4 ms·

Growing number of apps help automate pro-Israel activism online

26 points by aspenmayer 3y ago

stats111 3y ago
Why does a country that is apparently doing nothing wrong have the most advanced PR and propaganda machine in the world?
- llimos 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - goodSteveramos 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - ericfrazier 3y ago
      Nothing they haven't been pushed to.
      - goodSteveramos 3y ago
        What do you mean?
      - impossiblefork 3y ago
        What about their attempts to push out the Armenians from Jerusalem, or seizure of the property in Beit Sahour? What pushed them to that?
    - llimos 3y ago
      Israel in its current form has existed for ~2.2% of the history of the Jewish people. Antisemitism has existed for most of that time. If Israel wasn't Jewish, it wouldn't need the PR. See: all the other countries doing far worse things, that nobody cares about.
      - mdni007 3y ago
        Who would've thought creating a nation within the territory of another would be met with hatred from those who's homes were stolen...
      - goodSteveramos 3y ago
        So as long as Israel is jewish we should let it do whatever it wants? What exactly would Israel have to do to the Palestinians before they cross the line in your opinion?
        llimos 3y ago
        No, I'm not saying you should let it do whatever it wants. I'm saying you shouldn't have a double standard where only Israel's victims get you exercised and not those of China[1], Russia[2], Syria[3], Sudan[4], Pakistan[5], Turkey[6], Yemen[7] and more. This isn't whataboutism. This is asking about a double standard. The world failed to get anywhere near as excited about the other cases. If that applies to you as well, I'd love to hear an explanation why that doesn't include the J-word. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_civil_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_civil_war [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Sudan_(2023%E2%80%93present) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Sudan_(2023%E2%80%93pre... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_undocumented_Afghans_from_Pakistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_undocumented_Af... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purges_in_Turkey_(2016%E2%80%93present) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purges_in_Turkey_(2016%E2%80%9... [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemeni_civil_war_(2014%E2%80%93present) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemeni_civil_war_(2014%E2%80%9...
        goodSteveramos 3y ago
        I agree with you. Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians should stop and the mistreatment those countries do should also stop and I don’t think we should let any of those countries do want they want with the excuse that some other country is also doing a similar bad thing. I also think that when criticizing China we don’t need to bring up criticism of Israel in some kind of “equal criticism” principle to avoid offending China or visa vera.
  - aspenmayer 3y ago
    > “This level of organization only exists on one side of the conflict,” said Emerson T. Brooking, a former cyber policy adviser to the Defense Department who studies disinformation and propaganda campaigns as a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. “It exists for pro-Israel voices, and it exists because there are government ministries in Israel that support these tools and encourage their use.” > Brooking and other experts said they aren’t aware of any similar tools for Palestinian supporters.
    - goodSteveramos 3y ago
      Palestinian supporters could use the same apps and just comment with support instead of abusing the reporting system on pro-Palestine posts.
- hayst4ck 3y ago
  I think that is probably an exaggeration. I don't see a lot of reason to believe they have the most advanced machine and I don't buy that their PR machine exists to ameliorate ethical lapses. PR/Propaganda is power and all regimes want power. I've seen incredible amounts of (justfied) anti-Israeli action press, so I don't particularly believe they have a wildly successful PR machine either. China, the US, and Russia are all clearly advanced. Facebook alone got significant press for weighing in substantially on elections across the world. Twitter, before Elon, was used to coordinate against despotic regimes all over the world. Hollywood alone has incredible soft and hard power. NSO group's Pegasus, and their selling software to despotic regimes so that they can find and torture/murder/scare journalists is much more telling of Israel's ethical core, as is their bombing of associated press offices. Seeking power is not mens rea, directly harming those who would report your misdeeds is.
  - __jambo 3y ago
    > Hollywood has.. hard power Um, what??
- snird 3y ago
  Because most of the Muslim world shares false propaganda against them, and they are billions of people against ~10 million? Why does tech used have any effect on what is true? If you don't fear the truth, you should be happy that the minority has the tools to get more data out.
  - cornercasechase 3y ago
    Israelis on TikTok and Israeli leadership make the best case against Zionism. They’re openly racist and genocidal. As someone who’s not religious it’s clear the Palestinians have the moral high ground by a long shot.
    - snird 3y ago
      Palestinians have higher moral ground by raping innocent teenagers and then shooting them in the head? Yeah, some moral high ground. Your comment tells more about you than about this conflict.
      - cornercasechase 3y ago
        Palestinians have the moral high ground because it was their land that was invaded in 1948 and they been oppressed by Israel ever since. The “rapes” have been discredited over and over. One of the many things Israel does that is very obvious to outside observers is to lie constantly in the most obvious of fashions.
