Israel reportedly used imitation social media accounts to influence US lawmakers

The secret social media influence campaign to lobby US lawmakers to support Israel’s war on Gaza was organized and financed by the Israeli government, New York Times reports.

According to Times, Israel The Ministry of Diaspora Affairs allocated about $2 million to the campaign, which used hundreds of imitation accounts impersonating fictitious people and targeted U.S. lawmakers. The accounts claimed to be Americans and posted pro-Israel messages calling on members of Congress to fund Israeli military operations. The campaigns used OpenAI’s ChatGPT to create the posts and targeted several Black Democrats, such as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

The Ministry of Diaspora Affairs did not immediately respond Edgerequest for comment. The Times reports that the office denied involvement in the campaign. The Times claims that details of the network of accounts come from internal documents and people involved in the campaign.

According to her, a secret influence campaign was one of the efforts Meta thwarted quarterly threat report released at the end of May. In the report, Meta said it had identified a network of over 500 imitation accounts linked to Israel that posted pro-Israel messages on Instagram and Facebook. Meta noted that campaign accounts impersonated local Jewish students, African Americans and “concerned” citizens and left messages on the websites of legitimate news organizations and public figures. Comment topics included anti-Semitism on campus, calls for the release of hostages taken in the October 7 Hamas attack, and anti-Islamic material. OpenAI similarly reported that it did disrupted the campaign in Israel using his tools. It was not known at the time that the Israeli government was behind the campaign. According to website X, the campaign remains dynamic Times.

Political actors regularly attempt to manipulate public opinion through coordinated social media campaigns. In May, TikTok said it had disrupted more than a dozen such campaigns on its platform, including one originating from China. But Times It notes that this is the first time that the Israeli government has been found to be coordinating a campaign against the US government.

Like the war in Ukraine, since October 7, social media has become a proxy battleground where Israelis and Palestinians have tried to gain support from digital witnesses. More than 37,000 Palestinians have died as a result of the Israeli siege of Gaza. The US is Israel’s key ally and largest arms supplier to the country. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does a speech at Congress was scheduled sometime this summer.