Ep. 1855 - How Scammers Make Money By Infesting The Internet With Bots

October 13, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

In late 2024, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that drone strikes on Russian data centers had noticeably reduced online hate, division, and provocations. "A lot of people noticed," he said from Warsaw, suggesting that the attacks had disabled swarms of Russian bots. Even by the standards of wartime propaganda, the claim was audacious. But it touched a real nerve: the internet, for most people, feels broken, flooded with automated garbage, and nobody trusts what they see anymore.

The Zelensky Claim and What It Actually Means

Zelensky's victory lap was designed to exploit a Western audience primed by years of stories about Russian election hacking and online manipulation. The underlying problem he referenced—a dead internet choked with bots—is genuine. But his specific evidence dissolves under scrutiny. Reports that automated traffic from Yandex, Russia's largest search engine, plummeted after the strikes sound dramatic until you learn that most automated traffic is mundane: search engine crawlers indexing pages, not propaganda bots. Knocking a search engine's data centers offline stops its crawlers regardless of any troll farm activity.

Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.

Read Full Summary →

Free • No credit card required

Listen to Audio Summary Open in App

Never miss an episode of The Matt Walsh Show

Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.

No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.

What you'll learn

1 (00:59) **The Shrinking Internet** - Walsh introduces the paradox: more websites than ever, yet most people only visit a handful of sources, making us easy to manipulate.
2 (02:28) **Zelensky's Bizarre Claim** - Ukraine bombs Russian Yandex data centers, and Zelensky claims it noticeably reduced online hate and bots.
3 (06:41) **The Real Problem: Nobody Trusts Anything Online** - Walsh pivots from Zelensky's lie to the underlying truth: the internet is flooded with undisclosed paid influence.
4 (11:44) **Why Bots Are the Next Step** - Paid influencers are risky and expensive, so scammers and marketers are switching to cheap, undetectable AI-powered bot swarms.
5 (14:17) **Did the Bombings Actually Work?** - Walsh investigates the practical effect of Ukraine's drone attacks on Russian data centers.
6 (16:39) **Debunking the "Smoking Gun"** - Other armchair analyses of Reddit and X traffic also fall apart under scrutiny.
7 (18:32) **The Thought Experiment: A Bot-Free Internet** - Walsh poses the more interesting question: what would the internet actually look like if we could eliminate all bots?

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Zelensky bombed Russian data centers claiming to take out Russian bots. I investigate the reality of the online bot problem.

Ep. 1855

- - -

Today's Sponsors:

PureTalk - Go to https://PureTalk.com/WALSH to save 50% off your first month.

One Nation America - Making your voice heard is easier than ever. You can get election reminders, look up your polling location, and pick a date to vote early. Go to https://GOPVotes.org today. Paid for by SLF PAC. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

Policygenius - Head to https://policygenius.com/WALSH to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you could save.

- - -

DailyWire:

Become a Daily Wire Member and watch all of our content ad-free: https://dailywire.com/subscribe

🇺🇸 Get 3-Months of DailyWire for just $17.76 📜

🍿 Watch Run Hide Fight: Infidels https://www.dailywire.com/videos/run-hide-fight-infidels

📲 Download the free Daily Wire app today on iPhone, Android, Roku, Apple TV, Samsung, and more.

📜 Real History with Matt Walsh is available ad-free, exclusively on DailyWire+ https://dwplus.watch/RealHistory

👕 Get your Matt Walsh flannel here:

https://dwplus.shop/MattWalshMerch

- - -

Socials:

YouTube — https://youtube.com/@mattwalsh

Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/mattwalshblog

Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/mattwalshblog

TikTok — https://www.tiktok.com/@mattwalsh_

X — https://twitter.com/mattwalshblog

- - -

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices