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Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers
- erellsworth 2y agoWhy is this flagged? What rule does it violate?
- raxxorraxor 2y agoArticles get flagged if users perceive it to not be desired content and not necessarily because it violates a specific rule.
- jules-jules 2y ago[flagged]
- TwentyPosts 2y agoYou'd be surprised by how many HN users would prefer to keep politics-first-tech-second news off the site.
- runarberg 2y ago[flagged]
- ipaddr 2y agoEverytime I submit a github project it becomes [dead] immediately. You expect political drama submissions not to be flagged as offtopic?
- dang 2y agoSince there are no examples of that at https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=ipaddr https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=ipaddr, I assume you're talking about a different account. It's possible that account is banned, but more likely your self-posts might be getting filtered by HN's software which tries to apply this guideline: "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity.:.
- luckylion 2y agoThere'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.
- TwentyPosts 2y agoI specifically made sure not to claim that "tech is not political", because that would be wrong. The issue is that "X used fake accounts to push political agenda on social media" might be interesting political news, but it's incredibly boring technical news. Everyone knows that this is possible, and the only novel information here is political. I'd say that if you posted news which are interesting in how they relate to tech, and also political, you're going to (or at least should have) more success than this article. Even just a proper analysis of how widespread fake political social media accounts area, deeper statistics, more novel processes of this happening, etc. would all be interesting, and would not fall in the politics-first-tech-second bucket.
- dang 2y agoThis issue goes back as far as the site itself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 and the way we handle it has was worked out over a decade ago: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=political%20overlap%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... If anyone has questions about this, take a look at those links and if there's something unanswered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
- RabbiNoseberg 2y ago[flagged]
- dang 2y agoPosts 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 purpose of the site. But it's also important that the topics not be ignored completely, even though they're painful. There's no happy medium here, unfortunately. Here are some links to previous explanations. If you (or anyone, of course) have a look at these and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40418881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40418881 (May 2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39920732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39920732 (April 2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39618973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39618973 (March 2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435324 (Feb 2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435024 (Feb 2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39237176 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39237176 (Feb 2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39161344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39161344 (Jan 2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38947003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38947003 (Jan 2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38749162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38749162 (Dec 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38657527 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38657527 (Dec 2023)
- erellsworth 2y agoThank you for the explanation.
- jakupovic 2y agoThanks Dang this is much better than previously.
- DevX101 2y agoAppreciate the case by case basis approach to moderation here. There are quite a few topics where discussion becomes suppressed when blanket bans are enforced.
- throwaway55479 2y agohttps://archive.ph/sbAPI https://archive.ph/sbAPI
- pokepim 2y agoJust as russian bots, israeli bots spreading fake news are worst thing that happened to our society. Crazy that people are falling for this but here we are
- greenavocado 2y agoHow many congressmen are dual citizens with Israeli citizenship? This is even worse. Also, AIPAC is allowed to exist. As a thought experiment replace Israeli with Russian citizenship for the Israeli dual citizens in Congress and replace AIPAC with a hypothetical Russian ARPAC. Imagine how crazy this would be. Yet the current situation is somehow completely acceptable.
- golergka 2y ago> As a thought experiment replace Israeli with Russian citizenship for the Israeli dual citizens in Congress and replace AIPAC with a hypothetical Russian ARPAC Is Russia the main American ally in the region that contributes enormously to American intelligence and R&D, while also supporting American military operations?
- Hikikomori 2y agoSouth Africa was also their ally in that region.
- throw310822 2y agoHave you considered that things might go the other way around: if Russia had such a strong influence on the US through its political action lobby as Israel does, Russia would be considered by politicians the main ally of the US, and the economic and military ties between the two countries would be unbreakable. Because the purpose of these lobbies is exactly to influence how a certain country feels and acts about another.
- golergka 2y agoSo, in your scenario, US would get another valuable ally? You make lobbying look positively fantastic.
- SkipperCat 2y agoNot 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 "Internet" branch of the military. Maybe that's already happened.
- afroboy 2y ago> Not a comment about who's right or wrong in this war. This is not a war.
