Belarusian Internet under bots: how to recognize them and what to do about them

For greater vividness, Dziadok compares the modern internet to a situation in a cinema where one person stands up to see the screen better, forcing everyone behind them to do the same. As a result, no one sees the film except those sitting in front of the first person who stood up.

According to the blogger, several well-known social concepts describe a similar mechanism, including the "tragedy of the commons," which states that when there is a common, free resource available to all, people tend to abuse it, using it in such a way that it quickly becomes depleted or useless.

Similar processes, as Dziadok argues, are now occurring with the spread of information on social networks. When the internet first appeared, it was an open space with relatively equal opportunities for everyone. However, with the growth in the number of users and the internet's importance for politics and business, competition for audience attention intensified.

Following the widespread adoption of generative artificial intelligence, many content creators began using it to quickly produce large quantities of texts, videos, and messages. Dziadok refers to studies according to which up to 50% of internet content today is made using AI.

With this approach, the main advantage is no longer the quality of the materials, but their quantity. Those who use automated systems or bot farms gain particularly great opportunities. This forces other participants in the information space to use the same methods to avoid losing out in the competition.

Another problem the author identifies is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish genuine content from AI-generated content. In his opinion, this simultaneously facilitates the spread of fake materials and makes it possible to deny genuine evidence by claiming it was allegedly generated by a neural network.

The author includes clickbait among such practices — the use of maximally catchy headlines that often do not correspond to the content of the material. In his opinion, this forces other authors to increasingly resort to similar tactics, which ultimately undermines trust in the media — users stop believing media headlines altogether.

Dziadok notes that authoritarian states, including Russia, China, and the Belarusian authorities, have become active users of such tools. Bot farms create the illusion of public support for desired narratives, inflate views and comments, and promote necessary content.

Manipulative practices

The activity of bots, the blogger observes, is not limited to increasing the number of likes and comments. He identifies several main tactics used in information warfare.

Firstly, it is psychological pressure on people who openly criticize the authorities.

Mass insults and personal attacks can force some users to withdraw from public discussions.

Secondly, bots create a toxic atmosphere with their comments.

"When you open the comment section and see nothing but insults, dirt, profanity, GIFs with shit and butts, you feel an almost physical desire to close it quickly and not immerse yourself in that filth. This is clearly visible in the comments under Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya's Facebook posts (for obvious reasons, bots are most active there)," writes Dziadok, providing an example in a screenshot.

Павялічыць

Another task is to create the illusion of widespread support for desired narratives. As an example, the author describes observations of the Lithuanian segment of TikTok, where he observed how the activity of pro-Russian accounts artificially increased the popularity of radical statements.

"I open the comments under a video where Lithuanian ultra-nationalists march with a banner 'Lietuva Lietuvams' (Lithuania for Lithuanians). Not only does the video itself have an extremely large number of likes, but comments like *'Well done, Latvia is with you!'*, *'Poland is with you!'*, and all sorts of things in the spirit of 'down with foreigners' have 100 or more likes. More thoughtful comments, longer and more substantive than a slogan, have 2-3 likes. Such an unnatural disproportion clearly indicates artificial boosting, because anyone who has been on social media for a long time knows that this is an unnatural picture in small accounts. The goal is obvious: to infuriate the local Lithuanian population against Ukrainians and political refugees from Belarus and Russia," writes Dziadok.

Dziadok separately dwells on the Firehose of Falsehood tactic, which he considers the most dangerous in the long term.

Its essence is to simultaneously disseminate a large number of different, often contradictory versions of an event after a resonant incident. The goal is not for people to believe in any one version, but for them to stop being sure that the truth can be determined at all. As an example, the blogger names the information campaign after the poisoning of Alexei Navalny in 2020.

"The Russian authorities, from Kremlin bots to their useful idiots like Tucker Carlson, then rapidly started to throw out a whole stack of versions, fantastic in their immorality and absurdity:

– He was poisoned by his own people, oppositionists – they wanted to 'revive the protest movement!'

– Metabolic disorder.

– Poisoned by mushrooms.

– Poisoned by low-quality vodka.

