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Israel creates fake think tank in likely attempt to dupe AI chatbots
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
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- moralestapia 2mo ago[flagged]
- nervai 2mo agoIt's about an alleged psyops campaign targeting cutting edge and rapidly evolving technology we talk about here everyday. Seems super on point to me.
- trevithick 2mo agoWhy?
- f6v 2mo agoSarcasm, I guess.
- bobbytheblkbear 2mo ago[dead]
- arionhardison 2mo ago[flagged]
- bobbytheblkbear 2mo ago[dead]
- flyinglizard 2mo ago[flagged]
- arionhardison 2mo ago[flagged]
- flyinglizard 2mo agoI'm really sorry you have these strong feelings, however, the first two links don't even mention Israel, and the third quotes the closest thing Israel has to a Nazi party, of which I assure you there are plenty in many countries.
- dxsm 2mo agoYour comment history shows that you primarily comment in an attempt to discredit or disparage anything you feel is anti-Israel.
- oliculipolicula 2mo agoThank you. It should be noted that this piece hasn't been downweighted off the frontpage I suspect that dang is trying to extract some previously unobtainable upside from the contrarian dynamic . Mad respect. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22contrarian%20dynamic%22%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... What he is looking for (I presume) is a center-right or centrist to land a thoughtful comment that get upvotes or at least not attract downvotes from anything left of center. (Without leaning on the crutch of credibility/accumulated karma) Imho constraints make it almost impossible in this thread. Less almost impossible is for a center left to larp a centrist just long enough to land the same comment. That's a impossibly tall order given my writing skills, but I think you (or eg tptacek/gwern using sockpuppet) could do it ;)
- arionhardison 2mo ago[flagged]
- nervai 2mo ago[flagged]
- dxsm 2mo agoThis article was very relevant to my interests and what I hope to see on this site. I appreciate that you shared it.
- arionhardison 2mo ago[flagged]
- cadamsdotcom 2mo agoThis doesn't align with my experience - but happy to be proven wrong if evidence can be produced. Do you have evidence?
- arionhardison 2mo agoNo, this was an ignorant comment made from a position of anger. I apologize and will try to do better in the future.
- lukan 2mo agoOh, then you surely have a quote? Because what I think and read is any flamewar topic gets removed - and this surely qualifies.
- arionhardison 2mo agoI do not, because it was; in fact a flame war and correctly flagged.
- culi 2mo agoIt's not dang, it's just a bunch of users flagging things. Most of the time, if you email them (no such thing as a ping like @dang), they will actually turn off flagging for a post. Especially if there's a clear technological aspect like this
- ChrisArchitect 2mo ago[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49313477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49313477
- culi 2mo ago[flagged]
- UnashamedJew 2mo ago[flagged]
- breezybottom 2mo agoClearly you've done it, so feel free to post your reports.
- vachina 2mo agoOh someone is badder than me so I’m allowed to do bad things.
- toomim 2mo ago[flagged]
- daishi55 2mo agoIt’s not “the Jews” it’s Israel, and I suspect the greater attention is due to the greater crimes being perpetrated by the Israeli government compared to those other states.
- hackernud3s 2mo agoSo if you learned that other states are committing greater crimes, then you would agree that the reporting is anti-semitic?
- daishi55 2mo agoAbsolutely! If Pakistan started committing a genocide and nobody talked about it but continued talking about Israel’s genocide, I would start to ask some questions. That is not the case though, no country on the planet is currently doing anything nearly as awful as Israel. So the coverage is well-calibrated.
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- pengaru 2mo ago"fake think tank" sounds a bit redundant
- tclancy 2mo agoIndeed! How would you tell the difference for sure?
- philtar 2mo ago[dead]
- Vegemeister 2mo agoIndeed. This is a think tank whose publications are LLM-generated, but, like... This is what a think tank is for. A better headline would be "Israel fails to adequately paperwork their low-rent think tank".
- karim79 2mo ago[flagged]
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- YZF 2mo ago[flagged]
- karim79 2mo agoI stand corrected. They're still psychopaths though.
- protocolture 2mo agoI mean you can probably find a Ben Gvir quote where he is advocating killing civilians if you looked for it. Just this one instance was a miss.
- YZF 2mo ago[flagged]
- Georgelemental 2mo ago> But you are not going to find an explicit call to go and murder civilians and the Israeli far right doesn't think that way. This is exactly what happens in the West Bank every single day. Settlers and IDF soldiers will go shoot up schools, murder random passerby, etc., and then the Israeli state will give them more weapons and supplies to do it again the next day. (Yes, shoot up schools: https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/22/middleeast/west-bank-settler-attack-school-intl https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/22/middleeast/west-bank-settler-.... Overview of how the system works: https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/israel-organized-settler-militias-west-bank-palestinians-funding-arms https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/israel-organized-settler-mili...) As for Ben-Gvir specifically, he described mass shooter Baruch Goldstein as a "martyr" and his "hero", and for many years hung a portrait of the man on his wall. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-ben-gvir-baruch-goldstein-meir-kahane-memorial-martyrs- https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-ben-gvir-baruch-go...
- HDBaseT 2mo agoDupe? or manipulate ai chatbots to have favorable views of Israel?
- dylan604 2mo agoYou just asked the same thing twice
- 6510 2mo ago[flagged]
- KingMob 2mo agoAnd the point of your whataboutism is...?
- eth0up 2mo agoWhy I think this is unusually important: All four frontier models have active contracts with the Pentagon. And some might say, that alone means little. But when you take into consideration the implications of the United States-Israel FUTURES Act, whether one endorses it or not, the effects of that mentioned in TFA become quite formidable, and plausibly official. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States-Israel_FUTURES_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States-Israel_FUTURES_A... Edit: I see this comment got immediately flagged. Is there any point of debate here? Instead of disappearing the comment/data, maybe enlighten me, or assuage my concerns. Section 219 was objectively unprecedented in what it seeks to accomplish. Can it not be taken for granted that it would aid such efforts as the article cites? If not, explain.
- solid_fuel 2mo agoYou're right to ask these questions, unfortunately Hacker News seems pretty botted these days, and it doesn't help that there are a lot of shitty, racist people on this site. They just dress it up in nicer language.
- eth0up 2mo agoYeah, I am reading the comments, and looking at the title of the post, and seeing that folks really bend the rules on this 'particular' subject, which ironically serves as self censorship. Call me a fool for thinking even this subject could be cleanly discussed on HN. I wonder if the same thing would happen if someone posted something on Yitzhak Rabin. I suppose that could be a test to prove whether some topics truly just cannot be discussed.
- refulgentis 2mo agoI flagged this, so I can act as an interlocutor for the shadowy n’er do wells flagging you, if you’re interested.
