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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

#61

Post by mountainofdeath »

greenavocado wrote: post #32
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.

To my knowledge, zero. If you really mean Jews, I think there are roughly 40 between both houses of Congress. None of them are Israeli citizens. Jews are not automatically citizens of Israel though they do have dedicated pathway to obtaining it, but it's not as simple as merely showing up and claim you are Jewish.

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

#62

Post by erellsworth »

dang wrote: post #36
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…

Thank you for the explanation.

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

#64

Post by laweijfmvo »

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…

One thing I've learned about old people (and in the US, the people in charge are _OLD_) is that they have no concept of being scammed like this.

So they may recognize trolling, but if you tell them "Hey, the President of Israel tweeted at you," they just assume it was the President of Israel.

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

#65

Post by jamal-kumar »

runarberg wrote: post #30
SkipperCat wrote: post #4

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 "…

[flagged]

The holocaust came of age in the dawn of the information age if you count the radio as information technology, albeit a very one-sided information technology where you had the government giving everyone cheap radios that were only marked to tune to German and Austrian radio stations, unless you dared to go out at night to get an antenna up to receive others. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksempf%C3%A4nger

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

#66

Post by partiallypro »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #39
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.

I'm aware how it works. But those numbers just aren't that compelling, because as I said every large social media platform is full of large troll farms. It's more about influencing actual constituents to write their Congress person.

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

#67

Post by ipaddr »

runarberg wrote: post #44
TwentyPosts wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[flagged]

Everytime I submit a github project it becomes [dead] immediately.

You expect political drama submissions not to be flagged as offtopic?

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

#68

Post by wk_end »

greenavocado wrote: post #32
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.

> How many congressmen are dual citizens with Israeli citizenship?

I don't know. How many? I was curious and Googled, and couldn't find any good authoritative lists. This Quora answer [0] implies that the answer is zero, as does this Snopes article [1]. Both answers mention that there's various incorrect lists going around that are white supremacist propaganda.

[0] https://www.quora.com/Which-current-members-of-Congress-have...

[1] https://www.snopes.com/news/2024/02/05/dual-citizenship-elec...

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

#69

Post by partiallypro »

laweijfmvo wrote: post #64
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…

One thing I've learned about old people (and in the US, the people in charge are _OLD_) is that they have no concept of being scammed like this. So they may recognize trolling, but if you tell them "Hey, the President of Israel tweeted at you," they just assume it was the President of Israel.

Aside from the terminally online politicians (like Mike Lee, AOC, Cruz, MTG) most do not use their own accounts or even look at them. They might have a firm that measure constituent engagement, but still to this day the most effective way to complain to your congress person is a phone call or email. If we're being serious, the latter is what these bot farms, etc are after. They want to influence actual constituents to do their ultimate bidding. Now if we can get evidence of a huge phone campaign using AI voice, that would be much more alarming. Israel is doing it, and Iran/Russia/Hamas adjacent are doing it. There's absolutely no denying it.

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

#70

Post by cjk2 »

Well their enemies used social accounts to garner support from US citizens so you've got to start somewhere!

It's not like we haven't done this either. I worked for a company in 2005 which was doing this paid for by politicians. Moment I worked this out, I quit.

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