- germinalphrase 2y agoEspionage/propaganda/public relations/influence campaigns are hardly new. Social media is just a new flavor to go along with the others.
- marginalia_nu 2y agoI do think the economy is different. You've always been able to just hire a bunch of thugs to stage an event to shape the narrative, like old-school cold war style. That takes money and effort and a modicum of skill and the risk of being caught with your pants down is not negligible. Difference today is you can stoke the flames of public outrage with just a few people, without even setting foot in the country, while maintaining a lot of plausible deniability, since the modern playbook relies heavily on uncertainty and confusion, meaning you can safely target allies without significant risk of being caught (even if you're caught, you can deny it and say it's hostile propaganda).
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoEven in the old days, if your operation was caught, you could always claim that it was an enemy false flag. (And if it was your false flag and you were caught, you could always claim that it was an enemy provocation.)
- throw_a_grenade 2y agorelated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40583661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40583661
- dang 2y agoWe merged that one hither.
- r721 2y agoThere is some discussion here too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40587325 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40587325
- dang 2y agoMerged. Thanks!
- throw_a_grenade 2y agoMay I ask why did you move comments here and changed URL to that other entry, instead of just moving comments from this thread to the other? ISTM you already had a submission with correct URL, so naively it sounds simpler to do one operation than two... (I know nothing about moderation tools)
- dang 2y agoI'd already forgotten! but I think I've reconstructed it. I changed the URL of the current post (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40587079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40587079) because the haaretz.com article seemed better than the forbes.com one. Normally we would do it the other way, as you mentioned - we'd move the comments to the submission with the better article. But in this case I didn't want to reward that submitter because their pattern of submissions was clearly breaking HN's guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40587097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40587097. So I did it the other way.
- guerrilla 2y agoOf course it did. This is modern warfare. Welcome to the future. Just like how we knew everyone was always spying on everyone else long before Snowden, we should all know that everyone is doing this to everyone else long before all the revaluations come down to us. There is no benefit to assuming good faith here.
- frob 2y agoThis was on the front-page for a brief moment and is now nowhere in the top 150. The irony writes itself.
- myth_drannon 2y ago[flagged]
- tyen_ 2y ago[flagged]
- myth_drannon 2y ago[flagged]
- colpabar 2y ago[flagged]
- gettodachoppa 2y ago[flagged]
- myth_drannon 2y agoIt's an acceptable heuristic at the moment.
- KenArrari 2y ago[flagged]
- myth_drannon 2y ago[flagged]
- KenArrari 2y agoEquating things that Israel has clearly, demonstrably, actually done with blood libel is not a great idea even from a practical perspective.
- 2y ago
- nextstep 2y agoAlso reported on by NY Times and posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40583068 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.
- dang 2y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40586961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40586961
- 123yawaworht456 2y agothey used to be really unapologetic about it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Internet_Defense_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Internet_Defense_Force https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWD5xiiafBc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWD5xiiafBc it's prudent to assume such operations are still ongoing
- Animats 2y agoJIDF 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_diplomacy_of_Israel
- nickff 2y agoI'm one of the people who flags some of these articles (though not this one), because they're generally uninteresting, and repetitive. I'm not Jewish, have never been to Israel, and am not part of any brigade.
- 2y ago
- Metacelsus 2y agoThis was related to OpenAI announcing that they had shut down several covert influence campaigns using ChatGPT-generated social media posts. https://openai.com/index/disrupting-deceptive-uses-of-AI-by-covert-influence-operations/ https://openai.com/index/disrupting-deceptive-uses-of-AI-by-...
- dang 2y agoDisrupting deceptive uses of AI by covert influence operations - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40526068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40526068 - May 2024 (70 comments)
- sva_ 2y agoThis article itself seems to be written by chatgpt to some degree at least? I've developed trust-issues with bullet point lists in that format.
- dmix 2y ago> As of May 2024, these campaigns do not appear to have meaningfully increased their audience engagement or reach as a result of our services. Just like I've predicted many times on HN. Text generation is low on the list of things needed to successfully engage in automated spam. Social media is built on reputation, not who can write generic believable text the quickest. And funny enough the ex-OpenAI people (mostly Helen) calling for gov regulation said GPT should not have been released to the public because of this risk.
