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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

#71

Post by paul7986 »

germinalphrase wrote: post #8
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 "…

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

Indeed and one reason i don't watch or pay attention to news media(TV, online, etc) especially political news. What to believe is real / the truth and with the advent of AI, Deep fake voices and deep fake videos the Internet becomes an even worse place for deciphering truth.

Here's AI Trump and AI Biden debating live now on Twitch (video isnt great as of today but the voices are) https://m.twitch.tv/videos/2157689323

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

#72

Post by cafard »

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.

I am in my upper 60s--if a bit junior for Congress, let alone the White House--but like to think of myself as a bit more skeptical than that.

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

#73

Post by WhackyIdeas »

Israel never got the memo about calming their propaganda campaigns down - now even the most average Joe (at least in the UK) can spot them a mile off. They aren’t subtle about it.

For a country which is meant to be one of the smartest out there, their propaganda campaigns are an utter disaster giveaway to anyone with a pulse and a few dozen brain cells.

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

#74

Post by Kapura »

cjk2 wrote: post #70

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.

This seems extremely unethical no matter who is doing it.

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

#75

Post by cjk2 »

Kapura wrote: post #74
cjk2 wrote: post #70

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.

This seems extremely unethical no matter who is doing it.

100% agree (hence my point about quitting) but the problem is it's a difficult position to be in when everything is narrative driven and misreporting and propaganda are rife.

You can sit there and do nothing and wait for your enemy to paint you in a bad light and the next thing you know your usual political allies are throwing money and aid at your enemy. Or you protect your citizens as best as possible by entering the game. The moral high ground may have a higher body count.

This point applies to both sides for ref. And because it's a war, the rules of fair play go out of the window until people are on trial afterwards.

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

#76

Post by vsuperpower2020 »

wonderwonder wrote: post #56
jhp123 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many congressmen are dual citizens with Israeli citizenship? Zero? I can't find a reliable source for any congress member being an Israeli citizen

OP means Jews https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/defining-antisem... Lots of people going masks off now that is cool to be anti-semitic again but now we call it anti-zionist.

[flagged]

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

#78

Post by jakupovic »

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…

Thanks Dang this is much better than previously.

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

#79

Post by diggan »

WhackyIdeas wrote: post #73

Israel never got the memo about calming their propaganda campaigns down - now even the most average Joe (at least in the UK) can spot them a mile off. They aren’t subtle about it. For a country which is meant to be one of the smartest out there, their propaganda campaigns are an utter disaster giveaway to anyone with a pulse and a few dozen brain cells.

> For a country which is meant to be one of the smartest out there

Seems their propaganda works just fine if that's a commonly held belief :)

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

#80

Post by runarberg »

jamal-kumar wrote: post #65
runarberg wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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

This also applies to the Rwandan genocide. A lot of it was perpetrated via mass media, especially radio. But you can also claim that there were Industrialized genocides before the Holocaust, but what sets it apart is just how much it was defined by industrialized processes.

The Gaza Genocide is similar, the use of AI for target selection (or rather generation), the social media campaigns, using drones for killings, etc. We haven’t seen a genocide before which uses information technology to the extent it really defines whole processes of the genocide.

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