Expert: Kremlin bots made every effort to spread the meme of Musk with Zelensky
To do this, they postponed all other current affairs
On the day that X (Twitter) owner Elon Musk posted a meme with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Kremlin trolls devoted almost half of their posts to sharing and discussing the image.
Source. This was reported to the Agency by the founder of the Twitter project "Bot Blocker" Antibot4navalny. This is a very rare case when Kremlin bots forget a significant part of the current agenda for the sake of a single news item.
Subscribe to the weekly newsletter of the digest of regulatory changes from Mind.ua!
As a reminder, on October 2, Musk posted a photo of Zelensky with the caption "When five minutes have passed and you haven't asked for a billion dollars in aid yet." This post was responded to by 40% of all Kremlin bots who were active on Twitter on October 2.
They commented on the tweet or spoke in support of Musk under his reposts or media tweets dedicated to him.
The creator of the Bot Blocker told the Agency that over the past year, he has recorded only three news events that similarly pushed other news into the background. These were the Oscar award for the documentary Navalny, the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant for Putin, and the Russian dictator's statement that Wagner does not legally exist.
At the same time, Musk was discussed on VK on a much smaller scale: on October 2 and 3, 1400 comments out of about 38 thousand bots were dedicated to him, the founder of the Cook's Trap project told the Agency.
Elon Musk has repeatedly been criticized for his pro-Russian stance. For example, the billionaire's statement that he refused to turn on the Starlink system in the Crimea during the Ukrainian Armed Forces' drone strike on military facilities in Sevastopol caused a heated debate.
And the European Commission concluded in a special study that Twitter's new policy contributes to the spread of Russian propaganda. Musk himself responded that he does not see any Russian propaganda on Twitter.
After announcing the purchase of Twitter in April 2022, Musk promised to clean it of bots. However, the creator of the Bot Blocker says he sees no movement in this direction, and troll factories continue to operate on X.
If you have read this article to the end, we hope that means it was useful for you.
We work to ensure that our journalistic and analytical work is of high quality, and we strive to perform it as competently as possible. This also requires financial independence. Support us for only UAH 196 per month.
Become a Mind subscriber for just USD 5 per month and support the development of independent business journalism!
You can unsubscribe at any time in your LIQPAY account or by sending us an email: editor@mind.ua