- cyclecount 2y ago[flagged]
- RabbiNoseberg 2y ago[dead]
- dang 2y agoMods didn't touch it*. Users flag things. * (before I turned off the flags a few minutes ago) edit: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40586961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40586961 for more
- throw10920 2y agoI flagged the story because it's uninteresting politics that doesn't satisfy intellectual curiosity. I flagged your comment because it's anti-intellectual nonsense that attempts to emotionally manipulate readers and is unfounded in reality. Please keep that kind of thing to Reddit.
- KenArrari 2y agoWow it's been up for a full hour.
- jules-jules 2y agoNo it’s gone. We would need admin support to get it unflagged again, most likely.
- KenArrari 2y agoWoops. Hasbara-bots got it.
- throw10920 2y agoThe vast majority of submitted stories on Israel (as a subset of politics in general) are off-topic for HN. They almost never gratify one's intellectual curiosity (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and almost always lead to massive flamewars and political tangents in the comments. I flag all politics stories - this one is no exception. I want to avoid HN turning into another Twitter or Reddit, thank you very much.
- partiallypro 2y agoI'm sure the story is true, but I doubt it was effective. I don't think most politicians are really looking at their social media given most of it is trolling junk. I'm sure Russia/Iran/Hamas adjacent countries were doing the same. I just don't think they have been that effective in getting politician support. Direct lobbying or phone/email is much more effective than an online troll farm to get the attention of a politician in DC. I have worked in DC and this still feels very true to this day. I think the more worrying is going after the low information voter. I didn't think Russia's election interference had much effect in 2016, but now when you look at US Media (largely conservative outlets) their footprint is very visible.
- PurpleRamen 2y agoIt'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.
- partiallypro 2y agoI'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.
- dylan604 2y agoWe'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.
- partiallypro 2y agoNo, because there is little evidence it's effective, which is what I said. Israel has lost ground in polling in the US and all around the world as well. If anything, there's a huge backlash online against this sort of things to the degree that it goes overboard into blatant antisemitism.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mathgradthrow 2y agoPerhaps they are trying to achieve parity with the propaganda of their adversaries, Russia, China, and Qatar.
- hartator 2y agoDidn’t we almost go to war against Russia for doing precisely that?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- 0xcafefood 2y agoYes, but Israel is our Greatest Ally, so it's different when they do it.
- adolph 2y agoIsn't the US already in a (barely-proxy) war with Russia?
- TillE 2y agoIt'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.
- pessimizer 2y agoYou 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.
- dang 2y agoWe changed the URL from https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2024/06/05/israel-reportedly-used-fake-social-media-accounts-to-garner-support-from-us-lawmakers-on-gaza-war/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2024/06/05/israel-... to what looks like a more original source.
- gbnvc 2y ago[flagged]
- cjk2 2y agoWell their enemies used social accounts to garner support from US citizens so you've got to start somewhere! It's not like we haven't done this either. I worked for a company in 2005 which was doing this paid for by politicians. Moment I worked this out, I quit.
- Kapura 2y agoThis seems extremely unethical no matter who is doing it.
- cjk2 2y ago100% agree (hence my point about quitting) but the problem is it's a difficult position to be in when everything is narrative driven and misreporting and propaganda are rife. You can sit there and do nothing and wait for your enemy to paint you in a bad light and the next thing you know your usual political allies are throwing money and aid at your enemy. Or you protect your citizens as best as possible by entering the game. The moral high ground may have a higher body count. This point applies to both sides for ref. And because it's a war, the rules of fair play go out of the window until people are on trial afterwards.
- FpUser 2y ago>"until people are on trial afterwards" Speaking of trials: U.S. lawmakers had voted to sanction ICC if it tries to prosecute citizens of the US or it's allies. I guess it is always one rule for thee and another one for me. So much for rules based order.
- cjk2 2y agoWell there's a problem here. There are rules. But no one really has to abide to them. There are no consequences against a sovereign nation other than political allegiance risk or travel risks for convicts.