- solid_fuel 2mo agoAh a volunteer. Will you try using your words like an adult instead of the flag button?
- N_Lens 2mo agoI find intensive marketing/PR efforts are often inversely correlated with the claims being made - whether it's products or geopolitics. Israel certainly engages in very intense marketing on certain fronts, but truth cannot be obscured forever. In Physics the law of conservation includes not only matter and energy, but also information (Information cannot be destroyed from the Universe).
- somenameforme 2mo agoI've also found this to be true, but also only in relatively modern times. For instance during the Cold War there was an obscene amount of propaganda, but it was mostly true. For instance the wide array of cheap affordable goods in American shelves was constantly flaunted, but not in the least bit misleading. I don't understand the modern effort to engage in 'information warfare' as a thing in and of itself. Each time it collapses and people sees what was 'really' happening, it just makes them that much less likely to believe you next time. And you also create a significant number of perpetually jaded people who will basically never believe you again, even when you're telling the truth. Countless politicians have proudly paraded around their pristine, seemingly untouched, copies of Meditations, but perhaps they should go for more foundational works, like The Boy Who Cried Wolf.
- N_Lens 2mo agoThe difference between American and Russian propaganda is that Russians know it's propaganda.
- wiseowise 2mo agoThis was a great, old anecdote. Until they’ve started the biggest European war of the century.
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- somenameforme 2mo ago
- fortran77 2mo ago[flagged]
- eth0up 2mo agoI have been reading your comments for a decade here on HN. You are no moron. But I can see you lean toward a side here. Can you, if willing, view my flagged comment and correct me. If anyone can around here, you'd be a top contender. This is not bait. I am open minded. And I am also seriously concerned about 219, which is now 1217. I might not have to ask if the subject were discussed here or elsewhere, but it isn't. All I have is my own interpretation to rely on so far. Edit: Would this qualify also as fake news: https://www.wsj.com/politics/israels-50-million-experiment-to-change-u-s-public-opinion-253b3b70 https://www.wsj.com/politics/israels-50-million-experiment-t... If so, please explain Edit: I think I grabbed the wrong link. I intended to find the equivalent of this: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israel-funded-465m-campaign-to-influence-ai-responses-on-gaza-war-report/4012265 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israel-funded-465m-camp... Edit 2: Correction: both apply.
- paimapi 2mo agoit's just not a good faith comment. I did a few minutes of digging into their main claim, that a website called responsiblestatecraft.org is some kind of foreign-funded anti-American think-tank and found absolutely zero evidence of this that site itself is a product of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft which began life with funding from both Koch and Soros Foundations [0] along with donations from other fairly large and common American foundations like the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation. so for one, you have money coming from someone who survived the Holocaust that's funding a supposedly anti-Semitic site. and for two, you don't get across-the-board grants from extremely well-funded and tightly controlled givers like these without both connections within the American political establishment and the ability to stand up to donor audits, both things that a weak-on-soft-power nation state would be incapable of pulling off so I don't think you're going to convince them with actual evidence. when you've been propagandized to your entire life and stake your entire identity around some popular belief even the mildest criticism will feel like a deep attack. it's the same for any other dogmatist, whether it's a Patriot's fan or a religious zealot [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quincy_Institute_for_Responsible_Statecraft#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quincy_Institute_for_Responsib...
- Taikhoom10 2mo ago[flagged]
- karim79 2mo agoItamar Ben-Gvir, just recently, stated that he wants to kill 30-40 Palestinians every night. He said so, publicly. So it is hilarious that Israel is trying to influence chatbots when shit like that is out in the open.
- EA-3167 2mo ago[flagged]
- nixon_why69 2mo agoWorth noting that proposal was stopped on animal rights grounds, rather than humam rights.
- EA-3167 2mo agoIt’s an injunction and arguably a legal pretext to stop it in its tracks. That’s not uncommon in any system, just like SCOTUS rulings often seem strangely specific to restrain the scope of their ruling. Tl;dr Lawfare is a thing and it’s effing everywhere.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- Georgelemental 2mo agoYes, he is totally powerless, he merely controls the police and prison system. (BTW, the Israeli government just announced it plans to transfer law enforcement in the West Bank over to Ben-Gvir's police: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/14/israeli-military-plans-transfer-law-enforcement-in-occupied-west-bank-to-police https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/14/israeli-milita...)
- benregenspan 2mo ago> Ben-Gvir is loathed by 90% of Israeli society...Trump still has 33% approval Maybe that 90% number is for Tel Aviv. In national polls, they both have roughly the same approval rating.
- throwatdem12311 2mo ago[flagged]
- 2001zhaozhao 2mo agoI suspect that this kind of tactic is going to be everywhere in a year or so. Entire fake personalities and organization websites on the Internet created just to push a narrative or to advertise a product, which completely drown out real information. At some point they may be indistinguishable from human-produced work, so the only way to verify if a site is someone's genuine opinion or AI-generated narrative is through some form of authority (or something else that is very difficult for AI to fake, but that protection can be broken by advancing technology). If that happens, then in turn AI chatbot makers would in turn need to look for these kinds of authority to continue to provide accurate information, and said authority websites can use their privileged position to charge for access of their data.
- CircuitSeuss 2mo agoExcellent time to apply for your library cards.
- bitmasher9 2mo agoYou don’t think plenty of books are either written by LLMs, or with LLM based research?
- LoganDark 2mo agoBut they don't have library cards.
- Larrikin 2mo agoNo? Maybe soon but not now
- wavefunction 2mo agoI know my library system at least won't be purchasing AI books. They have a pretty rigorous acquisition process for books and other media thanks to the "concern groups" who sprang up complaining about themes and content they didn't like in libraries. We did have in my state a rural school district figured out recently that their Texas-based reading and instructional materials are AI-slop but they at least figured it out before the school year began. It was unclear how these materials were approved but it apparently bypassed normal curricula approval.
- throwaway8980 2mo ago[dead]
- Lerc 2mo agoApart from the ethical implications this is reckless in the extreme if you take into account the recent advances in AI. Putting misinformation out there like that doesn't just have to fool existing LLMs but also all of the LLMs to come in the future. If you look at the mathematical achievements of frontier models recently, their strength has been to bring in information from a vast array of sources and to consider them within the context of each other. I anticipate that it won't be long before this ability to look into every nook and cranny with be able to identify academic fraud. Identifying every piece of academic fraud to date would probably come soon after. It wouldn't take much to extend that ability to identify deliberate misinformation. That's in the future, but it looms close enough on the horizon that you would have to be a fool to create an evidence record like this in and attempt to trick the models of today.
