Free bots for Yulia Pravik: how an NAU associate professor used students’ work to promote her website

Yulia Pravik, who has been linked to a fake event, now teaches SMM at NAU.

She allegedly uses student assignments to produce content for her NewsMaker website, manage her social media accounts, and launch Telegram channels. Alena Guseva brought the matter to public attention in a Facebook post, saying that Pravik teaches a class in which her sister, Alina Guseva, is enrolled.

The following outlines the circumstances and examines the potential legal implications.

What Happened Alena Guseva shared details on her Facebook page regarding the situation unfolding at NAU. Her sister, Alina Guseva, is a third-year student, and SMM is taught to her class by Yulia Pravik.

According to Alina, Pravik started teaching SMM to their group this year. She assigns students tasks to write original articles for her website, manage her social media accounts, as well as create and monetize Telegram channels. Here is what Alina says about meeting the lecturer:

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“She spoke very enthusiastically about her work. Specifically, that she had returned to Ukraine from Russia and that she runs a company here developing a speed-reading program, which they later want to offer to schools. She also mentioned that she had been the director of a holding company that included several TV channels, and later the director of a radio holding company that owned ‘Radio Shanson’ and two other stations.”

Pravik was actively interested in how many followers the students had, says Alina. She asked if anyone had 50,000 to 100,000 followers and said that this should be important to them.

“During every class, she conducts a ‘job interview,’ constantly telling us whom she has already hired, and showed us screenshots of her website with job vacancies (with a salary of 50 UAH/hour). All the assignments she gives us are structured like a test before getting hired,” Guseva shared.

On Thursday, she gave students an assignment that triggered a widespread response on social media: create a Telegram channel, rewrite news about NAU, marketing, society, and volunteering for it, and then duplicate everything to her website, NewsMaker. After that, the students were required to maintain those posts by driving discussion. In other words, they were essentially required to act as bots — writing comments to engage real users.

In a Telegram chat, Pravik explained that the students needed to create a channel capable of attracting readers not only from Ukraine, but also from other countries, with the goal of monetizing it in the future.

“The idea is to promote a new social network, NewsMaker, and link a Telegram channel to it. If a large enough audience gathers and an advertiser comes on board, any future profit can be distributed proportionally among the most active content creators. High-quality content is currently trending,” Pravik explained.

In addition, Pravik suggests managing and promoting her Facebook groups: “Marketing Director,” “Cryptocurrency and Blockchain,” “Tourism Travel,” and “Businessmen Club.” Students are also expected to comment on posts in these groups.

According to Alina Guseva, most of the students in the group are already working in their field. Because of this, the students suggested replacing the assignment with posts they had written previously. In response, Pravik criticized them and resorted to personal attacks.

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Following the advice of a lawyer, the entire group of students is preparing a collective letter to the rector of NAU.

We reached out to Yulia Pravik for comment, but have not yet received a response.

Who is Yulia Pravik

Judging by her profile on Spark.ru, Yulia Pravik positions herself as a PR expert, journalist, and marketing director. According to LinkedIn, prior to NAU, she managed to work at Delta Bank, Swedbank, ORT Media, Agrocombank, Companion Group, Politeka, and Bank4YOU Group, and was also a mentor for the "Recursion" fund at Moscow State University.

However, Pravik is not known for that. In 2017, she organized a fake conference, Business-forum 2017. It turned out that the website was copied from iForum, and most of the speakers, including even Minister of Finance Aleksandr Danilyuk, knew nothing about the event.

Pravik insisted that all of this was a paid campaign aimed at compromising the event. However, few believed her version. In the end, the conference did not take place, but it was remembered for a high-profile conflict between Pravik and former AIN.ua CEO Artur Orudzhaliev.

Then in 2018, Pravik began promoting the blockchain conference Crypto Cartel Club. Its press release was published by Liga.net, among others. Later, the event organizer, Ivan Kroshny, stated that Pravik was not handling PR for the event.

In March 2018, Pravik promoted the NewsMaker aggregator platform. Originally, it was positioned as a response to the ban on cryptocurrency advertising on Facebook, Instagram, Google, and Yandex. The plan was for journalists and owners of websites in this niche to ask questions to experts.

Now, judging by everything, NewsMaker has moved away from that concept. Short posts and discussions on various topics appear on the site. Among other things, Pravik asked students to create content for it.

Additionally, in January, a post appeared on NewsMaker titled "Yulia Pravik: Ukraine’s best marketing director. The war with failed politician PR managers". The author was listed as Aleksey Burdak. His profile states that he is a journalist for Ukrinform, but we were unable to find a person with that name on social media. In the post itself, Burdak criticized Artur Orudzhaliev and defended Pravik. Comments supported his opinion.

Furthermore, information emerged that Pravik works at Ibox Bank, but this was also refuted. Another project considered hers is her own PR agency, PRAvik. However, there has been no news about it recently.

Currently, Yulia Pravik holds the position of Associate Professor at the Department of Journalism and Public Relations at the Institute of International Relations at NAU.

What the Lawyer Says

Maksym Popov, an associate partner at Mentors Law Firm, states that students’ articles are protected by copyright, even if they are assigned by a lecturer as part of the educational process.

"The Law of Ukraine ’On Copyright and Related Rights’ classifies articles and other literary written works as objects of copyright. The author is considered to be the person who created them through creative work—the student. Provided, of course, that the articles are original.

The lecturer will not be considered a co-author, because co-authorship requires creative labor, and setting an assignment does not qualify as such work," Popov explains.

The main rights of students include:

• Allowing or prohibiting the use of their works;

• Demanding recognition of their authorship (having their name specified upon publication);

• Independently using the work in any lawful manner.

According to Popov, a lecturer cannot use creative works created by students without written permission. Typically, the author receives remuneration for this.

“If there was no contract, students can demand an end to the use of their works or file a lawsuit demanding compensation,” Popov explains.

According to him, student works cannot be considered work made for hire (service works). If they were, the rights to them might default to the lecturer or the university.

“Under Ukrainian law, a work made for hire is created within the framework of an employment contract or under a work assignment from an employer. Since the university is not considered an employer to its students, the work cannot be considered a ’work made for hire’,” Popov says.