- gmdrd 2y ago> Or you protect your citizens as best as possible by entering the game. It doesn't seem reasonable to me to assume that the main objective of any government is to protect its citizens.
- WhackyIdeas 2y agoIsrael 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.
- diggan 2y ago> 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 :)
- tehjoker 2y agoYea, US propaganda is the same way. It's not subtle, it's just so many people are onboard with it they don't really care.
- WhackyIdeas 2y agoMaybe that is just the dregs of a time when they used to be half decent at propaganda ;) I take it back. They are smart with their hacking and that’s where it ends.
- jajko 2y ago> They are smart with their hacking and that’s where it ends So are often russians, or chinese. Maybe the concentration is on another level, they are a tiny country but highly educated for generations. I'd bet if we properly educated and developed whole world we would discover Einsteins and Bolts in many many places out there. Ie elite athletes often come from places around where they could do sport, ie mountaineers but also many others.
- some-guy 2y agoMy 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 :)
- Simon_ORourke 2y agoHow are those guys not treated as some hostile foreign power and have half their embassy staff expelled is beyond me.
- lprd 2y agoI’ve often pondered the same. Seems like Israel gets a lot of special treatment from the US.
- imzadi 2y agoBecause anti-Semitism is used to derail any conversation about Israel. If you criticize Israel, you're accused of being an anti-Semite, and actual anti-Semites flood the conversation with actual anti-Semitism that immediately shuts everything down.
- recursivedoubts 2y agoif i were a government and any conversation that criticized me could be shut down by calling it something I would pay people to do that something
- issafram 2y agoAlso, people ignore that Palestinians are Semites as well.
- nsguy 2y ago[flagged]
- bell-cot 2y agoYou might want to ask a few old politicians about what effects "being perceived as insufficiently pro-Israel" has historically had, on Election Day.
- vmladenov 2y agoWell, them and Saudi Arabia. It’s useful to have allies in the Middle East to protect trade routes.
- shmatt 2y agoOut: blame AIPAC for congress funding israel In: blame FB comments for congress funding Israel Is it really that hard to imagine congress supporting the democratic country with one of the biggest pride parades in the world vs the country that hasn’t had elections in 18 years and is split between 2 leaders who disagree on pretty much everything?
- notaustinpowers 2y ago> biggest pride parades in the world Do you mean NYC Pride or Sao Paolo Gay Pride Parade?
- Aerbil313 2y agoDoes anybody have any numbers? The one with the biggest numbers should get the biggest bonus from US because they are the most democratic.
- AzzyHN 2y agoTruly shocking. Who could've seen this coming. On a more serious note, I figured the majority of US lawmakers already supported the genocide. I'm surprised Israel feels the need to use propaganda for this
- pessimizer 2y agoThey really targeted the dumbest, most venal people in Congress. These particular people will fight for anyone but the people who elected them, so afraid to lose their jackpot.
- michaeljhg 2y agoIs there a country that doesn't do this?
- some-guy 2y agoNot the point here: Israel is our "greatest ally" and the target is our lawmakers.
- tptacek 2y agoI 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.
- rcpt 2y agoAs 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.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y agoJordan never sunk a US Navy ship and then machine-gunned the sailors trying to escape in lifeboats. But if they did, they wouldn't have painted over the jet's markings first.
- jjtheblunt 2y ago"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.
- CorrectingYou 2y agoI 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
- sdfghswe 2y ago[flagged]
- nerdjon 2y agoI find it quite concerning just how much propaganda the US seems to get from Israel. Where I live there are big billboards around, I regularly see ads on YouTube. I know propaganda is a thing, but it feels like we are getting more about a foreign government than our own. I feel like before what is going on now I was aware of some of the groups responsible for this being a thing, but was not fully aware just how much money there was in it those organizations until recently. Some of the practices are concerning, like I found out recently apparently the Boston police regularly go over to Israel for training? Regardless of what is going on right now, I don't understand how this much power over the US was ever deemed acceptable?