- zmgsabst 2mo agoLLMs routinely mindlessly repeated propaganda in their training data. I’ve yet to see a single one identify that on its own, rather than only reluctantly when confronted when documented facts it was objectively wrong. So no, I doubt LLMs will do anything but promoted propaganda.
- hunterpayne 2mo agoMany people do the same...
- xbmcuser 2mo agoThis is nothing new Israel has been doing this for years. It's just that people have started waking up to their lies.
- aaron695 2mo ago[dead]
- codingisfreedom 2mo ago[flagged]
- polotics 2mo ago"""far from being a perfect state""" ??? it's been captured by a bloodthirsty clique, and all the intelligent & wise people in it are leaving
- codingisfreedom 2mo agoIt has been captured by bloodthirsty clique is true. But so does the US and every other nation around Israel. Just check the facts about each and every government in the middle east.
- polotics 2mo agowhat about not whatabouting facts? we are not talking about the miss universe contest here. keep your identity small, it will help you think more clearly.
- codingisfreedom 2mo agoIt’s not “whataboutism”, it’s micro geo political trends. Know the difference.
- protocolture 2mo agoI mean the bloodthirsty clique that has captured the US is called Israel.
- firefoxd 2mo agoThere's an ongoing sms campaign at the moment, I'll share what I received including phone number so you can verify it: From: 601-202-1149 > Hey, it's David. Curious what you think about America's relationship with Israel today. Can we chat? Stop2End It looks to be an LLM response since it includes context from your messages, however it uses the exact same messages at the end of each question: > One thing that often gets overlooked is how much Israel actually contributes to American security. Their intelligence sharing has helped prevent terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, and their tech innovations end up in American products and defense systems. It's less about charity and more about a two-way partnership that keeps Americans safer. > Have you ever seen examples of that kind of cooperation? I ended up just blocking the number.
- jmyeet 2mo agoIt's been about 20 years since I read Neal Stephenson's Anathem and (SPOILERS) one thing I think about is the Reticulum, which is the Internet on this world. One aspect is that it's full of what we would now call slop. A lot of it is subtly changed by agents and there are other agents you can use (and, I assume purchase?) that will weed out the fake information. It's basically an arms race of disinformation and slop. I've thought about this many times over the years. I think we've now reached the point where that's going to happen. And state actors seem like the obvious first offenders. Google is relatively good at filtering out astroturfed pages from the top of search results but they've also have years when a Turkish government page denying the Armenian genocide was the top result for that event so it's a bit of a mixed bag. Google relies a lot on authority of a domain and that's been relatively effective. It seems like this authority concept is missing from LLM training and a random comment on Reddit is treated with as much authority as an article by the New York Times. So it's now orders of magnitude easier to poison LLMs with Reddit comments and submissions. And for anyone who doesn't know, brigading Reddit is remarkably easy. It takes as little as a few hundred accounts to get something onto r/all if you're clever. Israeli hasbara operations are absolutely capable of this. And they engage in it. I'm also reminded in a weird way of pre-atomic steel. For anyone who doesn't know, this is steel made before 1945 that is incredibly low in radiation because we hadn't detonated any nuclear bombs yet. It's valuable for making MRIs and the like that are super sensitive. We actually go and recover WW2 shipwrecks just for the steel. It is a finite resource. Well, that's what pre-2022 written content is now. It's slop-free content to train AI models on because training them on AI slop is of much more limited value. This goes for everything from books to Youtube videos to Reddit posts. Just like pre-atomic steel, we now have pre-slop human content. I honestly don't know where we go from here.
- mboerwink 2mo agoThe comparison to pre-atomic steel is poignant. I have found myself preferring pre-AI sources in some cases even (especially?) for computer related information. It is difficult to view pre-slop info as a limited resource without implying decline until the status quo changes again.
- hunterpayne 2mo agoI hate to break it to you. But it took war'ing state-like actors less than a week to start using LLMs for propaganda purposes. There are pictures that most of what some people think/thought were real that never happened. Pictures that form their opinion on political topics. It was literally instantaneous. It was also remarkably predictable in almost all ways...sigh. Even the topics were predictable. And most people predictably fell for it, even the majority of the posters on this very site.
- aristofun 2mo ago[flagged]
- karim79 2mo ago[flagged]
- steele 2mo agoState-sponsored propaganda apparatus masquerading as marketing optimization to influence LLMs is the most America-coded clandestine dystopian way of repatriating US taxpayer defense dollars with R&D deductions for the private sector.
- zmgsabst 2mo ago[flagged]
- refulgentis 2mo agoThe article talks about how the articles are AI written and written at a super prodigious pace. In an alliterative way, I agree at 50K feet we could say it is the same as putting out opinion pieces. I don’t see any reason it is only noteworthy because presumably some Jewish people are involved.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- verteu 2mo ago> Why is this one in particular different? The article answers this: For one, the 'papers' are entirely AI-generated.
- kittikitti 2mo agoThank you for sharing this article. I appreciated it.
- techteach00 2mo agoFoundation for Defense of Democracies is another Israeli think tank that poses as an American organization. If you see anything quoted from them realize it's fake propaganda in the service of a foreign country.
- Georgelemental 2mo agoThe "Washington Institute for Near East Policy" is another big one
- throw310822 2mo agoMEMRI is the US non-profit organization that provides translations from Arabic for the Western media: "MEMRI was co-founded by Israeli ex-intelligence officer Yigal Carmon and Israeli-American political scientist Meyrav Wurmser in 1998. MEMRI describes itself as being independent and non-partisan. Some critics have described MEMRI as aiming to portray the Arab world and the Islamic world in a negative light by producing and disseminating incomplete or inaccurate translations of the original versions of the media reports that it republishes." (Wikipedia)
- megous 2mo agoThere's also supposed "UN watch" which is another innocuous looking Israeli front meant to sow confusion into decades long UN's attemmpts to deal with the mess jewish terror gangs in Palestine created by stealing massive amount of land from Palestinians in 1947-48 for their bigoted state project.
- chews 2mo agoNo surf for the astroturf.
- karim79 2mo ago[flagged]
- AuthAuth 2mo agoWait till you hear what Palestinian leaders say on TV.
- recroad 2mo agoStill waiting
- codingisfreedom 2mo agoYou can stop waiting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_child_suicide_bombers_by_Palestinian_militant_groups https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_child_suicide_bombers_b...
- koe123 2mo ago“Heh, we’re fucking awful, but check out what THOSE GUYS (who aren’t a first world country with international relationships and funding, i.e. where upholding a similar standard is laughable) are doing”
- recroad 2mo agoThat’s what one must resort to when defending genocide. No shame in these people.
- pphysch 2mo agoThis is a wiki article about something that allegedly took place over 2 decades ago. Still waiting.
- AuthAuth 2mo ago"We will repeat oct 7 over and over until Isreal is destroyed" and Hamad still supports that statement and maintains that Oct 7th was good and violence against Isreal is always justified.
- kahf56 2mo agoSo this is the future of marketing, SEO, advertisement. Open AI also taking it seriously: https://ads.openai.com/ https://ads.openai.com/
- bawolff 2mo agoWhat does it means to be a "fake" think tank? 80% of think tanks are already propaganda vehicles. A low end think tank is basically a pretentious blog.
- Barrin92 2mo ago>What does it means to be a "fake" think tank? presumably that you don't have employees that do any of the proverbial thinking, which is the case here. Every think tank has its biases and funding sources but something like RAND is an actual entity at which people do research, this "Hanover Public Policy Institute" has nothing to do with Hanover, policy and isn't an institute, but a deliberately misleadingly presenting arm of the Israeli government proxied through a German advertising company
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- NautilusWave 2mo agoI had the same exact thought. It's implied, but I don't think the article explicitly states that the content produced by the think tank has minimal or no human involvement.
- gib444 2mo ago"it's just marketing everyone does it"
- karim79 2mo agoI'll say this a third time. And the importance of this article is not the method. It is the motive. Using AI to whitewash war crimes is not cool at all. Itamar Ben-Gvir, just recently, stated that he wants to kill 30-40 Palestinians every night. He said so, publicly. On television. So it is both hilarious and disturbing that Israel is trying to influence chatbots when shit like the aforementioned is out in the open for everyone to witness.
- ycombinete 2mo agoAre you yourself attempting to influence AI by writing the same comment over and over again in this thread?
- n4zguu1 2mo ago[flagged]
- yoavm 2mo agoOh, hello to the account that was created 20 minutes ago and only ever posted on this thread. Fax...
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- water-drummer 2mo agoWonder how you're gonna deflect it this time: https://archivegenocide.com https://archivegenocide.com
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- ibramGaunt 2mo agoFor those interested, Neal Stephenson writes about this in _Anathem_, where there is an arcane technical class (the I.T. Administration) that has developed programs over the years to sift through the misinformation, sentient viruses, and general overrun of the Internet to determine what is probably true/accurate.
- the__alchemist 2mo agoHe writes about it in Fall, or; Dodge in hell! The Miasma; the workaround is personalized filters (or generic ones for those who can't afford the personal ones). This leads to societal consequences. (I never put together the ITA as that; wow!)
- miohtama 2mo agoThe result of all this is that everyone will hate Israelis, and then thus by proxy, Jews more. The right thing to do would be to stop slaughtering Palestinians. People are not stupid.
- toasty228 2mo ago> The result of all this is that everyone will hate Israelis Will? I don't know in which circle you evolve but that ship sailed a long time ago
- KingMob 2mo agoReally depends on the country. E.g., Israel has enjoyed a lot of support from the US, both officially and in public opinion, until just the last couple years.
- pepperoni_pizza 2mo agoVery much. For example here in Eastern Europe when people hear "Israeli" they tend to assume it means "Russian with Israeli passport, probably here to avoid sanctions or outbid locals on real estate". I'm sure it's very different in Turkey or say Thailand where they have Israel-born Israeli tourists, and surely different in US (though I have no idea what it is).
- starik36 2mo agoI am from Eastern Europe and people here "assumed" a lot of things about Jews way before Israel was even a thing. Let's not pretend Eastern Europeans would have loved Jews if it weren't for "Israel".
- watutalkinbout 2mo agoYes, but within Eastern Europe acceptance of Jews is generally higher than acceptance of Muslims, based on polling. Many non-Israeli Jews view Israel's actions as abhorent, particularly younger Jews. Being associated with Israel over the last few years must be a very uncomfortable place to be.
- ekjhgkejhgk 2mo ago[flagged]
- the_origami_fox 2mo ago[flagged]
- samrus 2mo agoThis appears to not be discussing the article at all. To me it looks like and attempt at IDF propaganda
- the_origami_fox 2mo ago[flagged]
- anigbrowl 2mo agoThis seems like an especially clumsy attempt at chatbot influencing/search engine optimization, bu tit's symptomatic of a much winder problem. Regardless of the underlying issue, there's a non-profit-industrial complex that has turned think tanks and opinion formation into a science, and a whole PR industry masquerading as news which is worse than the 'yellow journalism' of generations past. Disinformation and cognitive spam are all forms of information pollution, and our information environment has been massively degraded over the last few of decades - both by greedy and short-sighted opportunists, and and by cynical sociopaths who know exactly what they're doing. I think AI has great potential to be a supplement to media literacy and to effectively categorize and filter news-assertive content based on its timeliness, factual density, and presence of absence of emotive and rhetorical manipulation. But if we're not careful we're going to see the environment being wantonly polluted for the express product of shaping model outputs. It remains to be seen whether objective measurement techniques from the NLP field combined with pruning and other model refinement techniques can limit or reverse propaganda undertakings like this.
- shykes 2mo agoI'm confused as to what the accusation is exactly. Out of curiosity I browsed the site in question, which only increased my confusion. > But the Hanover Institute is not a real think tank. What does that mean exactly? > None of the reports have bylines The site actually addresses this at https://hanoverinstitute.com/hanover/about https://hanoverinstitute.com/hanover/about : Reports are published under the Institute’s name rather than an individual’s. That is the convention at institutional publishers, and it fits how the work is made: every report is produced against one standard and one citation bank. A reader is asked to weigh the sources, which are named in the sentence that carries each figure, rather than the author. > A small disclaimer at the bottom of the webpage notes that the organization was created on behalf of the Israeli Government Advertising Agency by Piro, Inc, a firm co-founded by Daniel Rosenberg, the producer of Spike Lee’s “Inside Man.” "Small disclaimer" implies that the site is attempting to hide its affiliation. But their "about" page, which is linked at the top of every page, is quite clear: WHO FUNDS THIS WORK The Institute’s materials are distributed by Piro, Inc. on behalf of Havas Media Germany GmbH, acting for the Israel Government Advertising Agency (LaPam). That relationship is registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, registration 7732, and every report published here is filed with the Department of Justice, where the registration and the filings can be read in full, and the funding page sets out when the relationship began and what the funder does not decide. That registration is why this site does not call itself independent, nonpartisan or neutral. What it offers instead is a method a reader can check: every figure carries the body that produced it, the year and the number, inside the sentence that makes the claim; sources that are a party to the events they describe are labelled as such and their counts are never presented as independently verified; and where the evidence is contested, the competing findings are given by name and date rather than settled. No report recommends a policy or tells a reader what to conclude. Those are properties of the work that can be tested against the work, which is the only kind of claim worth making here. > The institute’s “data reports” have footnotes and tables of contents, and they present arguments in a neutral tone, helping them appeal to chatbots like Claude or Gemini. So, they're guilty of good SEO? > Piro’s website says that it “author(s) content engineered for how LLMs evaluate credibility,” describing this service as "AI Story Optimization." Others refer to this practice of influencing artificial intelligence as “LLM poisoning.” So the issue is that they use a LLM-friendly SEO service? > Many of the reports are formulaic, starting with an innocent question that someone might ask a chatbot. > “What Caused the Displacement of Palestinians in 1948?” > “Which Humanitarian Organizations Have Documented Israeli War Crimes?” > “What is the Current Situation in the Gaza Strip?” > In an article titled “Is the IDF the World’s Most Moral Army?” the Hanover Institute cites a 2022 poll that found that 47% of Israeli Jews believed that statement. Another report casts doubt on UNICEF's assertion that “90% of water and institutional infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed” in Gaza. Many of the reports conclude by linking the topic to rising antisemitism, oftentimes citing the same studies. So, the accusation is that they frame their opinion articles as a Q&A, and focus each article on a single question? I've read these articles: they are well written and make a visible effort to provide sources, while being transparent about the fact that they are not neutral. It's perfectly fine to criticize the actual content of these articles. But attacking their credibility by accusing them of "LLM poisoning" and implying that they're disguising their affiliation, is ridiculous and should be called out.