- Protostome 3y ago
  Well, that's because the premise of actions or policies being "right" or "wrong" is very simplistic. Both sides are active in the PR front, you think those "free palestine" rallies organize themselves?
xeckr 3y ago
Ah, I was wondering why the comments on r/worldnews read like propaganda.
- impossiblefork 3y ago
  I think it's more that /r/worldnews has removed any critical voices long ago. I don't even remember when I was myself banned. It's a very 'shaped' subreddit, and not just on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
  - goodSteveramos 3y ago
    Do you think the moderator account u/Maxwellhill on r/worldnews belonged to Ghislaine Maxwell? (The one that hasn’t posted since her arrest in 2019) https://www.the-sun.com/news/4460492/ghislaine-maxwell-reddit-account-arrest/ https://www.the-sun.com/news/4460492/ghislaine-maxwell-reddi...
    - impossiblefork 3y ago
      It's absolutely possible. But the power moderators and their anonymity are certainly a huge legitimacy problem. There are subreddits that are more important in shaping opinions than the New York Times or Washington Post, and the people controlling discussion in them are anonymous. It's hard to underestimate how enormous a problem this is.
      - LightHugger 3y ago
        I don't think the problem is the anonymity, but the complete lack of accountability. They don't need to be "unmasked" they need to be replaced when their moderation, which has long since turned into editorializtion, isn't serving the needs of readers. I like the idea of changing out moderation to a subscription system where you can 'subscribe' to specific moderators and moderators you dont like you can ignore. Ignored mod changes do not get propogated to your view. Default moderators can remain a popularity contest but at least this provides a release valve for all the completely unchecked corruption that happens in these mod teams and lets people fix the problem on an individual and eventually group basis. This would allow people to control who controls what they see rather than have moderators just materialize in these positions and be all-powerful for all time as they rot from corruption.
aspenmayer 3y ago
dang, is there any way to pre-emptively/proactively block the apps mentioned in this article and ones like it from parsing content on HN? I have no reason to believe that they’re being used here, but it would be nice to know that content posted here is not being targeted by coordinated inauthentic behavior.
- goodSteveramos 3y ago
  I think these apps just post links to the content they target for mass flagging. Individual users still use their personal accounts to access the content. I don't think there would be anything distinctive about the traffic other than a lot of it originating in Israel.
  - aspenmayer 3y ago
    Perhaps you’re correct. If the apps allow you to input/select content for parsing, then the admins/mods can do some tests/dryruns to see what is happening on the backend and block it, and nothing of value would be lost as far as HN and its guidelines are concerned. HN doesn’t allow bots or novelty accounts, and this kind of posting behavior as mentioned in OP is actively moderated against for breaking the guidelines of HN, so it doesn’t hurt to ask. The sites mentioned in OP may also have a way to request to not be used on domains that you own, as well.
snird 3y ago
[flagged]
- gnabgib 3y ago
  Look again
  - snird 3y ago
    I'm pleasantly surprised. I can live with that - no more politics on HN.
    - Simulacra 3y ago
      HN has a left-leaning audience, and it really just depends on the time of day, and when people see an article whether or not it will get downvoted for being political. It really depends on what side it takes. From a research perspective, it would be interesting to submit political articles and monitor comments, points, and if it gets flagged. Then see if when the article gets posted whether or not certain actions happen. For example, if the West Coast, which is more left-leaning is awake, and active I'm sure someone could write an interesting app for that
    - ratg13 3y ago
      This is a tech article about companies using technology to influence content. It's interesting from a technology perspective, and because those same apps were likely used to take down this post.
- prmph 3y ago
  It seems like it. Every article I post that seems even remotely supportive of Israel is immediately flagged. It's possible pro-Palestine stories are also flagged, but whenever I see an article on the crisis that gains any traction, the headline is invariable anti-Israel. Not sure what's going on here.
oatmeal1 3y ago
We're just lucky it's still attached to a human being. When online political discourse is dominated by millions of AI bots that appear indistinguishable from a human, that could be horrific.
Simulacra 3y ago
This is a terrible article. There are grassroots advocacy apps, and software for a wide variety of issues. Singling out Israel turns this into a hit piece and it doesn't belong on hacker news
ratg13 3y ago
They've been doing this for decades. What was that app they had in the 2000s? You used to install it into your computer and had some sort of megaphone icon in the app tray and would alert you whenever anyone was talking about Israel online. ---- Found it. It was called megaphone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaphone_desktop_tool https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaphone_desktop_tool
throwaway55479 3y ago
Related : The pro-Israel information war - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38572675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38572675 Israeli group claims it’s using back channels to censor “inflammatory” content - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38941719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38941719