- neves 2y agoImagine if it were Russia or China
- croisillon 2y agoWell it can’t be China because China don’t kill their muslim popula… oooh…
- cempaka 2y agoThe best part is when it comes from our own "newspaper of record" i.e. with the extraordinarily dubious "mass rape" article the NYT published. They finally dismissed the one Israel-connected reporter who had liked tweets calling for a brutal response against Gaza, but that of course has seen about one billionth the attention that her original claims continue to receive. You also get stuff like the POTUS repeating lies like "40 beheaded babies" and "a mother and child had kerosene poured on them" with none of the usual media freakout you usually see over "misinformation."
- gotoeleven 2y ago[flagged]
- nerdjon 2y agoI have struggled to even look at my News app anymore. Next to articles about the protests or other things, there are the articles about the hostages or something else that just feels like a propaganda piece aimed at one thing. And that is just the headlines.
- LeoNatan25 2y ago[flagged]
- odiroot 2y agoI guess two can play that game https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/security-insider/intelligence-reports/iran-surges-cyber-enabled-influence-operations-in-support-of-hamas https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/security-insider/in...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- SimbaOnSteroids 2y agoThe 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.
- xkcd-sucks 2y agoEven the spooky spy and torture people choose the crappy low bidding implementation partner
- dr-detroit 2y ago[dead]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- refulgentis 2y agoIt'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 message after message about the evil UN and not say, "uh, did we go off the rails somewhere?" (n.b. this was in a lefty Jewish space, broadly denigrating governmental institutions isn't a usual virtue signal) Going back to the beginning, there's an uncomfortable willingness/ignorance of Overton window widening, in a way that reduces sympathy rather than engenders it, and all of a sudden, otherwise kind people are engaging in rank racism*, glorification of destruction, and extreme conspiracies**. * lots of "no such thing as innocent Palestineans", "Palestineans love redacted", when questioned, turns into "it's not racist if they're not a race, and they aren't because bla bla bla" ** Day after day after day of the bailey, "World Central Kitchen was trying to smuggle terrorists", coupled to the motte "Jose Andres held a barbecue buffet! Lol!"
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoIf 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.
- shmatt 2y agoSo 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?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoAnywhere a voting public gets their information. Unfortunately that means FB comments. Could you answer my question though? Would it be ethical to counter an influence operation with your own?
- kelthuzad 2y agoprop·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.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoSure. 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.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y agoPropaganda is media designed to manipulate your opinion, without going to the trouble of rationally convincing you to change your mind. And yeh, most of what we see day to day is propaganda. If anything, everyone's under-using that word.
- MisterDizzy 2y ago[dead]
- Talkative32 2y ago[flagged]
- davesque 2y ago[flagged]
- HL33tibCe7 2y ago> Criticizing Israel is the like the "Anti Social Social Club" t-shirt of our time Nice bit of deflection. It’s not even true, either. People are being blacklisted from companies for speaking out against Israel, their faces being paraded through streets with threats made against them. Speaking out against Israel comes with significant risk, particularly for politicians and journalists - the proof is in the pudding, when you look at their insanely soft-balled coverage of anything Israel does. Anyway… > A political organization or world government is astroturfing on social media you say? And they're targeting lawmakers directly? Well, clutch my pearls! Sure, if it was Russia or China I wouldn’t be surprised. But it’s Israel. The US gives Israel $1,000,000,000s and $1,000,000,000s of dollars per year and is supposedly Israel’s closest “ally”. _That_ is what makes this interesting. I don’t really know why I’m bothering replying to you, given your incredibly thinly veiled bias. But here I am nonetheless.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- davesque 2y ago> given your incredibly thinly veiled bias What bias is that?
- mrcartmeneses 2y agoThis troll is hungry. I forget the name of the playbook, but it’s so obvious it’s painful
- zdragnar 2y agoI was part of a company that "hunted" terrorist groups that did this. Start with sympathizers publicly posting on Twitter, find who they are connected to, and fan out and cross reference to the people who are either organizing violence or running drug operations for funding. I assume most countries with designs in foreign politics do much the same.
- elfbargpt 2y agoCan you share what company that is? Palantir?