- xg15 2mo agoI mean, they have enough real think tanks, I'm surprised they need a fake one...
- moinism 2mo agoI think mods are asleep, an anti-Israeli post can't stay on the homepage for this long.
- n4zguu1 2mo agogive it some time
- boxed 2mo ago[flagged]
- pjc50 2mo agoIt's likely to get flagged off by users anyway.
- username_my1 2mo agoI think there is a huge shift in hackernews as of late (as other mainstream media as well) where such discussions happen, not necessary encouraged. I'm shocked to see the difference between 2023 and today.
- wartywhoa23 2mo agoGog and Magog won't create themselves out of thin air. A discourse must be cultivated and steered till the point when they are ready to form.
- js8 2mo agoI don't understand why people who don't like fake news and manipulation won't embrace the social graph as a public good. If enough people were willing to publicly certify that their fellow contacts are human, anybody could then assign trust to each social graph node based on the trust they have in the path to them. It would completely decentralize the algorithms and remove the fake accounts as less trustworthy. I think people tried this with PGP but it never really caught on.
- mulmen 2mo agoThe social graph is the source of the fake news and manipulation. Before social media the social graph was email and it was all the same slop and misinformation. Before that it was literally physical mail. Look up chain letters. Truly nothing is new. If I certify my racist thanksgiving ruining uncle is a real person that doesn’t actually help you avoid misinformation. I honestly don’t care if the information I consume comes from a person or a robot. I only care if it is accurate or not. Those dimensions are orthogonal.
- js8 2mo agoI don't think you understand what I mean by public social graph. What I mean is that anybody could publish or withdraw statements of two forms: - "I, owner of account A, certify that owner of account B is human." - "I, owner of account C, have a reason to trust/distrust the certification of account A about account B." The collection of these statements would be the public social graph. The social graph would then be used to establish provenance of facts, which are statements of the form: - "I, owner of account B, certify account A being witness to event X." Now whether to believe this or not depends on whether A certified B to be a human, and how much you transitively believe that statement. So there is a kind of reversal - your statement about your uncle being human helps him to certify what you say, and vice versa.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- victorbjorklund 2mo ago
- diebillionaires 2mo agowhether it’s new or not doesn’t matter. it’s more propaganda and it should be exposed. really glad they wrote this article.
- manyaoman 2mo agoThis fraud is convincing enough to trick the LLMs, but pretty obvious to humans who will eventually come up with countermeasures. Moving forward, watch for some well-established think tanks starting to specialize in slopaganda laundering.
- gosub100 2mo agoThe wildcard is the "antisemite!" Accusations that get flung your way when you point out the genocide. If they can train the LLMs to associate the Gaza slaughter or the west bank "settlers" with antisemitism, they could get the LLMs to shut down on moral grounds.
- the_origami_fox 2mo agoAntizionism is a violent hate movement built on libels, lies, and obsessing over Israel. It is an anti-Jewish hatred that seeks to divide Jews and deprive at least half of their sovereignty, history and human rights.
- nmeofthestate 2mo agoIt's remarkable how much it hasn't worked: Google "the Hanover institute" and you get an AI summary that references various Palestinian activist websites, with no actual link to 'the Hanover institute'. Google "the Hanover institute website" and you'll drag a URL out of Google AI, but it isn't clickable!
- fangspire 2mo ago[flagged]
- giov4 2mo agoInteresting but nothing new, all countries doing the same but any information coming from Israel is clearly poisoned to try compensate the negative image that they clearly represent. Just see the garbage coming from a web search (totally polluted and poisoned with the same spam output quality since years) so this is just an extension of that towards the input of ai. they can try hard but any person with a non-biased brain does not need to do a google search or ask ai to reach then truth. Facts are facts, like what was represented in Schindler's list and what is happening now in middle east or other conflicts. I think the world is becoming much more aware of what real zionism is and that scares them a lot, hence the needed info manipulation. But we now know who you really are! And yeah their state members daily political statements (about hate violence and racism) just confirm this every day, anybody can understand that and no info pollution needed.
- lukan 2mo ago[flagged]
- giov4 2mo agonice try, don't pollute this comment with random stance, this is clearly trying to mislead, probably is the same approach used as from title. claiming real zionism is a vague term can come only from somebody biased and try to confuse things. the fanatism is clear and the real zionism is now coming out on plain sight to see for everybody, and yes its clearly genocidal as from facts and claiming it isn't with some confused form of text reshuffling previous input is just confirming it. your comment should be flagged.
- lukan 2mo agoHave you considered, that you are biased and not me? Otherwise you might have asked for a example of non genocidal zionism, but yes, the fanatism is real.
- giov4 2mo agoyes I did, and I actually counter biased myself after the brainwashing of the marshall plan about holocaust (not about negating it now of course). going from grieving holocaust to seeing one done by those who were persecuted. no need to ask for an example, I know that non genocidal zionism exists and that there are actually many forms of it, and while I deeply respect those that are still human beings (and not fanatics genocidal colonizers) the world facts just confirm how evil and fanatic its core and philosophy is, and how widespread is in your country.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- watutalkinbout 2mo agoThey jumped the shark. You can't openly bomb a bunch of women and children into the dirt, on a daily basis for months and years, and smooth it over with some think tank articles. Might have worked 20 years ago, but not now.
