Porn sites have worked for the benefit of Margarita Simonyan

The head of the RT channel was accused of wrapping the Youtube channel through bots and porn sites.
03.04.2020
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Millions and billions of views of the Russia Today television channel, led by Margarita Simonyan, turned out to be fake. A simple analysis of YouTube accounts showed that RT is gaining views and comments for itself under the video. Apparently, cheating is needed for fabricating reports so that it is easier to receive subsidies from the Russian budget.

Billions of views that don't exist

The reason for studying Russia Today by FBK employees was a statement by Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the TV channel, that recently the network of RT YouTube channels had reached ten billion views. Total for all countries for the entire existence of the channel. According to the claimed indicator, RT even outperformed the world famous CNN.

However, FBK leader Alexei Navalny said that the propagandist is lying, and in fact, almost no one is watching RT. View rates are achieved due to the paid markup, as well as the number of comments.

The criteria by which FBK experts evaluated the degree of reliability by viewing RT videos is the activity of the audience, expressed in the number of likes / dislikes and comments, as well as the concentration of views over time.

“There are many signs by which you can determine the wrap: comparisons of social activity in the videos, view statistics and view geography. For example, any student will tell you that if you have a video that has more than 1 million views, like this video from Spanish RT, but with only 95 comments, then the matter is most likely unclean, ”says Navalny’s website.

For comparison, the study provides statistics on comments on the channel "Bulk LIVE". For example, almost 1.5 million people watched the “In Facts” program with FBK lawyer Lyubov Sobol, leaving over 14 thousand comments. Or, for example, the video “How VKontakte became friends with the Kremlin” on Navalny’s channel was watched by more than 1.3 million people, writing almost 6 thousand comments.

Evaluated and the nature of the comments. If live users express in their comments their attitude to the content of the video or communicate with each other, then under the Russia Today videos, foreign viewers either simply write their name, or incoherent nonsense, or are surprised at how they were brought to this channel at all.

Some users leave comments of this nature: “Here is your comment in Spanish about which you asked,” “Congratulations, you have found a Vietnamese comment,” and so on. This clearly indicates that the comments were ordered through one of the online exchanges. Apparently, the task was described as simple as possible - leave a comment in a foreign language, depending on the region where the video was published.

A large number of commissioned comments appeared under the Russian video RT “Children’s Final”, where pupils of football schools in Moscow repeated the final match of the 2018 World Cup. The video is one of the most watched by Russia Today, however, analysis shows that this was the result of cheating.
Some comments on RT videos and views are wound through porn sites, say FBK employees.

“Simonyan prefers to wind up views through porn sites. Because of this, under some videos you can find beautiful and concise porn comments, ”the publication says.

The activists then analyzed how views of RT videos are distributed over time. The videos with the most views were selected for consideration. Apparently, these videos were key and were intended for reporting to the curators.

“If there are no signs of virality, if there are no comments, and a video that no one has watched for years, suddenly a million people watch sharply, and then stop watching - the views are wound up,” the FBK said.

One example is a video posted on the RT channel on February 25, 2015. In three years, the video gained only 32 thousand views, and then in a couple of days it got a million views, after which growth fell again.

The situation is similar with the video “Children’s finals: pupils of football schools in Moscow repeated the final match of the 2018 World Cup”. Although the video was posted immediately after the end of the championship and was of high relevance, for six months it collected only 30 thousand views. But then, from January to April, the video collected 8 million views. The increase in views was accompanied by the appearance of inappropriate comments.
“Perhaps such anomalous views only in Russian and Spanish RT? No alas. Absolutely everywhere, on all channels - one picture. And you can find exactly the same signs of cheating on any channel from the RT network, ”Navalny noted.

The opposition leader is sure that all these frauds with views and comments are necessary for the RT editor-in-chief so that there is something to report to the authorities. Under his command, Navalny refers to Kremlin officials, in particular, the first deputy head of the presidential administration, Alexei Gromov, with whom Simonyan is in close relations, as well as President Vladimir Putin.

Real billions from the budget

Possibly “puffy" reports influence how the state distributes subsidies between TV channels. For example, in 2020, Simonyan TV channel will receive 23 billion rubles, in 2021 - 18.2 billion rubles, and in 2022 - 18.5 billion rubles. Such figures are indicated in the appendix to the bill “On the federal budget for 2020 and for the planning period 2021 and 2022”.

“Thanks to these fake statistics, they are asking more and more money for their media. The presidential administration sees these fake figures and allocates space budgets to them. Thinking that they set them apart for propaganda. But in fact - into the air. To a drawing of statistics. And porn comments, ”summed up the FBK leader.

Navalny demanded that Simonyan resign from the post of editor-in-chief of the Russia Today television channel, as well as a check by law enforcement agencies regarding the embezzlement of budget funds by the television channel’s leadership.

The FBK investigation was the third part of the film “Parasites,” dedicated to RT chief editor Margarita Simonyan. In the first part, Navalny talked about how Simonyan and her husband earn hundreds of millions of rubles on dubious telecasts of their own production and advertising contracts from Aeroflot, and in the second series he highlighted the “cut” of budget money allocated for the film “Crimean Bridge. Made with love".

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