26 points by aspenmayer 3y ago

Why does a country that is apparently doing nothing wrong have the most advanced PR and propaganda machine in the world?

llimos 3y ago
[flagged]
- goodSteveramos 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - ericfrazier 3y ago
    Nothing they haven't been pushed to.
    - goodSteveramos 3y ago
      What do you mean?
    - impossiblefork 3y ago
      What about their attempts to push out the Armenians from Jerusalem, or seizure of the property in Beit Sahour? What pushed them to that?
  - llimos 3y ago
    Israel in its current form has existed for ~2.2% of the history of the Jewish people. Antisemitism has existed for most of that time. If Israel wasn't Jewish, it wouldn't need the PR. See: all the other countries doing far worse things, that nobody cares about.
    - mdni007 3y ago
      Who would've thought creating a nation within the territory of another would be met with hatred from those who's homes were stolen...
    - goodSteveramos 3y ago
      So as long as Israel is jewish we should let it do whatever it wants? What exactly would Israel have to do to the Palestinians before they cross the line in your opinion?
      - llimos 3y ago
        No, I'm not saying you should let it do whatever it wants. I'm saying you shouldn't have a double standard where only Israel's victims get you exercised and not those of China[1], Russia[2], Syria[3], Sudan[4], Pakistan[5], Turkey[6], Yemen[7] and more. This isn't whataboutism. This is asking about a double standard. The world failed to get anywhere near as excited about the other cases. If that applies to you as well, I'd love to hear an explanation why that doesn't include the J-word. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_civil_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_civil_war [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Sudan_(2023%E2%80%93present) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Sudan_(2023%E2%80%93pre... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_undocumented_Afghans_from_Pakistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_undocumented_Af... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purges_in_Turkey_(2016%E2%80%93present) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purges_in_Turkey_(2016%E2%80%9... [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemeni_civil_war_(2014%E2%80%93present) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemeni_civil_war_(2014%E2%80%9...
        goodSteveramos 3y ago
        I agree with you. Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians should stop and the mistreatment those countries do should also stop and I don’t think we should let any of those countries do want they want with the excuse that some other country is also doing a similar bad thing. I also think that when criticizing China we don’t need to bring up criticism of Israel in some kind of “equal criticism” principle to avoid offending China or visa vera.
- aspenmayer 3y ago
  > “This level of organization only exists on one side of the conflict,” said Emerson T. Brooking, a former cyber policy adviser to the Defense Department who studies disinformation and propaganda campaigns as a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. “It exists for pro-Israel voices, and it exists because there are government ministries in Israel that support these tools and encourage their use.” > Brooking and other experts said they aren’t aware of any similar tools for Palestinian supporters.
  - goodSteveramos 3y ago
    Palestinian supporters could use the same apps and just comment with support instead of abusing the reporting system on pro-Palestine posts.
hayst4ck 3y ago
I think that is probably an exaggeration. I don't see a lot of reason to believe they have the most advanced machine and I don't buy that their PR machine exists to ameliorate ethical lapses. PR/Propaganda is power and all regimes want power. I've seen incredible amounts of (justfied) anti-Israeli action press, so I don't particularly believe they have a wildly successful PR machine either. China, the US, and Russia are all clearly advanced. Facebook alone got significant press for weighing in substantially on elections across the world. Twitter, before Elon, was used to coordinate against despotic regimes all over the world. Hollywood alone has incredible soft and hard power. NSO group's Pegasus, and their selling software to despotic regimes so that they can find and torture/murder/scare journalists is much more telling of Israel's ethical core, as is their bombing of associated press offices. Seeking power is not mens rea, directly harming those who would report your misdeeds is.
- __jambo 3y ago
  > Hollywood has.. hard power Um, what??
snird 3y ago
Because most of the Muslim world shares false propaganda against them, and they are billions of people against ~10 million? Why does tech used have any effect on what is true? If you don't fear the truth, you should be happy that the minority has the tools to get more data out.
- cornercasechase 3y ago
  Israelis on TikTok and Israeli leadership make the best case against Zionism. They’re openly racist and genocidal. As someone who’s not religious it’s clear the Palestinians have the moral high ground by a long shot.
  - snird 3y ago
    Palestinians have higher moral ground by raping innocent teenagers and then shooting them in the head? Yeah, some moral high ground. Your comment tells more about you than about this conflict.
    - cornercasechase 3y ago
      Palestinians have the moral high ground because it was their land that was invaded in 1948 and they been oppressed by Israel ever since. The “rapes” have been discredited over and over. One of the many things Israel does that is very obvious to outside observers is to lie constantly in the most obvious of fashions.
Protostome 3y ago
Well, that's because the premise of actions or policies being "right" or "wrong" is very simplistic. Both sides are active in the PR front, you think those "free palestine" rallies organize themselves?