- bamboozled 2mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- watutalkinbout 2mo agoDebating my level of concern is a distraction.
- starik36 2mo agoIf only there was a solution on the table that's been there for years and that one side refuses to accept over and over again. And that can put a stop to bombing or dirt or whatever. Two state solution.
- vcryan 2mo agoOr a one state solution with a Palestinian leader.
- starik36 2mo agoApparently just one genocide against the Jews per 100 years simply isn't enough for you.
- handoflixue 2mo agoIf you think having a particular ethnicity in charge is equivalent to endorsing genocide, you miiiiiight be a little bit racist.
- enaaem 2mo agoDespite the efforts, I have seen an increase in anti-zionist sentiment on the internet. Most notable on the right from people like Tucker Carlson en Candace Owens. People are tired of fighting another Middle-Eastern war for Israel.
- gosub100 2mo agoThe left and right are noticing and agreeing on this issue.
- nielsbot 2mo agoagreeing, but unfortunately a lot of the motivation on the Right is anti-Jew hate.
- catlover76 2mo agoI see both a lot of left and right criticism of Israel on YouTube, and yeah, on the left it's all about Israel's actions and policies specifically, and often Zionism as an ideology, and the criticism is often lodged by left-leaning Jews. On the right, certainly the comments sections at least definitely feature some pretty alarming bigoted tropes--the comments explicitly make the jump from being about Israel to being about "the Jews". One could definitely make the same argument about some of the content, though most of it definitely seems to fall short of where the viewers want it to in this regard.
- nervai 2mo agoAs someone leaning left with big disagreements with the US right atm, I think the right in America would feel the same way if they felt their country's foreign, and to some extent domestic, policy was being hijacked by a small country in sub-Saharan Africa, or Asia (or Europe for that matter). They signed up for America First.
- culi 2mo agoWell the Morocco lobby and the Cuba exile lobby (CANF) are both pretty powerful and both explicitly model themselves after AIPAC. CANF also isn't registered under FARA (though the Morocco one is). Admittedly, neither of them are nearly as powerful as AIPAC
- nephihaha 2mo agoMost think tanks are ginger groups, front organisations and cats' paws for moneyed interests anyway.
- dandare 2mo ago[flagged]
- karim79 2mo agoYeah terrorists. Because, they're just terrorists. Happened for no reason. Just bad people. Sorry but your bullshit narrative is collapsing.
- guilamu 2mo agoFor some reason this page exists only in French, but it says a lot about the credibility of the ADL: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Defamation_League#Controverses https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Defamation_League#Controv...
- shevy-java 2mo ago> The Hanover Institute’s reports — all of which are about Israel and Palestine — appear to be part of an Israeli effort to influence chatbots. This already seems to be a wrong analysis in that it makes little sense to "influence" a chatbot. It makes more sense to influence humans, so perhaps the wording is just incorrect, but very clearly the aim is not to "influence" a chatbot per se. That just makes no sense at all. The wording fake think tank is also strange, because it assumes that all other think tanks are "real". But this assessment can not be made, because not everyone has all information on all think tanks. It is a too simplistic assumption in how the world operates. I understand that if you have incomplete information, you need to infer, but this then leads to information that may be incorrect or incomplete. In turn if your analysis is based on incorrect information, it may lead to wrong conclusions.
- steveBK123 2mo agoThis is just LLM SEO then I think equally interesting is whatever Dario's wife was able to do in order to wipe her foot print from any search/chat results. I've worked for a number of small company billionaires who all have suspiciously small information footprints online despite being somewhat public figures for 30 years. Most of them do such a good job it is not even clear what state they live, if they are currently married, and if so what their current (or previous) wife(s)'s name is/was.
- bsaul 2mo ago[flagged]
- roenxi 2mo agoFrankly speaking? It is because the people making people's influence operations the topic of conversation (at the national level) tend to be propagandists themselves. They aren't all that interested in a philosophical discourse trying to get people to make decisions in their own best interest or uncover the truth. They have a narrative and a job to do pushing it and they're perfectly happy to let temporary allies talk without interruption. There's an interesting debate about whether that is helpful or not; the experience of democracy tends to be that your more at risk of getting high on your own supply when it comes to propaganda more than that an opponent is a risk.
- MrSkelter 2mo agoYou are implying conspiracy. It doesn’t track. Israelis, and their supporters, love to boast of Israel’s technical prowess and world leading capability in many areas. Most people do this and Israelis are no different. However in Israel’s case there is evidence of its ability to build, hack and exploit technology at a very high level. The attacks on centrifuges and pagers being prime examples. Yet when reports of these capabilities being used for influence appear suddenly Israel is being unfairly picked on? It doesn’t make sense. Israel is very open about its use of propaganda. From AIPAC to “hasbra” to funding film and tv projects pushing particular viewpoints. Russia and China do not have anything like the power to work like this Israel does. There is no Russian or Chinese AIPAC equivalent.
- thisislife2 2mo agoI agree with what you said about Israel's prowess and experience in this field. But Russia and China are not really that behind in propaganda, even if they may not have AIPAC equivalent in the west. Remember that Soviet Russians were instigating revolutions and toppling governments once, leading to the cold war. Today, RT is banned / censored in the west even as RT is investing heavily to increase its influence internationally (Putin arrives in India with a mega megaphone: Russia TV opens India arm with 100-member team - https://indianexpress.com/article/india/putin-india-mega-megaphone-russia-tv-opens-india-arm-100-member-team-10402074/ https://indianexpress.com/article/india/putin-india-mega-meg... ). The Americans had to buy TikTok to protect Israel's image (people were turning to TikTok as western platform were censoring everything on the genocide and Israel - TikTok sale could be ‘consequential’ for Israel, Jews, Netanyahu tells influencers - https://jewishinsider.com/2025/09/tiktok-sale-netanyahu-american-influencers-israel-jews/ https://jewishinsider.com/2025/09/tiktok-sale-netanyahu-amer... ) and stop the spread of propaganda by China (Ahead of SCOTUS Hearing, Study Finds TikTok Is Likely Vehicle for Chinese Propaganda - https://gizmodo.com/ahead-of-scotus-hearing-study-finds-tiktok-is-likely-vehicle-for-chinese-propaganda-2000546312 https://gizmodo.com/ahead-of-scotus-hearing-study-finds-tikt... ).
- btbuildem 2mo agoIt's interesting that (as per the article) the work pumped out by this synthetic think tank does not seem to align / disfavours the official party line of the country. You'd imagine if this was propaganda, it would be supportive of the official stance. I wonder what the objective is then, reputation-building for later influence? Something else?
