Russian data centre bombing: less aggressive/ far right posting on MN?

[BeurialJimberley]

Lots of talk about how the Ukrainian bombing of Russian data centres has decimated far right/ destabilising and aggressive social media posts over the last week as the bots have been taken offline. Have we noticed less of this on here?

www.euronews.com/2026/10/12/did-ukrainian-strikes-on-yandex-data-centres-cause-russian-bot-activity-to-plummet

I've certainly noticed very left leaning threads on here, at least 3 since yesterday. And I do think the far left and far right are as bad as each other. Both extreme and unwilling to budge on their views.

I've seen quite a few posts suggesting this might be something that has happened, but most of the right wing stuff I see is shared by my local council leader (unfortunately).

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I felt something was different but haven’t done a full analysis

I do think it’s fundamentally different having state sponsored bots pushing a right wing agenda compared to individuals pushing their personal left wing views

I try to read a wide range of valid news sources so when randoms post I know my own views.
I don’t like this view that bots are more likely to be one side of the other. If I was trying to turn a country into a fighty vortex I’d have the bots out shitposting in either direction.

I must know! What are the 3 left leaning threads?

That wouldn’t necessarily work as well though

I’d be maximising instability or pushing the country to my own idea of “correct politics “ Russia is right wing so naturally promotes its belief system ?

It’s not a ‘view’, it’s fact. 96% of the comms coming from the data centre wasn’t posted by real humans.

I think there has been a difference too. Hope @mnhq do some analysis- a potentially very useful natural experiment.

Edited to add I dont think it's just new threads either- any vaguely feminist thread has been much less likely to descend into anti Islamic/ anti Muslim immigrant sentiment

I don't think Mumsnet has a big problem with bots. If Mumsnet is the only place you post, and you're not used to having your views challenged, I can see why it's tempting to think so. But if you spend five minutes on any other platform, it's easy to spot the bots. They're really not as sophisticated as people make them out to be.

The suspicious posters we get on Mumsnet tend to be - in my view - journalists looking for something they can build into a story, or else just plain old market research. The big draw is to be able to sell us stuff, not influence how we think on politics.

You can tell the bot situation is not actually bad on here because we haven't been overtaken by the same Lindsay Clancy and Cornell 7 mania that has the rest of the internet in its grip. Both seem like very astroturfed stories to me, designed to create a backlash against women / feminism ahead of the American elections. (To be clear, I think the stories are real but the push to make them a huge public conversation has been artificial, and highly suspect.)

By contrast, conversations about Reform and immigration seem pretty in line with the views of real people I've spoken to. I think many "left-leaning" Mumsnetters would be surprised to find out how many of their peers hold such views in secret. The sudden uptick of "new" posters in these threads has always felt more like good old fashioned name-changing to me.

Hmm, interesting. You may well be right. Don't you think that, should a sudden change coinciding with Russian data centre bombing be shown through analysis, that would tell us something, though? Comparing business as usual with a change in the system.

@SnoopyPajamas i agree.
The main bot problem is some posters who cannot believe or tolerate others views ,the types who want an intellegence test to vote / calling others bots in a paranoid frenzy

My experience of people trying to politically influence Mumsnet is that everyone forgets we exist until right before an election is due, then there are some very clunky and obvious attempts to sway the direction. But day to day I don't think we're of much interest to the bot farms. I don't think they understand Mumsnet.

Data would be interesting, of course. But I haven't observed any sudden changes myself.

Not sure if those are bots or just classic nutters, which the internet has always attracted

Snoopy I agree. MN is great with lots of amazing people posting but it's just a chat forum.
Some people post in a very high handed way as if they are literally feeding feedback directly to government from a highly regarded think tank.

To be fair, if governments north and south of the border had paid more attention to this forum they'd have saved themselves a whole heap of trouble re the supreme Court judgment. Its just a chat forum but the way its ordered by time posted means you often get a proper discussion with a lot of decent points made and argued through.

I think it's feminism chat this week where I've noticed a real fall in derails.

I thought the opposite. That the general mood on here for the past - atleast a week but maybe I only just noticed- has been really bad. Lots of angry persistent trolls trying to upset people.