Viral Claim Tying Russian Data-Center Strikes to Tucker Carlson's Views Left Out Key Days

He said the comparison left out October 7, when Carlson had two posts with more than 2 million views, and put Carlson’s average decline at 10%¹. He also said the post “leans on one or two viral posts” in the “before” week.

@BillboardChris, who posts as Billboard Chris, wrote on X on October 13 that the claim tying Ukrainian strikes on Russian data centers to a drop in Tucker Carlson's views is "fake news." The post he answers came from Matt Tardio, who posts as @angertab and dated it October 13 as well². Their dispute is over what a before-and-after comparison of view counts can show, and BillboardChris put his objection on the record the same day¹.

“leans on one or two viral posts”

1. October 7 to 8Yandex said its Sasovo data center was damaged in a drone attack
2. October 9Yandex said its Kaluga data center was attacked
3. October 11RFE/RL reported a strike on a Yandex facility in Vladimir
4. October 12Zelenskyy said social media had fewer bots after the strikes
5. October 13BillboardChris posted his challenge

BillboardChris’s October 13 post is embedded here.

Tardio’s post, timestamped 12:24 a.m. that day, went beyond Carlson. It put Douglas Macgregor’s drop at 62% and TCN’s at 34%. A second Tardio post claimed Scott Ritter’s views fell 43% and Rick Sanchez’s 39%.

Against Tardio’s 71%, BillboardChris holds to that 10% average for Carlson and says the skipped October 7 was Carlson’s best day of the whole stretch¹. He says Macgregor’s drop comes almost entirely from one viral post on October 5, and that Macgregor’s median post is down 7%. On TCN, he concedes a real dip of about 27%, but says it rests on only 8 posts, that views were already sliding before October 7, and that nothing in the data ties it to the strikes.

The strikes themselves came in quick succession. Yandex said its Sasovo data center was seriously damaged in a drone attack on the night of October 7 to 8 and completely shut down. The company said another data center, in Kaluga, was attacked on the morning of October 9³. RFE/RL reports that a third strike, on a Yandex facility in Vladimir on October 11, forced a complete suspension of operations. Zelenskyy said on October 12 that social media had fewer bots after the strikes, but researchers told RFE/RL that the drop in Yandex’s automated traffic comes mostly from the company’s own web crawlers⁴, not from accounts posting on X.

Sources

1. @BillboardChris on X, 2026-10-13: The post about Ukrainian strikes on Russian data centers causing Tucker Carlson’s views to drop is fake news. It ignores October 7 when Tucker had two posts over 2 million views, and leans on one or two viral posts in the "before" week. Tucker's average vi, 2026-10-13
2. Matt Tardio on X: "Following Ukrainian strikes on Russian data centers:
3. What is happening to our data centers, the iron heart of Yandex
4. Zelenskyy Says Yandex Strikes Crippled Pro-Kremlin Bots But Tech Experts Question Evidence