– A staging by Western intelligence agencies.

In this case, it is absolutely irrelevant that all versions are refuted by elementary common sense, even without specialized expert knowledge. But in the Firehose of Falsehood concept, its initiator does not need you to accept the official, pro-government version of events. They need you to say: 'it's not so clear-cut' and 'we won't know the whole truth' in situations where everything is actually quite clear-cut," Mikalai Dziadok notes.

Another tactic the author calls the polarization of the society of a rival country or rival community.

According to him, Russian information operations can combine support for real radical groups with the use of AI accounts that imitate opposing extreme positions – from ultra-right nationalists to radical feminists or other ideological groups.

Such accounts actively participate in discussions, use aggressive rhetoric, exaggerate existing problems, and spread provocative or fake messages, striving to intensify conflicts between different population groups.

"Both sides begin to create their accounts, pages, and channels, becoming active in comments with maximally aggressive rhetoric, trying, if possible, to radicalize segments of the population close to them (feminists – women, jihadists – Muslims), swaying their views towards greater aggression with slogans (*'Muslims rape our women!'*, *'Men are trash!'*), hyperbolizing real existing problems, and often through fake information pretexts," writes Dziadok.

According to the author, as a result, radical views gain significantly greater visibility on the internet than corresponds to their actual support in society. We clearly observe such tactics in the Belarusian internet and Belarusian communities as well.

Possible consequences

According to Dziadok, the expansion of artificial intelligence and bots in social networks has several important consequences.

First, he names the growth of societal polarization, where people are less willing to compromise and more often unite only around their own group.

The second problem the author considers is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to assess real public opinion on social networks. This is influenced both by platform algorithms and the activity of bots, which can create the impression of massive support for certain positions.

In addition, in his opinion, due to the toxic atmosphere and the dominance of AI content, people who count on meaningful discussions and an exchange of arguments are gradually leaving social networks.

In his opinion, this leads to a relatively higher proportion of bots and users prone to aggressive communication styles, and the overall quality of discussions continues to deteriorate.

How to counter bots

The author proposes several possible ways to counteract this trend.

The first is the active detection and removal of fake account networks by internet platforms themselves. He notes that Meta has already reported eliminating a number of such networks but considers these measures insufficient.

The second possible option is mandatory user identification by passport, with a selfie and personal data. However, Dziadok notes, such a solution creates serious risks for privacy and the concentration of personal data in the hands of large corporations.

He considers the improvement of algorithms that could automatically detect and block bots to be the most realistic.

In addition, Dziadok suggests strengthening legal responsibility for the creation and use of tools for information manipulation. In his opinion, fines and blocking should apply to both the organizers of bot farms and legal entities whose products are used for such purposes.

He also believes that software and hardware manufacturers should bear some responsibility for ensuring that their developments are not used for informational pollution, and the development of specialized software for such purposes should entail legal responsibility.

At the individual level, as the blogger writes, everyone who has been attacked by bots in the comments faces a dilemma: ban them, which means lowering their post in indexing (fewer comments, even from bots, fewer people will see it). Or not to ban them — and get a cesspool in the comments.

Dziadok notes that he himself prefers selective blocking of the most aggressive accounts, while trying not to contribute to further degradation of discussions.

Concluding the article, the author returns to the cinema analogy and expresses the opinion that the long-term preservation of common rules is more important than short-term gain, even if it requires more complex solutions:

"Personally, I have chosen the path of maximizing my advantages within the rules. I don't want to be the person who stands up and blocks the film view for a neighbor. However, I will try to maximize my competitive advantages without harming the institutions themselves. Adhering to fair competition in the short term may mean falling behind, but in the long term, it helps preserve institutions and rules that are important to everyone.

So, finding yourself in the cinema example I mentioned at the beginning, perhaps one should not immediately jump up, imitating an unwise neighbor, but ask the person in front to sit down. Perhaps try to lean to the side, or appeal to everyone around to respect each other and use common sense. Or step into the aisle and watch the movie from there.

And hope that others will follow your example. Because a good example, as life shows, is just as contagious as a bad one," writes the former Belarusian political prisoner.

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