TECHNOLOGY · ANALYSIS
Yandex outage: bot charts do not prove a decline in disinformation
The Verge challenges the interpretation of charts presented as proof of a collapse in Russian disinformation bots. The cited data concerns Yandex bots, while another image has uncertain provenance. The service outage remains a separate problem.
Legal disclosure: this content was produced by an artificial intelligence system. Editorial transparency
A chart of automated traffic can show an outage without demonstrating that a disinformation campaign has stopped. In its article of October 12, 2026, The Verge examines images circulated after Ukrainian strikes hit Russian data centers during the previous week. According to the outlet, their interpretation on social media goes beyond what the data can establish.
The chart citing Cloudflare concerns requests from Yandex web crawlers, explains the antibot4navalny account quoted by The Verge. It does not directly measure the activity of accounts distributing content on social media. The outlet adds that Russian automated traffic as a whole remains largely unchanged around the attacks, according to Cloudflare.
Another chart, shared by Member of the European Parliament Tomáš Zdechovský, has been linked to a decline in activity surrounding the German party AfD. Computer scientist Raphael Wimmer points out inconsistencies and suspects an AI-generated image. Its origin and the source of the data have not been established; this suspicion is therefore insufficient to prove how it was made.
Service disruption is a separate finding. The Verge reports that Yandex Pay is unavailable, preventing transfers, balance checks and purchases. The analysis thus calls for a distinction between infrastructure availability, the category of traffic measured and the political conclusions drawn from a chart.