- zdragnar 2y agoNo, they were a competitor that pivoted away from government contracts to more commercial applications because there was too much red tape (palantir had some features that were interior according to our contacts but basically was already entrenched in the space by that point). It has been a long while since I worked with them- the basic idea was that you could identify how people related to each other via their public posts, identify communities by topic, then identify how people influenced each other. Some topics were harder to automate- if we took as an example b the keyword "abortion" you'll find multiple opposed groups. Searching for terrorists was somewhat similar- their public mouthpieces would use certain words, and their detractors would use the same words in opposition. I won't go into too much further detail because while the company closed in 2022 I really respected the owners and I suspect they're going to find a way to bring the idea of the company back in a new form.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago[flagged]
- jolj 2y ago[flagged]
- jjtheblunt 2y agoit would be interesting to know how global politics and wars would change if the US were to stop shoveling money to foreign countries.
- mrcartmeneses 2y agoMuch, much more peaceful. Once parties lack the resources for war and have to come to peace, it often takes hold in unexpectedly strong ways
- jjtheblunt 2y agoi expect the same.
- yonixwm 2y agoIt really doesn’t seem so when we experience Russia doing the opposite. It only seem to work if both parties to the conflict are democracies where meaningless war can put a toll on the government
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> Much, much more peaceful The entire history of our species runs counter to this. The most peaceful periods are uni or bipolar dynamic. Pax Americana is statistically meaningful [1]. > Once parties lack the resources for war Generally speaking, impoverishment increases violence. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana
- cuku0078 2y agoEverytime Iam reading manupilations in social media I remind the documentation The Dissident
- greentxt 2y agoCrtl+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.
- aszantu 2y agoi recommend looking at 9gag.com news... these places are flooded with propaganda from all sides, it's impossible to not get influenced...
- thenayr 2y ago[dead]
- MisterDizzy 2y ago[flagged]
- Calvin02 2y agoHow many problems in the US are due at least in part to the desire to support and promote democracy? We wouldn’t be involved / concerned with NATO unless we valued democracy and freedom for our partners, no?
- SrslyJosh 2y agoWhat does this have to do with the US' unconditional support of an apartheid regime in the middle east?
- issafram 2y agoYou are out of your mind if you think that Israel is a democracy
- bakuninsbart 2y agoThe ill-conceived post-911 War on Terror was cheered on by Israel and its supporters, but it would have probably happened either way. Osama Bin Laden specifically mentions Israel in his motivation for his terrorist attacks, but his overarching argument for attacking the US is more about western powers empowering dictators across the middle east, suppressing the local population and getting control over ressources. I honestly doubt much would be different in this regard if Israel had been founded in Pomerania instead. The argument becomes more interesting when talking about the last 10 years. The US actually does not have a lot of self-interested reasons to keep engaging in the ME as much as they do. Controlling energy and trade is useful, but containing China seems to be the more pressing issue, and binding a lot of ressources in the ME might be dangerous going forward. Either way, it is the center point of the world, so controlling it, or plunging it into chaos, both benefit a power on the margins like the US.
- nikolajan 2y agoI genuinely can't tell if this is meant as satire.
- kats 2y agohttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/11/nsa-americans-personal-data-israel-documents https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/11/nsa-americans-...
- SrslyJosh 2y agoIsrael: The "ally" that acts like an enemy. =) (Alternately, the client state that controls its patron.)
- CommanderData 2y agoOnce a glorified US military base in the middle east served to expand US interests has become a parasitic entities and controls the host. The upside is the relationship is symbiotic, US expands Israel's borders, wreaking havock in the region, but tests US's war apparatus under "defence" and prevents a unified Arab/Asia/Indo state. Israel gets free reign to ignore international law, billions, while touting some story about a 'promised land'.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- issafram 2y agoYou know what else garners support from US lawmakers? AIPAC. They give money directly to members of the house and Senate. And that is somehow considered ok.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bamboozled 2y ago2024, dammed if you do, dammed if you don’t.
- MisterDizzy 2y agoComments critical of Israeli influence immediately disappear. Why?
