spam the comment sections of social media. I know very few people (if any?) who read and post in comments, everyone knows that the comment section is a toxic cellpool of mostly bots and deranged individuals.

    Also, if you search for “War in Ukraine”, most videos come from pro-Ukrainian channels and have wide audiences. I found two videos in the last 24h, one pro-UK and one pro-RU. The pro-UK video has 200k views and 23k likes. The pro-RU video has 100k and 6k likes. This is just one example, but I think it illustrates the broader point: Russia hasn’t won the informational war.

  11. If people get their world view from YouTube comments then they are already lost.

  12. Hey, I’m Irish, keeping up with the war since day 1 so I’m also no stranger to Russian bots and so on. Its obvious propaganda and in my opinion, is only effective on Russians, rest of the world recognises it easily as propaganda.

    So, maybe you feel that way, but I don’t feel you guys are losing, in fact the opposite. Don’t know a single person who isn’t backing ye, and dont know a single person who believes a word from the Kremlin. Keep your head up friend!

  13. Ruzzia has done this type of YouTube manipulation way before 2022.

    It promotes, or more precisely, enables the accounts that it views as favourable to its narrative. And at the same time it works to undermine accounts that are genuinely dangerous to Kremlin. I am not talking about Navalny, but mainly Russian speaking creators.

    It over time manipulates accounts so they either stop growing and become insignificant or get deleted altogether. This creates a vacuum so Kremlin has filled this with channels it controls and they constitute an overwhelming majority of what Russian speaking population globally consume on youtibe.

    This process was pretty much complete even before 2022 invasion. So yea Russian language content on YouTube is 99% pro Kremlin or useful idiots

  14. youtube is NOT a source of serious information about war…

  15. In my YT feed I see only pro Ukr video’s nowadays. This was different the first year of the war. Also, comments are good for the algorithm, so Russian bots are self-defeating in a way.

  16. Mate 95% of the comments on these videos are not even British they’re russian bots

    However who the fuck comments on YouTube videos ? Its like writing a review to “you’ve been framed” after each episode

  17. I think authenticity and openness is key.

    Public awareness will need continues and concerted effort.

    [documentary: factory of lies ( 2018 )](https://www.filmplatform.net/product/factory-of-lies/)

    [troll factory](https://www.voanews.com/a/inside-the-internet-research-agency-a-mole-among-trolls/4352107.html)

    [troll factory 2](https://www.rferl.org/a/russian-troll-factory-hacking/31076160.html)

    A small group of people online are into information, the rest is into entertainment

    Finding a way into Google, Reddit, Facebook, twitter policies and cutting the stuff at source, must be doable, but in which universe we’ll never know, through class action suits? Consumer rights orgs?

    Personally I find it incredible how this stuff can be released into the wild, it’s painful to see and hard to ignore.

  18. Informational war is a huge problem that is underestimated and under the radar of many people in the west. I could write a huge post here, but the informational war is in a terrible situation, also informational awareness and hygiene is just not something that evokes emotions in people or just generally interesting, so many just eventually unconsciously low their guard and fall for some tricky russian propaganda.

  21. Alternate drone attacks on oil refineries with hitting Russian troll farms?

  23. I’ve never seen the Russian comment bots as anything other than a pathetic excercise in futility on their part, it would be beneath us to emulate their behaviour.

    All they are doing is creating a reputation for their country that won’t ever wash out, like the Nigerian princes of yore, or the Indian tech support cold calls, that prey on the elderly and technically illiterate.

    All one has to do to recognise them is ask if the words they speak are positive in any way to Russia, and dismiss them. 

    If they happen to be a useful idiot from your own country, then their opinions are just as relevant as if they were posting from St Petersburg.

    Their goal is to seed self doubt, so the easiest way to win against them is to continue openly supporting Ukraine, and belittling Russia.

  24. I just looked at some current YouTube videos and the most liked comments were pro Ukraine.

  25. If I understand what occurred around the peak of constant Sandy Hook disinformation correctly, DMCA takedowns are somewhat effective and all the tech companies respond to them. If there are significant IP violations with any pro-Russia videos or posts that can be leveraged.

  26. The way Russian propaganda is spreading is very scary… I’m Italian and it looks like it’s dominating the media and the internet.

  28. People misunderstand the importance of comments. The only true damage negative troll commentary causes is to our feelings. Seriously, how often do you read the comments about the other YouTube videos you watch? Almost never, right? We read these comments because we know what we’ll find and feel an obligation to argue back. Don’t waste your time or energy.

  29. The problem is that the West do not consider the informational war a WAR at all and is not approaching this with a mentality that..well..this is a war, we are being attacked, and the governments are doing nothing.

  31. 1. Stop treating the information field as a war field, and begin treating it as the truth domination field

    2. Reject misrepresentation, incomplete and misleading information as acceptable tools in “waging the information war”

    3. Always accept and acknowledge own mistakes and failures before the opponent does.

    4. Shape the narrative not as “a fight of good vs. evil” (even though it is), not as “our impeccable heroes against the stupid cowards”, but as a fight of true democracy against a cruel tyranny in protection of Western civilization values.

    5. Allow a complete and unfettered access of the Western media to the front lines. The PR disaster of the Kherson liberation shout be learned from. Accept related security risks as a necessary cost.

    6. Make treatment of foreign and domestic reporters an example of openness and virtues of the Ukraine as opposed to Russia.

    7. Reduce the amount of military censorship to the absolute minimum, accepting associated security risks as necessary costs.

    I don’t believe that the above is possible under current Ukrainian leadership (and Zelenskyy, by the way, is probably not to blame, though I do not know).

  32. You win by helping in the real world and not worrying about bot-manipulated social media online

  33. Copy them, if they’re mass flagging us, let’s mass flag them back.

  34. create your own automated bots or networks of bots to combat disinfo. Use the very weapon pro-Russians are using against themselves. Manually reporting and combatting disinfo works as well, but is slow and tedious.

  35. how is the measure of top comments a barometer for winning/losing an information war?

Leave a Reply