The drone strikes on Yandex did not silence the comment sections

Bots, Yandex and AfD: what our data shows

A claim has spread fast on X: that drone strikes on Yandex’s data centres sent comment activity on AfD and MAGA accounts into freefall. Common Consultancy tracks more than 17,000 accounts in over 30 countries every day, so we checked. We found no drop.

After the strikes on 8, 9 and 11 October, new Facebook posts from 76 AfD politicians received between 8% fewer and 5% more comments than those accounts usually get. That is within normal variation. For 136 MAGA profiles, comments were 4% to 10% above normal. In absolute terms, MAGA accounts received 480,000–560,000 comments a day after the strikes, up from around 370,000 in late September.

Denmark tells the same story, and here we also have X. Comments per hour on Danish MPs’ posts fell 4% on Facebook and 2% on Instagram, and were flat on X. From 8 to 11 October, MPs received 2,600 comments on X, against 1,500–1,800 on the same days in the previous three weeks. The right-wing parties (the Danish People’s Party, the Denmark Democrats and the Citizens’ Party) saw no fall either: 8 October was the busiest day on their X posts since August.

Our X data covers Denmark only, and just a few days after the strikes. Bots exist. But the collapse people describe is not in our data.

Data: Facebook posts from 76 AfD and 136 MAGA profiles, 10 August to 10 October 2026. Danish MPs on Facebook (151), Instagram (116) and X (57), measured roughly every three hours. Source: Common Consultancy.