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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

#311
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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> The real problem here isn't the POTUS repeating some rumour that was going around. It wasn't “a rumor going around”, it was Israeli state propaganda which both started and continued for a long timw to be pushed by Israeli state organs (official sources like the Foreign Ministry, not just proxies.)

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

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We're just arguing semantics at that point though aren't we?

If the purpose of the trolling is to influence a decision, does it matter if the target reads it and is trolled directly or trolls enough constituents to call for action? Either way, the influence was asserted making the effort worthwhile.

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

#313

The wild part about this, at least to me, is the wholesale incompetence demonstrated by Israel in this regard. If I couldn't google the talking points the bots make and see Israeli officials saying the same things, one would think these bots were Iranians acting with the intent to make Israel look bad.

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Israel is not a democracy, a huge percentage of the populate cannot vote and have no civil rights or any sort.

Let’s please stop repeating this falsehood. It’s propaganda and the facts are clear.

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

#314

The wild part about this, at least to me, is the wholesale incompetence demonstrated by Israel in this regard. If I couldn't google the talking points the bots make and see Israeli officials saying the same things, one would think these bots were Iranians acting with the intent to make Israel look bad.

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

#315
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank God you're protecting us from what you do not find interesting.

When you have a minute, please review the HN Guidelines, specifically: > ”Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.”

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

#316

The wild part about this, at least to me, is the wholesale incompetence demonstrated by Israel in this regard. If I couldn't google the talking points the bots make and see Israeli officials saying the same things, one would think these bots were Iranians acting with the intent to make Israel look bad.

It's a very interesting thing, it demonstrates something uncomfortable & scary to me as a goy Zionist, who hangs out in a private, predominantly Jewish, space. Note the biggest word in the cloud: UNRWA. All my confirmation bias was in one direction in October. The oddly dissonant and desperate messaging you'd see made things extremely difficult to maintain that, like, you have to be of a very specific mindset to see…

* Assuming the comments came from Israelis/Jews. All the left and right-wing channels are infiltrated with Iranian agents(plenty of news on that topic in Haaretz/Walla). They are causing rift and radicalization in society.

That's a solvable tech problem to shut it down. Unfortunately, it's not a priority on a state level because everyone is doing it.

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

#317
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The algorithm is public

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781013

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

#318
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I struggle with not calling this propaganda: https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/18skzb0/ah_behold_o... https://www.boston25news.com/news/local/new-billboards-along...

Then you have a somewhat unconventional personal definition for "propaganda". Almost always people use that word to imply something clandestine, misleading, or both. What you showed is a paid advertisement from a US-registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit, JewBelong, with public accounting on all donations, and a relatively clear mandate for how it spends its money. Again, you're simply saying that a (really only slightly edg…

> Almost always people use that word to imply something clandestine, misleading, or both.

No, propaganda is often quite blatant. Look at the posters from both of the World Wars, depicting US enemies as vicious, inhuman monsters.

Even the “Rosie the Riveter” and Uncle Sam imagery is propaganda.

Propaganda can be any sort of one-sided media used to manipulate public opinion. It doesn’t necessarily have to be banned, but people need to learn more media literacy to recognize it.

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

#319

Is there a country that doesn't do this?

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

As far as I can tell "greatest ally" is just something these accounts say.

Jordan seems to be a much stronger friend to us in the region.

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

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Israel is not a democracy, a huge percentage of the populate cannot vote and have no civil rights or any sort. Let’s please stop repeating this falsehood. It’s propaganda and the facts are clear.

Can you speak more to your perspective? The only way I can understand your take is to say that the West Bank is rightfully Israeli and therefore its residents should be citizens with voting rights. Are you opposed to an independent Palestinian state?
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