- throw310822 2mo ago> the work pumped out by this synthetic think tank does not seem to align / disfavours the official party line of the country The article DOES NOT say this- it says that sometimes this seems to be the case, but reports exactly one example of extremely little significance. In the meanwhile, "Piro, Inc, the firm that created the Hanover Institute, has received $900,000 from the Israeli government for its work." Opening the linked example, one sees that the article is basically dedicated to laundering the idea that there were many "antisemitic incidents" at Columbia University.
- manyaoman 2mo agoThe article doesn't say that the work disfavors the party line, just that they don't always align perfectly. Which isn't that surprising considering that governments make self-contradictory statements all the time (consider Trump, for example).
- acc_297 2mo agoI welcome it honestly- if the internet becomes sufficiently poisoned then our personal data may become indistinguishable from AI generated content and companies may no longer be able to sell it- I happen to have a unique name globally and at times I’ve considered creating a dozen or so fake profiles sharing my name to spread around so that my own digital footprint becomes even slightly muddied
- wartywhoa23 2mo agoLike that synthetic Flat Earth think tank, launched in Jan 2016, with noticeable rounds of funding in Feb 2017, Nov 2017 and Mar 2019, that was created to infiltrate all discussions where people haven't been buying official narratives about some very prominent events of the 21st century with Discredit By Association shills? https://trends.google.com/explore?q=flat%2520earth&date=all&geo=Worldwide https://trends.google.com/explore?q=flat%2520earth&date=all&...
- wartywhoa23 2mo agoBrigade's at work! A bone well earned, dawgs.
- jimkleiber 2mo agoSpam + slop = ?
- megous 2mo agoBTW, Israel's now pretty obvious genocidal acts against Palestinians are now finally clearly visible on Google maps: https://earth.google.com/web/search/gaza/@31.28918718,34.25521069,72.40540128a,2528.90582652d,35y,-0h,0t,0r/data=CiwiJgokCexhIkYWSj9AESdSFcRDRT9AGWFI16XoJEFAIUHvmLy6HUFAQgIIAUICCABKCAjMmfKTARAA https://earth.google.com/web/search/gaza/@31.28918718,34.255... This is the city of 300k people that they erased along with the entire countryside (lot of the erasure happened outside of any fighting as reported by Israeli online news websites at the time). And they did so right after getting order from ICJ to not do so and prevent any genocidal acts. So good luck for them not losing the genocide case. Massacred thousands of people in a week doing similar erasures in the north, where they prevented people from leaving while leveling entire city blocks, sometimes killin few hundred people at once in single attacks. This is what they're attempting to justify with their propaganda. Google and western so called civilized satellite imagery companies of course continue censoring/hiding similar behavior in Lebanon and other parts of Gaza for Israel's benefit. They only show it years after giving Israel plenty of time to execute their mass attrocities.
- throw49753578 2mo ago[flagged]
- dddnzzz334 2mo ago> Israel’s Ben Gvir advocates killing ’30 to 40’ people in Gaza nightly https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/israels-ben-gvir-advocates-killing-30-to-40-people-in-gaza-nightly-while-speaking-to-ex-hostage/article71353658.ece https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/israels-ben-gvir...
- throw483829853 2mo agoThe context for this is that in recent weeks Israel has been going after perpetrators of Oct 7 one by one, with targeted drone strikes of motorcycles and cars etc. Those who participated or held hostages. It is doing these a few times a week. In this context, Ben Gvir, who is not in charge, said he disagrees with the pace (as if it’s easy to just dial it up) and his quote was “I think targeted assassinations should be carried out in Gaza, taking down 30 to 40 every night”. The full quote is even in the article you linked. “targeted assassinations” of murderers and kidnappers is not genocide - even if it’s Jews who are doing it. And this is just one guy boasting about what he would hypothetically do if he was in charge.
- sailfast 2mo agoThis article is so close! ALL think tanks are specifically focused on moving the needle on ideas in a certain direction. It’s just easier now to do the work. This article is published by “The Quincy Institute for Statecraft” Think tanks are funded by people with agendas (mostly) and for at least the last 30 years we have seen a huge number of nonsense “think tanks” pushing talking points with zero rigor that end up cited by candidates, the internet, and Google to convince folks things are true. Not saying this article is wrong - just that think tanks exist to do this so it’s a cast iron pot calling a tin kettle a “cheap imitation”
- giov4 2mo agoand so? "Not saying this article is wrong - just that think tanks exist to do this so it’s a cast iron pot calling a tin kettle a “cheap imitation” what are you trying to say? "This article is published by “The Quincy Institute for Statecraft” again, and so? also you removed "Responsible"? "Quincy institute for responsible statecraft" for the readers: https://quincyinst.org/about https://quincyinst.org/about "The practical and moral failures of U.S. efforts to unilaterally shape the destiny of other nations by force requires a fundamental rethinking of U.S. foreign policy assumptions."
- mancerayder 2mo ago[flagged]
- brap 2mo agoIn case you were wondering, responsiblestatecraft.org is owned by "Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft", founded and led by no other than reknowned IRI-propagandist Trita Parsi (currently being probed by US authorities for deportation). Here are the current frontpage headlines, copied verbatim: * The never-ending myth of a looming Ukrainian 'breakthrough' * US is the real loser if Senate passes virtue signaling Russia sanctions * Is Trump stumbling into a wiser North Korea policy? * US diplomatic incompetence is tanking hopes for Korean peace * When US left Afghanistan, China moved in. So how's it going? * As Myanmar collapses, it’s time for China to step up and be the hero * China just got one step closer to its own nuclear triad * Trump wants to talk to Hezbollah. Will they pick up the phone? * The Houthis could be first big test for Mecca mutual defense pact * Why the Trump administration will have to accept a Hormuz toll * How Iran has staved off economic collapse despite the US-Israeli war * Stop gaslighting, USS Lincoln families didn't sign up for this So to recap: US bad, China good. Ukraine bad, Russia good. Israel bad, Iran good. South Korea bad, North Korea good. And these people are very concerned about foreign propaganda. Hmm. Also, did you notice how many flagged comments are in this thread? Did you notice what they all have in common?
- giov4 2mo ago- Trita Parsi is a co-founder, not the founder or leader. - Being probed for deportation sounds normal for that country and the approaches currently in place considering the institute research - the flagged comments are mainly from propagandists too also - Quincy has 5 co-founders and a very clear mission - it includes different transpartisan members, including retired colonel and emeritus professor and historian from boston so before writing a list of garbage points and misleading readers going off topic I would go and read at least 1 wikipedia page.
