People are rejoicing about the removal of Russian bots from social media – but the truth is far more complicated

Smoke billows from Yandex's Sasovo hub, one of the company's five large data centres, after a fire following a drone strike forced the suspension of operations at the site, which hosts tens of thousands of servers, Sasovo, Russia, in this screengrab obtained from a social media video on 8 Otober 2026 - (Reuters)

Social media is busy with claims that something dramatic just happened to the online environment.

Huge numbers of posts claim that that Russian bot traffic has fallen dramatically across the internet. And, with that, so has the number of posts and replies from automated accounts on sites such as X, formerly Twitter, and Facebook, the posts claim.