Featured Image Credit: Alamy/North Royalton/YouTube
Topics: Russia, Ukraine, Technology, Reddit
Emily Brown
Topics: Russia, Ukraine, Technology, Reddit
Protesters of the ongoing war in Ukraine seem to be literally 'trolling' the Russian military by broadcasting pictures of troll faces on to their radios.
Footage shared by both a Reddit user and the Twitter page for Anonymous shows the troll face appearing on the radio broadcast, with a wide smile seemingly created to mock those attempting to use the radio for more serious communications.
It's unclear exactly who is behind the creation, but it was first posted on the YouTube page North Royalton yesterday, March 6, as Russia continues its second week of invasion in Ukraine.
Check it out below:
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The video has racked up thousands of views on YouTube in the hours since it was posted, while over on Reddit it received praise from one user who responded: 'Troll Level: Maximum'.
In response to another Redditor who asked what methods North Royalton had used to 'read the airwaves or whatever', the YouTuber told them to 'Look up kiwi sdr on google [sic]'.
KiwiSDR is available as an app which 'provides access to the Wideband Shortwave Radio Receiver Map', suggesting the YouTuber used the software to capture and share the message being sent by the trolls. They also provided internet users with the radio frequency the broadcast was taking place, writing on YouTube: '4625 kHz is the frequency the buzzer broadcasts on.'
Another Redditor, who goes by u/myselfelsewhere, expained that SDR is 'able to broadcast signals on almost any wavelength', and that it offers 'the ability to control the broadcast frequency via software.'
They continued: 'The video shows a waterfall plot, where the horizontal axis is the radio frequency. The vertical axis is time, where the older data is at the bottom, and the latest data is at the top. The color depicts the signal strength at the frequency and time points of the plot.
'If someone was broadcasting troll faces on the same frequency as your wireless router, it has the same effect as noise. It can interfere with the communication between your device and router. With strong enough interference, the devices would no longer be able to communicate,' they continued.
The Redditor added that while 'a few troll faces here and there wouldn't cause that much interference', they could be enough to slow down the transfer of data.
The person or people behind the faces on the radio aren't the only ones to be sabotaging Russia through the media, as Anonymous themselves also claimed to have hacked into Russian state TV to share footage of the conflict unfolding in Ukraine.
If you would like to donate to the Red Cross Emergency Appeal, which will help provide food, medicines and basic medical supplies, shelter and water to those in Ukraine, click here for more information.