It is 2022 and a lot has changed in Ukraine, though some things appear to remain the same,  and among those is  Volodymyr Zelensky’s ‘army of bots’ on social media.

Back in 2021, ‘Bukvy’ tracked down the widespread use of fake accounts for the president’s online publicity and protection with campaigns orchestrated by his advisor Mykhailo Podoliak and minister of digital transformation Mykhailo Fedorov. It is worth noting president Zelensky does not bother to respond to requests seeking his comments on the issue.

Facebook, though, did.  In response to ‘Bukvy’ 2021 investigation, the social platform moved to take down a network of the bots our journalists had identified. Those bots and groups apart from lauding the president’s accomplishments  and slamming his rivals were also used for social media campaigns promoting PM Volodymyr Groysman.

Misinformation, depite efforts from Facebook, is still there,  is still coming up in our newsfeeds. While back in 2020 such  bot farms were used mostly to publicise policies of the Ukrainian president, swifting from  smear online campaig on his opponents, these days they are busy putting the heat on  opposition politicians and people who criticize the president.

The ‘amry of bots’ work revs up their activities once the Ukrainian president or his officials face some scandal or PR disaster, which are a common occurence these days. The online troll machine was at full throttle this January –  ‘commetators’took to social media to comment on Petro Poroshenko return to Ukraine and his trial in in coal contracts case.

It was  a flurry of almost identical comments that came as either post or memes. The choice of format is obvious – writing thousands of meaningful comments requires some writing skills, time and resources, while a simple script can do a trick generating scores and scores of silly memes.

The most of such stuff routinely harps on Petro Poroshenko story over his alleged ties to  pro-Russian politician Viktor Medvedchuk. Notably, this recent smear campaign got unleashed soon after Ukraine’s officials started to peddel this allegation in their statements.  The most striking manifestation was, in fact, the criminal proceeding against Petro Poroshenko.

What does the activity of bots look like?  They predictibly and swiftly pile in with short comments to any  post criticising Zelensky’s goverment . Comments to just one ‘Bukvy’ page on Facebook are are a good case in point.  A mention of  Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky gets you a barrage of pointless comments and memes.

 

If you  look up  the Facebook profiles and pages of such ‘commentators’, you will see little is going on there,  they have a few photos, at best, shares of complimentary stories about the government, and lots  of criticisms targeting  Ukraine’s opposition.  Most of such users often have empty profiles,  with a few ‘friends’, who look much like fake Facebook accounts.

 

Their online activities have the same pattern: there are ‘clone’ groups reposting articles from news sites (albeit different in title, but almost identical in design and content), then you have complimentary comments that pour in from mostly fake accounts’ users , and all of that is mixed up with lots of clickbait, which proves to come as a winning formula for both engagement and political messaging on social media.

Such methods are nothing new and Ukraine’s government officials often use this trickery, giving plenty of material for Bukvy investigations.  Facebook moderators obvioulsy  try to weed out such fake accounts and bots, yet bots ‘resilience’ is impressive – they come back each time something critical about Zelensky pops up  with  the same comments and memes.

Some accounts users have claimed a ‘top fan’ tag on the ‘Bukvy’ Facebook page.  Social media users receive the status of a ‘top fan’ if he/she often comments the page. Simply put, the activity of such profiles is so intensive making it hard for the social network algorithms to identify it.  It also makes  ‘Bukvy’ page vulnerable  as it can be hit anytime with ‘complaints’ from such ‘top fans’ getting it suspended or banned.

Usually, such ‘top fun’ pages are, unsurprisingly, almost empty.  We don’t care much about content of these pages, but what can really raise a flag is ‘interests’ given in their profiles, and this is wher we have noticed a certain pattern there.

You  can see the same thing with most of them. They have subscriptions to an assortment  of ‘news sites ’ groups that are mixed with pages of neutral content. The ‘news’ groups featured in their profiles stand out among other pages.