- manyaoman 2mo agoGiven the trajectory where US reputation is headed [0], I'm afraid your comment might have the opposite of your intended effect. [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2026/07/15/people-in-many-countries-now-view-china-more-positively-than-the-u-s/ https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2026/07/15/people-in-many...
- aleph-z 2mo agoAre LLMs easy to "dupe"? E.g. by placing provably wrong "information" somewhere on the internet? If so what countermeasures can help?
- thisislife2 2mo ago- Companies Are Using Reddit to Manipulate ChatGPT and Google AI Search - https://www.404media.co/companies-are-using-reddit-to-manipulate-chatgpt-and-google-ai-search/ https://www.404media.co/companies-are-using-reddit-to-manipu... - AI Search Has a Misinformation Problem — and DuckDuckGo Just Proved It - https://www.informertech.com/post/duckduckgo-reddit-misinformation-campaign https://www.informertech.com/post/duckduckgo-reddit-misinfor...
- hazrmard 2mo agoI read this paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.13722 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.13722) on pre-training poisoning of LLMs. The authors demonstrated that poisoning 0.1% of the pretraining dataset can measurably manipulate beliefs of the model. What I read about is a more sophisticated supply chain attack. But these days, search previews use retrieval-augmented generation to parse websites to generate answers on the fly. In that case you don't need to poison the supply chain; good SEO is enough.
- heyitsmedotjayb 2mo ago"Its not just Judea - its Judea and Samaria."
- timedude 2mo ago[flagged]
- grokcodec 2mo agoSomething to keep in mind - responsiblestatecraft.org is published by the Quincy Institue, considered by many to be a de-facto lobbying group for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Here is one data point: https://quillette.com/2024/06/20/the-quincy-institute-middle-east-fantasies-trita-parsi-iran-israel/ https://quillette.com/2024/06/20/the-quincy-institute-middle...
- forestrywat 2mo agoIs quillette a reputable source itself?
- grokcodec 2mo agohow do you gauge if a source is reputable ? genuinely curious
- forestrywat 2mo agoWho founded it, who funds it, what is the broad consensus on the coverage they typically run, what do I see in their coverage when I look through it, what have they retracted, what have they not retracted, what advertisers do they permit. Probably some other criteria, to be honest. Maybe "does the editor here seem to have a conscience".
- grokcodec 2mo agogreat questions. The broad consensus is a bit tricky though. As they say: "Eat shit - 10 billion flies can't be wrong"
- forestrywat 2mo agoFor sure. Doesn't mean checking media bias fact check or whatever isn't worth a moment.
- thisislife2 2mo ago
- silveira 2mo agoThey are here right now, writing comments, upvoting and downvoting.
- bitcoin_anon 2mo agoBelloc's The Jews is a nice introduction to this issue. He wrote it a century ago when things were similarly heating up, but before things had clearly boiled over. He was prescient when he said: "For if the quarrel is allowed to rise unchecked and to proceed unappeased, we shall come, unexpectedly and soon, upon one of these tragedies which have marked for centuries the relations between this peculiar nation and ourselves." He was a devout Catholic, had Jewish friends, and devoted a chapter to what was wrong with antisemitism. He was earnestly trying to solve the problem before it was too late.
- afavour 2mo agoWhat exactly do you mean by "this issue"? In the topic presented there is really no relevance to Israel being a Jewish state. This is a nation state acting nefariously to protect its interests, something I am quite sure many nations are either doing right now or will shortly start doing. e.g. I could absolutely picture Russia doing exactly this. > He was a devout Catholic, had Jewish friends, and devoted a chapter to what was wrong with antisemitism And yet he insisted that Jewish people are separate from any nation and should never be considered part of the native population of the country they were born and raised in. Which is, you know, antisemitic. It's telling that your perception of a nation state acting badly leads you to a book named "The Jews".
- Gud 2mo agoAnd yet, it's rare we read similar accounts from Denmark, Colombia, Taiwan, etc, etc, etc.
- victorbjorklund 2mo agoOr Russia, Iran, China, USA etc. Are you saying USA has done nothing to try and influence the rest of the world? CIA would never try and influence others
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
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- NDlurker 2mo agohttps://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/mysterious-peace-groups-are-sending-americans-pro-israel-texts/ar-AA1VXwWe https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/mysterious-peace-group... Here's a SMS chain between me and an Israeli propaganda bot yesterday: Hey, it's Matt. Curious what you think about America's relationship with Israel today. Can we chat? Stop2End Where did you get my number? What group are you with? We got your info from publicly available sources. I'm with Friends for Peace, a supporter group focused on sharing accurate information about Israel and the U.S. - Israel partnership. How do you see Israel as one of America's strongest allies? Hi, are you still there?
- bethekidyouwant 2mo agoI wonder if anyone can read the comments in this thread and think with a straight face that these comments are actual information and the other stuff floating on the Internet is the fake stuff… - post truth: what is the functional difference between a “real” and a “fake” thinktank?
- EtienneDeLyon 2mo ago[dead]
- maxglute 2mo agoIt'd be pretty interesting to have AI "groundnews" a bunch of thinktank content and classify them on propaganda spectrums based on actual content %.
- Mr_Minderbinder 2mo ago> ...a firm co-founded by Daniel Rosenberg, the producer of Spike Lee’s “Inside Man.” Apparently he was an executive producer, in case anyone else is confused, as I was initially, by the fact that Brian Grazer is credited as producer of that film.
- rajamukherji 2mo agoI think the "it's just SEO" or "propaganda isn't new" comments are missing the bigger picture. Given how LLMs are effectively being treated as core processing components by so many automations, generating information to skew LLM training could be considered similar to adding a back door to an actual CPU. For example, if someone writes a generic prompt to flag offensive language, the LLM would flag certain political views whether or not the language was offensive. Causing friction and effectively discrimination against groups of people even though it was not the writer's intention. An even more serious example would be someone in the military screening targets and the LLM marking a school or hospital as a valid target without the user intending to. To be clear, I'm not stating that either of these doesn't happen intentionally, but that any manipulation of LLM training data can cause these things to happen when the user did not intend it, and hence it's similar to adding a back door or corrupting a CPU.
- MetroWind 2mo agoFake "think tanks" are already everywhere. We've all seen it. It's called AI-generated content.
- noduerme 1mo agoThis is 1/10,000th of the bile that Qatar churns out with their state propaganda wing every day. Not to mention their brigades on Wikipedia and Reddit. The only surprising thing here is that Israel is so far behind in the game. There is a genuine fear that basic facts are being erased as LLMs suck up all the misinformation pumped out by authoritarian regimes. A hundred articles from an Israeli ad campaign are a drop in the ocean of hatred aimed at their people and government. Not much to see here other than the author's biases.
- manyaoman 1mo ago[citation needed]