A thorough analysis of the downvoters to an inflammatory anti-Russian comment posted by National Zero editor “Spartan” on an article at Kremlin propaganda site RT.com on Tuesday revealed that fully 90 percent of the identifiable Disqus accounts having recorded a downvote had themselves posted zero comments, with the remainder also being of suspect origin. The comment mocking Russia’s economy in contrast to California’s received a high number of downvotes – 68 as of 3:19 PM EDT on Tuesday – however only 50 of those 68 were tied to an account, with the remaining 18 being recorded as “Guest votes”. What follows is a list of the bot accounts:
| Disqus ID | Comments | Upvotes |
| 1022 | 0 | 0 |
| 10_001 | 0 | 0 |
| 19-X1 | 0 | 0 |
| 99wxx | 0 | 0 |
| abc_s | 0 | 0 |
| Aflow | 0 | 0 |
| alister | 0 | 0 |
| amoch | 0 | 0 |
| B_Buena | 0 | 0 |
| beachball | 0 | 0 |
| catsap3 | 0 | 0 |
| checkos | 0 | 0 |
| costa | 0 | 0 |
| cruel | 0 | 0 |
| d_drop | 0 | 0 |
| fatcat | 0 | 0 |
| fellow_a | 0 | 0 |
| flemming | 0 | 0 |
| Gabby | 0 | 0 |
| H Potter | 0 | 0 |
| Johnson | 0 | 0 |
| Leav_e | 0 | 0 |
| Letit_B | 0 | 0 |
| life_line | 9 | 5 |
| lifequest | 0 | 0 |
| master | 0 | 0 |
| melon11 | 0 | 0 |
| Molly | 0 | 0 |
| my show | 0 | 0 |
| netfish | 0 | 0 |
| Nicki_Na | 0 | 0 |
| Nkelly | 0 | 0 |
| Nova | 0 | 0 |
| now_fit | 0 | 0 |
| paperclip | 0 | 0 |
| predicter | 0 | 0 |
| que_skew | 0 | 0 |
| Rome7 | 0 | 0 |
| s_type | 0 | 0 |
| SammyS | 0 | 0 |
| she_she | 0 | 0 |
| so_b_so | 0 | 0 |
| Solar | 0 | 0 |
| Space | 0 | 0 |
| tomtom | 0 | 0 |
The following accounts had a human controlling them at least at some point since they were created and, as they’ve posted at least one comment, their join date can be determined through the Disqus API data (unlike the definite bot accounts listed above):
| Disqus ID | Comments | Upvotes | Created Date |
| a1_b1 | 3 | 8 | 9/20/2021 |
| BreivikAntiPedo | 20 | 9 | 10/5/2021 |
| fancy | 1 | 0 | 9/20/21 |
| piffu | 1 | 0 | 9/15/2021 |
| Quodpipax | 16 | 22 | 8/26/21 |
So there you have it. Someone sicced bots on that comment to downvote 60-something times (and flag it five times, per the API data). We don’t know if it was definitely a Russian actor who did that but considering it’s a Russian website and a comment mocking Russia… well, who else would it be?