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Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers

haaretz.com

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Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers

#11
Also reported on by NY Times and posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40583068

but like most articles about Israeli hacking, US Big Tech involvement in the war, etc it was immediately flagged once it reached the front page.

I don’t know how much of this is moderators removing posts, or if there is a pro-Israel brigade that is censoring HN’s front page.

Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers

#17

Not a comment about who's right or wrong in this war, but it is fascinating that we have entered the age of the Internet being a place where warfare is fought. There have always been people posting web content about conflicts but now with Gaza and Ukraine, it seems that the nations fighting are actively looking at the internet as the fourth field of battle. Just waiting for a random US future president to create an "…

Espionage/propaganda/public relations/influence campaigns are hardly new. Social media is just a new flavor to go along with the others.

I do think the economy is different. You've always been able to just hire a bunch of thugs to stage an event to shape the narrative, like old-school cold war style. That takes money and effort and a modicum of skill and the risk of being caught with your pants down is not negligible.

Difference today is you can stoke the flames of public outrage with just a few people, without even setting foot in the country, while maintaining a lot of plausible deniability, since the modern playbook relies heavily on uncertainty and confusion, meaning you can safely target allies without significant risk of being caught (even if you're caught, you can deny it and say it's hostile propaganda).

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