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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

#361

Post by Karawebnetwork »

jimbob45 wrote: post #91
dang wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

> HN simply refuses to implement 21st-century forum enhancements.

I'd argue that the reason most of us are on HN is that it doesn't use 21st century forum enhancements.

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

#362

Post by cess11 »

myth_drannon wrote: post #343
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IDF after the initial shock is doing great From an outside perspective, this doesn't appear to be the case. It's like that old management consulting saw: "Strategy without execution is useless — execution without strategy is aimless." Israel's actions appear to be entirely reactive; they're on the back foot, and they don't have a clear set of strategic objectives. Execution without strategy. In essence, they're res…

It appears the government has no clear strategy and lacks the famous "the day after" plan. But from IDF side, it took two weeks to take over the whole border with Egypt. Rafah is empty and by the end of the month, it will be Israeli. So yes, they spent months not doing anything while the government was trying to secure hostage release and Biden was screaming do not touch Rafah. But in general what strategy do you nee…

Do you really believe this? Do you think this is an efficient way to perform military counterinsurgency?

And are you really sure it's a good idea to wallow in war crimes like this in relation to the rest of the world? Something like, the UAE kind of gets away with it in Sudan currently, so Israel can use IDF like its own janjaweed?

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

#363

Post by dicefordeath »

myth_drannon wrote: post #343
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IDF after the initial shock is doing great From an outside perspective, this doesn't appear to be the case. It's like that old management consulting saw: "Strategy without execution is useless — execution without strategy is aimless." Israel's actions appear to be entirely reactive; they're on the back foot, and they don't have a clear set of strategic objectives. Execution without strategy. In essence, they're res…

It appears the government has no clear strategy and lacks the famous "the day after" plan. But from IDF side, it took two weeks to take over the whole border with Egypt. Rafah is empty and by the end of the month, it will be Israeli. So yes, they spent months not doing anything while the government was trying to secure hostage release and Biden was screaming do not touch Rafah. But in general what strategy do you nee…

The IDF's ability to steamroll Gaza was never a question

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

#364

Post by throwup238 »

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 "…

> Just waiting for a random US future president to create an "Internet" branch of the military. Maybe that's already happened.

Cyber Force!

They have cyber marines, cyber carriers, cyber destroyers, cyber bombers, cyber jets, and cyber drones. They even have their own sister agency called Veterans Affairs where veterans can go to get virtual healthcare treatment.

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

#365

Post by greentxt »

Crtl+f "NAFO" > zero hits

So I want to say that it's not entirely clear to me that social media peer pressure campaigns are not on occassion counter productive. Automating it seems like it would be potentially disasterous. At the end of the day, there's much we still dont know about psychology, particularly when it comes to efforts at online persuasion.

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

#366

Post by CorrectingYou »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #350
some-guy wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"greatest ally" according to whose claim? that reads like propaganda, just plain nonsense. perhaps a contender for greatest external funding liability? not sure how the hard data would rank such numerically.

I believe this was sarcarsm, since American politicians like to always pitch Israel as "America's Greatest Ally", thus making it a common target of sarcasm

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

#367

Post by myth_drannon »

cess11 wrote: post #362
myth_drannon wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears the government has no clear strategy and lacks the famous "the day after" plan. But from IDF side, it took two weeks to take over the whole border with Egypt. Rafah is empty and by the end of the month, it will be Israeli. So yes, they spent months not doing anything while the government was trying to secure hostage release and Biden was screaming do not touch Rafah. But in general what strategy do you nee…

Do you really believe this? Do you think this is an efficient way to perform military counterinsurgency? And are you really sure it's a good idea to wallow in war crimes like this in relation to the rest of the world? Something like, the UAE kind of gets away with it in Sudan currently, so Israel can use IDF like its own janjaweed?

Look at Judea&Samaria, beyond a shooting from stolen weapons nothing happens and that's without tight control over the border. Insurgency works as long as you have a constant supply of weapons. Gaza had it, but not anymore.

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

#368

Post by dang »

racional wrote: post #359
dang wrote: 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…

It seems you've been triggered by the mention of the g-word. But when we calmly consider what the commenter is saying: Israel is using information age technology to commit and propagandize their genocide It's plainly not an unreasonable proposition, nor does it seem to be intended to engage in battle or provoke. They're simply describing a perfectly horrible situation that happening on the ground (that some recognize…

I wasn't responding to any proposition, but rather to the pattern of how the account is using Hacker News over a long stretch of time. That's what the word "primarily" refers to, and it's the most important thing to understand.

Of course I replied to a specific post because any reply has to do that; but I was responding to the account's use of HN over time. That's the issue here.

I wrote the GP in haste and can see how this point wasn't obvious. On the other hand it should quickly become obvious to anyone who clicks on the link I provided (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...), which is the purpose of providing the link.

(more at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40589978)

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

#369

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

kelthuzad wrote: post #356
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.

prop·a·gan·da /ˌpräpəˈɡandə/ noun 1. information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view. This definition is good enough, I don't see why it would need a redefinition.

Sure. But why does it seem like everyone here calls everything propaganda all of the time?

I think those who overuse the term ought to explain it in their own words.

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

#370

Post by megous »

ignoramous wrote: post #292
megous wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people have both mechanisms to record what's happening, and share it. It's been that way with Syria conflict, too, though. A lot was shared in twitter/youtube during that one. One thing that's seemingly a bit new is how much ordinary Israeli soldiers are sharing their behavior, empowered by their self-righteousness, I guess. Videos from shooting unarmed deaf people up close in their homes, to all kinds of ca…

> empowered by their self-righteousness ... Total dehumanisation Jeez, just like those supremacists of the yesteryears Hollywood made movies to warn us about, then?

Those warned us that we westerners are not immune from getting manipulated into engaging in, and turning a blind eye to mass atrocities against entire groups of people. Even to attempts at their eradication. It was a lesson about the west and humanity.

We didn't learn though.

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