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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

#91
post #36

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…

The problem is that we've already solved these issues many times over on other sites that are decades old. HN simply refuses to implement 21st-century forum enhancements.

Brigaded reports? 4chan solved it by adding a mandatory enum to reports to specify what the report is reporting for. Identifying bad reports and banning users as a result becomes trivial.

Flooding with stories about a particular topic? That's what stickies are for and they work particularly well so that mods can auto-delete any non-sticky stories pertaining to the MOT.

Flamewar on a MOT? Add a sticky to the top of the thread like reddit does saying moderation will be minimal and to enter the thread at your own risk.

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

#92

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 "…

We entered that some time ago; or rather, the Internet accelerates the use of such information operations. This is (imho) why Musk bought Twitter.

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

#94
post #79

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 :)

My wife lived in Israel on and off for years, I got to visit her for awhile during her dissertation work in the West Bank. Only a few blocks of Tel Aviv deserve the "modern Middle Eastern country" label in my mind. And even then it wasn't nearly as impressive as I thought. Haifa is a lovely town though :)

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

#95

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.

they used to be really unapologetic about it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Internet_Defense_Force https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWD5xiiafBc it's prudent to assume such operations are still ongoing

JIDF turned out to be one guy. That was a sideshow.

This article is from Hareetz, which is a major newspaper in Israel.

There's a huge, organized Israel lobby aimed at the US. It's no secret. There's AIPAC, the American-Israel Political Action Committee. "Lobbying for Pro-Israel Policies", it says on their web site. There are official organizations in the government of Israel which do "public diplomacy".[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_diplomacy_of_Israel

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

#96

How are those guys not treated as some hostile foreign power and have half their embassy staff expelled is beyond me.

General lack of countries with something even vaguely resembling representative government in the Middle East.

Israel seems to only extend that sort of courtesy to a part of its citizenry, but when you remember that the "stable" countries in the region are all more-or-less absolute monarchies, it becomes obvious why the US is willing to at least work with Israel.

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

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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are you trying to get Nazi talking points bingo? Don't forget the race science stuff or "ouch! my neck"

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

#98

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]

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

#99

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.

See, this is the thing - this propaganda is only meant as the "rationale" that goes along with the real bribe - campaign funding from the likes of AIPAC and DMfI.

The funding is what secures these politicians' votes. The propaganda is what the politicians can use to justify their actions to everyone else. That it's laughably bad is a function less of the capabilities of Israel than the utter fealty that these politicans have to the Israeli cause.

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