There are old ones and new ones, some of the latter were registered only in the fall of 2021.

 

The last screenshot shows such ‘Ukrainian’ pages can have moderators in as far as Armenia. There is nothing new here either as recruiting cheap social media ‘workforce’ on hire in other countries is usual practice these days.

Groups overseen by such ‘moderators’ are often decorated in colors of the Ukrainian flag to show a visible ‘connection’ to Ukraine:

 

In general, the main activity of these communities is posts from ‘news’ sites. The pieces of news in the different groups are strikingly similar narratives:

The news says Ukrainian singer has died, but Mr. Vynnyk fans need not worry as  everything is  ok with him. It is typical a attention-grabber silly stuff  to lure people.

 

While the sites such ‘news’ comes from can be different, most of them share the same simple layout and tone of news delivery:

 

The advertising on these pages is just monotonous and simple.

This advertising post is definitely the most popular:

You can  see a ‘push class’ phrase, which has never been used on Facebook, yet often  used on Russian social network ‘Odnoklasniki’. It alos shows Russian coins while the group itself has  clear Armenian ‘origins’.

Although such groups post a lot of neutral content, they regularly seed in their newsfeeds  both positive clickbait stories about Volodymyr Zelensky spruced up with critical or even fake posts about Petro Poroshenko:

 

Group administrators also do not forget about the agenda: after president Zelensky is criticized, fake account users pile in with slamming comments.

These pages and bots attacked Dmytro Gordon and Olesya Batsman after their criticism of Zelensky and his role Wagnergate scandal.  Zelensky-affiliated  ‘Kvartal 95’ comic group even mocked Dmytro and Olesya in one of its TV show segments,  they were showed in a bedroom scene discussing how much  money they are making from blasting Zelensky.  Remarkably, Zelensky and his top aide were in the audience watching this show.

Bots ripped into TV presenter Savik Shuster after his TV show  discussed Wagner mercinaries capture scandal:

 

Geo Leros who broke away from Servant of the People MPs group also got slammed after criticism of the president and his senior officials:

Yuriy Butusov drew the ire of this social media crowd when he exposed the botched attempt of Ukraine’s intelligence to capture Russian mercinaries in Minsk, known as Wagner mercinaries capture plot.  After Butusov’s public spat with Zelensky at the president’s press conference state investigators soon opened a probe into his Donbas video at Ukraine’s military position claiming him posing at the artillery unit  was  ‘planning, preparing, resolving and waging an aggressive war’:

 

Ousted parliament speaker Dmytro Razumkov took the heat on social media after his rift with the president that cost him his speaker’s seat and led to his breakaway from Servant of the People party.

 

All the headlines and stories above have one thing in common. They heap praise on Ukraine’s president and throw mud at his rivals.

Sometimes such groups post critical posts about Volodymyr Zelensky, but when it happens, the comments gather president’s fans who support his activities in every way, regardless of the content of criticism.

Some posts can be given a pass by president’s ‘fans’ and then you can see more balance of opinions.  The post below got equal share of ‘input’ from supporters of Volodymyr Zelensky and Petro Poroshenko.

Another thing that can baffle is when a post gets comments not related to its subjec – you can see a post about, say,  Volodymyr Zelensky and the oligarchs geting comments that are either happy-new-year wishes or words of praise for Ukrainian servicemen, or just some meaningless emojis.

One possible explanation is that  bot farm tries to bypass algorithms of the social network, artificially generating fake activity under the posts so that Facebook could allow the post a higher ranking.

It is clear that quality content was never much of a concern for such bot farms.  To make things worse, their  public opionion manipulations are creating another problem making it literally impossible for people to enjoy meaningful discussions on social media that are now drowned in deluge of dumbed-down memes and comments with misspellings.

They are getting blocked and taken down by the platform moderators, and soon you see them bouncing back on which means fighting misinformation and fake news can be an  uphill battle for Facebook.