'Israel' leading propaganda campaign to subdue Palestinian creators
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The Washington Post has reported on the various apps and tools used by "Israel" to counter pro-Palestine content and creators on social media platforms.
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A woman takes a selfie while holding a Palestinian flag during a March 2022 rally in Gaza City. (AP)
Supporters of "Israel" are attempting to utilize online tools that allow them to suppress the reach of pro-Palestine content and flood them with pro-"Israel" propaganda using Artificial intelligence, The Washington Post reported.
Experts are calling this a "citizen-led propaganda campaign," since the usage of the tools does not appear to breach platform rules against "coordinated inauthentic behavior," which refers to posts that appear to be from unconnected persons but are the result of an orchestrated effort, frequently via automated accounts.
Researchers also believe it's impossible to tell which comments were created by these tools since there's no way to publicly trace a user's private behavior across various applications.
Social media businesses would have to devise methods to identify their use, which is difficult because the applications run on their platforms, not those of the social media companies. If the applications posted automatically, they would most certainly breach the rules against inauthentic behavior. However, third-party applications that simply urge genuine users to report postings are not subject to these penalties.
Several users claim that once their Instagram and TikTok postings were featured on the apps, they were either deleted or substantially downranked, making them less accessible to a big audience.
Nys, a Palestinian content creator who did not want to use her last name for fear of Israeli retaliation when she went to the West Bank, expressed that each of her posts on TikTok was getting a flood of pro-"Israel" possibly AI-generated comments.
She also reported her posts are usually removed after being reported for bullying or hate speech. “I’m not using hate speech,” Nys expressed. “I’m just doing commentary on everything happening in Palestine.”
Another content creator, Laura Chung, expressed that after creating pro-Palestine content that was going viral, her TikTok account was revoked in December.
“I believe it’s these apps that got me banned on TikTok."
"Israel" desperate to buy content creators
Emerson T. Brooking, a former cyber policy advisor to the Defense Department who studies disinformation and propaganda campaigns as a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab expressed that the level of organization for pro-"Israel" propaganda is one-sided, noting that “it exists because there are government ministries in "Israel" that support these tools and encourage their use.”
One app is directly tied to the occupation. Moovers pushes users to “Advocate for Israel, One Click at a Time.”
It allows users to mass react to pro-Palestine content pulled in from social media apps such as reporting it for review or commenting on it. It also gives pre-written pro-"Israel" responses to similar posts.
In early December, an Israeli influencer marketing business began contacting creators in the US offering to pay for the promotion of Moovers on their Instagram accounts.
Read more: ‘Israel’s’ after content creators, offering $5,000 sponsorship deal
Words of Iron is another pro-"Israel" app that collects anti-"Israel" posts and offers to “boost Israel’s voice on social media with a single click.”
The app called on users to mass report a post from influencer and lawyer Rosy Pirani for calling Jesus Palestinian on Christmas Day.
Her posts are no longer suggested to non-followers, her content is removed from the Explore page and the Reels tab, and she is no longer permitted to monetize her posts, she claims.
“Sites like Words of Iron are scaring other content creators from posting about Palestine. They’re chilling free speech, and that’s what they aim to do," Pirani expressed.
In 2017, Gilad Erdan, "Israel's" minister of strategic affairs at the time, launched an online campaign dubbed 4IL ("For Israel") to boost social media support for "Israel".
Act.IL, which was shut down in 2022, allowed quick responses to any posts overly critical of the occupation or too pro-Palestine in an effort to "promote Israel and delegitimize the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement," according to an Israeli news outlet +972 magazine.
Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, a freelance journalist covering the war on Gaza, called the Israeli efforts a contribution to "the silencing of anyone trying to document, advocate or use their voice.”
