Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

haaretz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 807 posts

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

#31

Post by partiallypro »

I'm sure the story is true, but I doubt it was effective. I don't think most politicians are really looking at their social media given most of it is trolling junk. I'm sure Russia/Iran/Hamas adjacent countries were doing the same. I just don't think they have been that effective in getting politician support. Direct lobbying or phone/email is much more effective than an online troll farm to get the attention of a politician in DC. I have worked in DC and this still feels very true to this day.

I think the more worrying is going after the low information voter. I didn't think Russia's election interference had much effect in 2016, but now when you look at US Media (largely conservative outlets) their footprint is very visible.

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

#32

Post by greenavocado »

pokepim wrote: post #3

Just as russian bots, israeli bots spreading fake news are worst thing that happened to our society. Crazy that people are falling for this but here we are

How many congressmen are dual citizens with Israeli citizenship? This is even worse. Also, AIPAC is allowed to exist. As a thought experiment replace Israeli with Russian citizenship for the Israeli dual citizens in Congress and replace AIPAC with a hypothetical Russian ARPAC. Imagine how crazy this would be. Yet the current situation is somehow completely acceptable.

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

#35

Post by TwentyPosts »

jules-jules wrote: post #25
raxxorraxor wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Articles get flagged if users perceive it to not be desired content and not necessarily because it violates a specific rule.

[flagged]

You'd be surprised by how many HN users would prefer to keep politics-first-tech-second news off the site.

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

#36

Post by dang »

erellsworth wrote: post #18

Why is this flagged? What rule does it violate?

Posts on all sides of this topic get flagged quickly (by users), and mods turn off the flags on limited occasions—mostly when some significant new information arises and there's at least some chance of a substantive discussion about it.

It's pretty important that most stories about this conflict and similar current affairs get flagged, because otherwise HN's front page would consist of little else, and that's not the purpose of the site. But it's also important that the topics not be ignored completely, even though they're painful. There's no happy medium here, unfortunately.

Here are some links to previous explanations. If you (or anyone, of course) have a look at these and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40418881 (May 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39920732 (April 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39618973 (March 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435324 (Feb 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435024 (Feb 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39237176 (Feb 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39161344 (Jan 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38947003 (Jan 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38749162 (Dec 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38657527 (Dec 2023)

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

#38

Post by dang »

Metacelsus wrote: post #13

This was related to OpenAI announcing that they had shut down several covert influence campaigns using ChatGPT-generated social media posts. https://openai.com/index/disrupting-deceptive-uses-of-AI-by-...

Disrupting deceptive uses of AI by covert influence operations - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40526068 - May 2024 (70 comments)

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

#39

Post by PurpleRamen »

partiallypro wrote: post #31

I'm sure the story is true, but I doubt it was effective. I don't think most politicians are really looking at their social media given most of it is trolling junk. I'm sure Russia/Iran/Hamas adjacent countries were doing the same. I just don't think they have been that effective in getting politician support. Direct lobbying or phone/email is much more effective than an online troll farm to get the attention of a po…

It's not just for the politicians, but the people around them, the companies researching the mood, the normal citizen who will carry the mood to others. It not simply to quantify the effect of this type of social engineering.
Post reply on HN