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

261–270 of 807 posts

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

#261

Post by akudha »

dfxm12 wrote: post #162
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 "…

"Manufacturing Consent" was written in the 80s mostly in response to newspapers, but the ideas have been adapted to the Internet for some time (and talk radio, and cable news, etc.). I'm old enough to remember this from the Iraq war. Yeah, we didn't have microblogging back then, but there were Email campaigns, blogs, message boards, chat rooms, etc.

Propaganda, false news etc are as old as time. It was the radio, TV and newspapers before, now it is social media and the internet.

The difference now is the speed, cost and scale. It is super cheap to spread crap today than ever. Also it is quick and the reach is massive.

By the way, Manufacturing Consent is a depressing book. You’d lose what little faith you have in media, if you read it…

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

#262

Post by pessimizer »

TillE wrote: post #43
mathgradthrow wrote: post #37

Perhaps they are trying to achieve parity with the propaganda of their adversaries, Russia, China, and Qatar.

It's certainly striking that the quality of the propaganda is very much on par with that of Russia. It's clumsy, it often espouses political views (eg, the faux-anarchist stuff) which are incoherent in America or really anywhere in the West.

You can't make a religious argument to people who don't share your religion, so they're stuck with harassment and bald-faced lies. Even non-Israelis who agree with them on everything end up with a bad taste in their mouth after reading or listening to it.

They don't have any practice making a secular argument about the Palestinian situation, how could they? They fall back to assuring people that Israel is a friend to the US, that Israel is a democracy (a ton of its inhabitants are forced to live in ghettos and refugee camps), that Israel loves gay people (Israel doesn't have gay marriage, or even secular marriage except by treaty), and the worst: "Why don't you give America back to the Indians?"

Russian propaganda is bad, but it's also lazy: it gets them nothing and they don't put a lot of effort into it. Israel is trying as hard as it can. To not ethnically cleanse Israel leaves a population that Europe tried its best to exterminate drifting the stormy seas of having to compromise with their neighbors. This is a population whose neighbors once built factories in order to slaughter them more efficiently.

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

#264

Post by rendall »

dang wrote: post #183
runarberg wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Your account has continued to use HN primarily for political battle after we asked you recently to stop: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40519369 (May 2024) If you keep this up we're going to have to ban you, for reasons explained on many past occasions: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... . Edit for anyone concerned: yes, this principle applies regardless of which side of any politic…

I'm not sure what's happening with the HN algorithm, but these anti-Israel, non-technology-related posts keep making the front page while e.g. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/security-insider/in... does not

runarberg's comments are just a symptom of a deeper problem, dang

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

#265

Post by tptacek »

some-guy wrote: post #113
michaeljhg wrote: post #102

Is there a country that doesn't do this?

Not the point here: Israel is our "greatest ally" and the target is our lawmakers.

I think you would be surprised by the list of countries the US IC believes are our most important intelligence "adversaries"; the list includes many of our allies.

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

#266

Post by leoh »

nerdjon wrote: post #253
leoh wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

No I am not, I am still engaging in the conversation. But there is very little I can actually say when your response is that it is anti-semitic. You are no longer responding to what was actually said and instead pivoting it to something else that does not leave anything to respond too since you are not addressing what you are responding too in the first place. And again you are doing the same thing here, instead of a…

> Do you find it concerning that no presidential candidate can even pass the primary without first kissing the ring of AIPAC? That Zionist lobby openly attacks insufficiently pro-Zionist candidates and then openly brags when they lose elections? With Zionist lobby trying to outlaw any criticism of Israel in direct violation of 1st amendment? Etc, etc. IDK about others, but I think this is insane.

* foaming at the mouth *

kiss the ring, AIPAC, Zionist, Zionist, Zionist

Fixed that for you.

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

#267

Post by SCUSKU »

akudha wrote: post #261
dfxm12 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Manufacturing Consent" was written in the 80s mostly in response to newspapers, but the ideas have been adapted to the Internet for some time (and talk radio, and cable news, etc.). I'm old enough to remember this from the Iraq war. Yeah, we didn't have microblogging back then, but there were Email campaigns, blogs, message boards, chat rooms, etc.

Propaganda, false news etc are as old as time. It was the radio, TV and newspapers before, now it is social media and the internet. The difference now is the speed, cost and scale. It is super cheap to spread crap today than ever. Also it is quick and the reach is massive. By the way, Manufacturing Consent is a depressing book. You’d lose what little faith you have in media, if you read it…

I think one of the big takeaways for me was aside from deliberate manipulation of media by the government and willing media partners, that journalists also self censor in a way because they are operating in a professional environment and within a certain Overton Window.

Maybe it's not what I should remember most, but it did help remind me that when your livelihood is based on what you say you will be much more measured, regardless of the subject.

Probably why people look to social media or Substack for more independent people who have a longer leash, less on the line, and more to gain, since that's where you get your interesting although many times wrong takes (e.g. Ivermectin for Covid, or Lab Leak Theory)

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

#268

Post by shmatt »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #233

If there are influence operations online is it ethical to counter them with your own? Obviously none would be preferable. We need to better define what propaganda is . To me it's misleading or false information with the purpose of facilitating a political outcome. Or deceptive information not meant for selling a product.

So buy comments on Israeli MK Facebook accounts? I think the only ones that would move any needle here is Meta profits on DAU and the company being paid to run the bots. You think your congressman goes to FB comments to decide how they’re voting?

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

#269

Post by cooper_ganglia »

Maxatar wrote: post #224
michaeljhg wrote: post #102

Is there a country that doesn't do this?

I don't know of any government department in Canada, Mexico, the UK, France, Germany, Australia that target U.S. law makers with fake social media accounts. Do you know of any? Can you cite them?

I don't know of them, that's why I'm sure it's happening. I'd assume that the US is doing this to our allied nations, too.

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

#270

Post by luckylion »

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]

There's reddit.com if you need to vent your outrage about technology and politics. We don't need to turn every website on the internet into reddit, it's okay to have some websites focus on other things.
Post reply on HN