- CommanderData 2y ago[flagged]
- gptretdevnull 2y agoThere is zero need for Israel to garner support from the US. The point of this campaign was to highlight "fake social accounts tricking" "Black lawmakers and young progressives" (>Black lawmakers in the U.S., particularly Democrats., >young Americans, >Black Americans) because at least someone wants them to think that they, their teams and their followers are weak & easy targets, thus reducing their perceived competence and credibility without the necessity of success of the campaign itself, except that similar campaigns existed for pro-Russia and fuck-Russia content all while celebrating Ukraine's destruction, sorry, fight for independence, officially. These campaigns are part of a cluster. They are not meant to merely polarize but to make some people resign and follow public/ the states' opinions much quicker than they normally would. At the same time, buffs, journalists, educated people and the rational kind spend more time sieving through information sources that are bloated. I'm not saying this is a conspiracy, hell no, it's entanglement, it's marketing, it's the business of politics and national establishments and companies challenging each other to test ludicrous strategies to sway public opinion. It's all from the modern "The Drump" playbook. Just imagine how at least enough people who fall for campaigns like this, feel when they are told the truth. How many will get angry, really? How many are going to start gearing and studying up? Who are they to trust if their own government supports governments who have the need to run campaigns like this? This whole "making people support conflicting causes" has been working pretty damn well for the (alt)Right, who is desperately trying to diminish young peoples' independence and turn them all into obedient followers to sell their 'stones are really hard' books and narratives and time on screen. It's just dozens of millions but that's the few you need make the elected look your way when they are ready to pay2win "at all cost". So how can we fight this with engineering? We need analysis run by red and blue teams from universities worldwide. I mean it's 2024. The scientific community does it, but their time is dictated by the scientific method. Or are there live projects already?
- GenerocUsername 2y agoAlways makes me wonder how many false threads exist on other platforms, even this one. There are many chats happening in this thread that seem oddly written. Either excentrics, or automatons.
- nikolay 2y agoZionism at its best!
- JoeyBananas 2y agothe entire US government is deeply compromised by agents of the Israeli state, including nasty coercion campaigns by Mossad
- muaytimbo 2y agoSo Israel does the exact thing all the politicians try to scare us into believing Russia does every election in the US. I guess the difference is AIPAC.
- chipdart 2y agoWhat do you mean "try to scare us into believing Russia does"? Do you have any doubt that Russia has been interfering in US politics for well over a decade?
- StanislavPetrov 2y agoThe total amount of direct evidence (evidence, not assertions of secret evidence by the US government, unproven and unsubstantiated allegations of hacking or superman Bernie memes by click farms based somewhere in Russia) that Russia has "interfered" with US politics that has been released by the US government in the last 10 years adds up to less than the evidence in this article on Israel alone. Evidence aside, I personally think it is extremely likely that Russia, China and most other countries active on the world stage have tried to "interfere" in US politics to some degree, but nowhere near the amount that we interfere in the politics of other countries or that Israel interferes in ours.
- chipdart 2y ago> that Russia has "interfered" with US politics that has been released by the US government in the last 10 years adds up to (...) So you acknowledge that it's quite clear that Russia indeed is systematically interfering, and your only claim is to call "what about" some other country?
- StanislavPetrov 2y agoNo, I acknowledge that some interference by Russia and other countries is likely but not clear, since no clear evidence has ever been publicly offered. The only public evidence of clear, systemic, long-standing and ongoing interference we have is that of Israel.
- StanislavPetrov 2y agoAnyone who thinks this is bad should revisit the Jane Harman affair from ~18 years ago. This is nothing new from Israel. https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/lawmaker-news/32907-report-jane-harman-recorded-vowing-take-action-for-aipac-on-wiretap/ https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/lawmaker-n...
- Narhem 2y agoHonestly I’ve been getting harassed by hackers and really would be excited if the United States would actively find the people bothering me and block them from the internet
- em1sar 2y ago[dead]
- goodByHN2233 2y agoHackernews have become much worse than reddit/r/gossip or reddit/r/politics or reddit/r/yellowpress or whatever. Good thing, I wasted to much time here anyway. Still I fail to understand why the mods let this happen. Maybe quantity over quality.
- hazn 2y ago:wave: see ya around
- xjlin0 2y agoI am fairly sure other countries use fake social accounts to garner support or take advantage from US lawmakers too.