{"id":164982,"date":"2026-10-14T10:16:54","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T18:16:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/10\/14\/up-to-90-of-elon-musks-fans-may-have-been-russian-bots-and-ukraine-just-silenced-them\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T10:16:54","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T18:16:54","slug":"up-to-90-of-elon-musks-fans-may-have-been-russian-bots-and-ukraine-just-silenced-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/10\/14\/up-to-90-of-elon-musks-fans-may-have-been-russian-bots-and-ukraine-just-silenced-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Up To 90% Of Elon Musk\u2019s Fans May Have Been Russian Bots, And Ukraine Just Silenced Them"},"content":{"rendered":"

The world\u2019s richest man continues to spend hundreds of millions<\/a> of dollars to help Republican politicians escape the electoral consequences of their spectacular mismanagement of all three branches of the federal government. We\u2019ll see if he can succeed in buying another election.<\/p>\n

Whether it works again or not, Elon Musk has already gotten many obvious perks through his support of Republicans in general, and Donald Trump in particular. From ridiculous tax breaks<\/a> to a fun stint operating as the shadow president while the head of DOGE, all this investment in right-wing politics has paid off tangibly for Musk, allowing him to do so many things he evidently wanted to do.<\/p>\n

Yet, for all of his bravado, and all of his casual cruelty, I think Musk actually does want to<\/a> be liked. I\u2019m convinced he bought Twitter because he really did believe something nefarious was happening on the platform that was keeping him from getting the attention and positive affirmation he craved.<\/p>\n

To those of us not insulated from reality by nearly three decades of obscene wealth, it might seem obvious that accumulating the largest personal fortune in the history of the world is not really a good way to win a popularity contest, to say nothing of cutting hundreds of thousands of people\u2019s jobs, or causing the deaths of many thousands of poor people abroad who could have been saved for pennies. Rather than try to be more likable, however, Musk opted for delusion.<\/p>\n

In control of his own social media platform, Musk could tweak and tinker with the algorithm<\/a> to his heart\u2019s content (or order his engineers to do it for him, anyhow) so as to maximize engagement with his own tweets. Fiddle with those dials enough, and even an unlikeable billionaire actively striving to make life worse for everyone poorer than him could build a huge following.<\/p>\n

Or so it seemed. Before he purchased Twitter, Musk complained repeatedly<\/a> about the number of bots and fake accounts infesting the platform. Once the deal closed, he got conveniently quiet about bots on the newly renamed \u201cX\u201d platform.<\/p>\n

Over the last week, Ukrainian forces struck three<\/a> of Russian tech behemoth Yandex\u2019s five data centers in response to Moscow\u2019s attacks on internet infrastructure in Ukraine. Suddenly, tens of thousands of Musk\u2019s most fervent supporters on X fell silent.<\/p>\n

After these strikes, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky noted \u201cless hate, less division, and fewer provocations\u201d online. His reasoning was simple: \u201cfewer bots.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is exceedingly difficult to definitively prove how many of a person\u2019s followers on social media are bots. That being said, throughout October, up until Ukraine took out these data centers that had been linked to Russian bot farms, Musk\u2019s posts attracted an average<\/a>\u00a0of between 17,000 and 81,000 likes per day. After the strikes, the average range of daily likes plummeted to 8,000 to 11,000.<\/p>\n

Other than a big swath of Russian data centers being put out of commission, nothing else had apparently changed. Could perhaps as many as 90% of the \u201cpeople\u201d who had been liking Musk\u2019s posts really have been Russian bots?<\/p>\n

Russia had no qualms about waging massive campaigns to interfere<\/a> in America\u2019s elections. Vladimir Putin has time and again played Donald Trump like a fiddle<\/a> to gain leverage in Russia\u2019s ongoing war against not just Ukraine, but against the concept of freedom itself. It is entirely believable that Russia would ply an American tech oligarch who is obsessed with his level of engagement on social media by deploying a Twitter bot army.<\/p>\n

None of this is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. If you asked me<\/a> to weigh the preponderance of the evidence, though, I\u2019d say most of Musk\u2019s supposed fans are in reality Russian bullshit. Ukraine should go ahead and destroy the other two Yandex data centers.<\/p>\n