xeckr 3y ago

Ah, I was wondering why the comments on r/worldnews read like propaganda.

impossiblefork 3y ago
I think it's more that /r/worldnews has removed any critical voices long ago. I don't even remember when I was myself banned. It's a very 'shaped' subreddit, and not just on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
- goodSteveramos 3y ago
  Do you think the moderator account u/Maxwellhill on r/worldnews belonged to Ghislaine Maxwell? (The one that hasn’t posted since her arrest in 2019) https://www.the-sun.com/news/4460492/ghislaine-maxwell-reddit-account-arrest/ https://www.the-sun.com/news/4460492/ghislaine-maxwell-reddi...
  - impossiblefork 3y ago
    It's absolutely possible. But the power moderators and their anonymity are certainly a huge legitimacy problem. There are subreddits that are more important in shaping opinions than the New York Times or Washington Post, and the people controlling discussion in them are anonymous. It's hard to underestimate how enormous a problem this is.
    - LightHugger 3y ago
      I don't think the problem is the anonymity, but the complete lack of accountability. They don't need to be "unmasked" they need to be replaced when their moderation, which has long since turned into editorializtion, isn't serving the needs of readers. I like the idea of changing out moderation to a subscription system where you can 'subscribe' to specific moderators and moderators you dont like you can ignore. Ignored mod changes do not get propogated to your view. Default moderators can remain a popularity contest but at least this provides a release valve for all the completely unchecked corruption that happens in these mod teams and lets people fix the problem on an individual and eventually group basis. This would allow people to control who controls what they see rather than have moderators just materialize in these positions and be all-powerful for all time as they rot from corruption.

aspenmayer 3y ago

dang, is there any way to pre-emptively/proactively block the apps mentioned in this article and ones like it from parsing content on HN? I have no reason to believe that they’re being used here, but it would be nice to know that content posted here is not being targeted by coordinated inauthentic behavior.

goodSteveramos 3y ago
I think these apps just post links to the content they target for mass flagging. Individual users still use their personal accounts to access the content. I don't think there would be anything distinctive about the traffic other than a lot of it originating in Israel.
- aspenmayer 3y ago
  Perhaps you’re correct. If the apps allow you to input/select content for parsing, then the admins/mods can do some tests/dryruns to see what is happening on the backend and block it, and nothing of value would be lost as far as HN and its guidelines are concerned. HN doesn’t allow bots or novelty accounts, and this kind of posting behavior as mentioned in OP is actively moderated against for breaking the guidelines of HN, so it doesn’t hurt to ask. The sites mentioned in OP may also have a way to request to not be used on domains that you own, as well.

snird 3y ago

[flagged]

gnabgib 3y ago
Look again
- snird 3y ago
  I'm pleasantly surprised. I can live with that - no more politics on HN.
  - Simulacra 3y ago
    HN has a left-leaning audience, and it really just depends on the time of day, and when people see an article whether or not it will get downvoted for being political. It really depends on what side it takes. From a research perspective, it would be interesting to submit political articles and monitor comments, points, and if it gets flagged. Then see if when the article gets posted whether or not certain actions happen. For example, if the West Coast, which is more left-leaning is awake, and active I'm sure someone could write an interesting app for that
  - ratg13 3y ago
    This is a tech article about companies using technology to influence content. It's interesting from a technology perspective, and because those same apps were likely used to take down this post.
prmph 3y ago
It seems like it. Every article I post that seems even remotely supportive of Israel is immediately flagged. It's possible pro-Palestine stories are also flagged, but whenever I see an article on the crisis that gains any traction, the headline is invariable anti-Israel. Not sure what's going on here.

oatmeal1 3y ago

We're just lucky it's still attached to a human being. When online political discourse is dominated by millions of AI bots that appear indistinguishable from a human, that could be horrific.

Simulacra 3y ago

This is a terrible article. There are grassroots advocacy apps, and software for a wide variety of issues. Singling out Israel turns this into a hit piece and it doesn't belong on hacker news

ratg13 3y ago

They've been doing this for decades. What was that app they had in the 2000s? You used to install it into your computer and had some sort of megaphone icon in the app tray and would alert you whenever anyone was talking about Israel online. ---- Found it. It was called megaphone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaphone_desktop_tool https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaphone_desktop_tool

throwaway55479 3y ago

Related : The pro-Israel information war - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38572675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38572675 Israeli group claims it’s using back channels to censor “inflammatory” content - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38941719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38941719