Israel has an app where they post links to social media posts discussing Israel for app users to go astroturf. They take their propaganda very seriously. They have a word for propaganda targeting foreigners: “hasbara.” https://mepc.org/speeches/hasbara-and-control-narrative-element-strategy
Israeli work contacts flooding LinkedIn with their shit is one of the weirdest ways I see this online. It’s usually inappropriate to bring politics into the work sphere but in the days after the October attack, the business world came out in sympathy for Israel, as they should. The problem is that this was cemented as the only business friendly position from that point forward. Nowadays I see Israelis posting raw vitriol while everyone else is too timid to say anything except “we support Israel’s right to exist” or “we hope for peace in the Middle East” and other such fatuous trivialities.
Why is pro-Israel the only business friendly position? Simple. There aren’t any Palestinian startups. There are very few Palestinian CEOs.
I sometimes wonder if they’re just bad at it, so the astro turfing is obvious. The people posting have to be immersed in and understand the western site to blend in while remaining loyal to a very different kind of home communication and they often don’t manage it, and if they do that difference makes them stand out.
While we have dozens of western police show up in any discussion of police violence to explain that it’s really hard. Not even astroturfing, I think, just people being themselves. Aside from being obviously police their posting style blends in perfectly, if there were western astroturf campaigns I think they would blend perfectly and use much more subtle techniques
A lot of them aren’t people, they’re LLMs. And I don’t think the actual people doing it stand out to the average person. They’re not posting “death to America, Putin is amazing,” it’s much more subtle.
A common tactic is divide and conquer. They’ll support both extremes of a contentious political issue like abortion, gun violence, or policing.
Israel has an app where they post links to social media posts discussing Israel for app users to go astroturf. They take their propaganda very seriously. They have a word for propaganda targeting foreigners: “hasbara.” https://mepc.org/speeches/hasbara-and-control-narrative-element-strategy
Israeli work contacts flooding LinkedIn with their shit is one of the weirdest ways I see this online. It’s usually inappropriate to bring politics into the work sphere but in the days after the October attack, the business world came out in sympathy for Israel, as they should. The problem is that this was cemented as the only business friendly position from that point forward. Nowadays I see Israelis posting raw vitriol while everyone else is too timid to say anything except “we support Israel’s right to exist” or “we hope for peace in the Middle East” and other such fatuous trivialities.
Why is pro-Israel the only business friendly position? Simple. There aren’t any Palestinian startups. There are very few Palestinian CEOs.
When you don’t have a voice: you are wrong.
yeah, like every country, Ukraine does that, Russia pays bot, China concripts bot. And the US have its education system
Authoritarian countries like Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela do it much more than democracies.
I sometimes wonder if they’re just bad at it, so the astro turfing is obvious. The people posting have to be immersed in and understand the western site to blend in while remaining loyal to a very different kind of home communication and they often don’t manage it, and if they do that difference makes them stand out.
While we have dozens of western police show up in any discussion of police violence to explain that it’s really hard. Not even astroturfing, I think, just people being themselves. Aside from being obviously police their posting style blends in perfectly, if there were western astroturf campaigns I think they would blend perfectly and use much more subtle techniques
A lot of them aren’t people, they’re LLMs. And I don’t think the actual people doing it stand out to the average person. They’re not posting “death to America, Putin is amazing,” it’s much more subtle.
A common tactic is divide and conquer. They’ll support both extremes of a contentious political issue like abortion, gun violence, or policing.