Social media groups dedicated to cryptocurrency in Russia have been attacked by bots in what looks like a campaign against bitcoin and the like. His comments on Russia’s largest social media platform are triggered by certain keywords like crypto and blockchain, community members have noted.
Bots flood Vkontakte groups with anti-crypto comments
In the past week, crypto-themed groups on the state-controlled Russian social network Vkontakte (VK) have been seeing a growing number of comments seeking to discredit cryptocurrencies and related technologies, cryptocurrency news outlets Bits.media and RBC Crypto reported.
Comments appear on linked crypto asset posts and articles. They are all similar, for example: “It is more expensive to go deep into crypto, there are always big risks”, “Does anyone still talk about bitcoins?” or “People who talk about crypto don’t even understand it.”
According to Nikita Zuborev, a senior analyst at the exchange aggregator Bestchange.ru, these bots first appeared on the community and the official page of their platform on Vkontakte on February 13. The accounts are typical for this type of attack and are recently registered or stolen inactive accounts.
Bots are often used to spread spam and ads or lure users into fraudulent schemes, but this is not the case this time. The messages lack external links and their content is limited to abstract critiques of cryptocurrencies and activities like trading.
Vkontakte’s press service told RBC that the company “does not record an increase in the number of bots on the platform” and assured that its moderators “quickly respond to complaints” about bots posting the same information en masse.
Zuborev also commented that it is still difficult to establish what exactly the bots are reacting to. According to his observations, they ignore posts containing images, but are activated by those containing words like “Binance”, “bitcoin” or “blockchain”. The attacks have intensified this week, the analyst noted.
Crypto channels on Telegram not affected by bot attacks
It is difficult to understand the meaning and effectiveness of such campaigns against cryptocurrencies, commented the CEO of banking platform defi Indefibank, Sergey Mendeleev, since the majority of the Russian-speaking crypto community does not use this social platform, “for obvious reasons.” .
Mendeleev believes someone ordered the attacks to later refer to “the sheer volume of negative comments on the most popular social network.” The expert noted that no such attacks have been seen on cryptocurrency channels on Telegram.
Vkontakte was founded in 2006 by Russian businessman Pavel Durov, who later launched the Telegram messenger. In April 2014, Durov was fired as CEO of VK. He suggested the move was due to his refusal to hand over users’ personal data to Russian law enforcement, including members of a group dedicated to the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine, and he left Russia.
In September of that year, the Mail.ru group became the sole owner of the company. In December 2021, the Russian state bank Gazprombank and the insurance company Sogaz bought 57.3% of VK’s shares, becoming the holders of its majority stake. Vkontakte recently launched an NFT service.
Who do you think is behind the attacks on crypto groups on Vkontakte? Share your thoughts on the subject in the comments section below.
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