\n

Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Your Debt-Free JD<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn\u2019t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>jon_wolf@hotmail.com<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Up To 90% Of Elon Musk\u2019s Fans May Have Been Russian Bots, And Ukraine Just Silenced Them<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t(Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris\/Getty Images for The Met Museum\/Vogue)\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The world\u2019s richest man continues to spend hundreds of millions<\/a> of dollars to help Republican politicians escape the electoral consequences of their spectacular mismanagement of all three branches of the federal government. We\u2019ll see if he can succeed in buying another election.<\/p>\n

Whether it works again or not, Elon Musk has already gotten many obvious perks through his support of Republicans in general, and Donald Trump in particular. From ridiculous tax breaks<\/a> to a fun stint operating as the shadow president while the head of DOGE, all this investment in right-wing politics has paid off tangibly for Musk, allowing him to do so many things he evidently wanted to do.<\/p>\n

Yet, for all of his bravado, and all of his casual cruelty, I think Musk actually does want to<\/a> be liked. I\u2019m convinced he bought Twitter because he really did believe something nefarious was happening on the platform that was keeping him from getting the attention and positive affirmation he craved.<\/p>\n

To those of us not insulated from reality by nearly three decades of obscene wealth, it might seem obvious that accumulating the largest personal fortune in the history of the world is not really a good way to win a popularity contest, to say nothing of cutting hundreds of thousands of people\u2019s jobs, or causing the deaths of many thousands of poor people abroad who could have been saved for pennies. Rather than try to be more likable, however, Musk opted for delusion.<\/p>\n

In control of his own social media platform, Musk could tweak and tinker with the algorithm<\/a> to his heart\u2019s content (or order his engineers to do it for him, anyhow) so as to maximize engagement with his own tweets. Fiddle with those dials enough, and even an unlikeable billionaire actively striving to make life worse for everyone poorer than him could build a huge following.<\/p>\n

Or so it seemed. Before he purchased Twitter, Musk complained repeatedly<\/a> about the number of bots and fake accounts infesting the platform. Once the deal closed, he got conveniently quiet about bots on the newly renamed \u201cX\u201d platform.<\/p>\n

Over the last week, Ukrainian forces struck three<\/a> of Russian tech behemoth Yandex\u2019s five data centers in response to Moscow\u2019s attacks on internet infrastructure in Ukraine. Suddenly, tens of thousands of Musk\u2019s most fervent supporters on X fell silent.<\/p>\n

After these strikes, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky noted \u201cless hate, less division, and fewer provocations\u201d online. His reasoning was simple: \u201cfewer bots.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is exceedingly difficult to definitively prove how many of a person\u2019s followers on social media are bots. That being said, throughout October, up until Ukraine took out these data centers that had been linked to Russian bot farms, Musk\u2019s posts attracted an average<\/a>\u00a0of between 17,000 and 81,000 likes per day. After the strikes, the average range of daily likes plummeted to 8,000 to 11,000.<\/p>\n

Other than a big swath of Russian data centers being put out of commission, nothing else had apparently changed. Could perhaps as many as 90% of the \u201cpeople\u201d who had been liking Musk\u2019s posts really have been Russian bots?<\/p>\n

Russia had no qualms about waging massive campaigns to interfere<\/a> in America\u2019s elections. Vladimir Putin has time and again played Donald Trump like a fiddle<\/a> to gain leverage in Russia\u2019s ongoing war against not just Ukraine, but against the concept of freedom itself. It is entirely believable that Russia would ply an American tech oligarch who is obsessed with his level of engagement on social media by deploying a Twitter bot army.<\/p>\n

None of this is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. If you asked me<\/a> to weigh the preponderance of the evidence, though, I\u2019d say most of Musk\u2019s supposed fans are in reality Russian bullshit. Ukraine should go ahead and destroy the other two Yandex data centers.<\/p>\n

\n

Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Your Debt-Free JD<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn\u2019t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>[email\u00a0protected]<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The world\u2019s richest man continues to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to help Republican politicians escape the electoral consequences of their spectacular mismanagement of all three branches of the federal government. We\u2019ll see if he can succeed in buying another election. Whether it works again or not, Elon Musk has already gotten many obvious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":164983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}