Israel is losing the battle for public opinion in the West. As Alan Maclead reports, it has taken to Twitter's Community Notes function, hoping to turn the tide.

One of the reasons that social media companies have not cracked down on disingenuous pro-Israeli activities could be that former Israeli government and military officials hold top positions at a great number of the world’s most important platforms.

Emi Palmor, for example, is one of 22 individuals who sit on Facebook’s Oversight Board. Palmor was formerly the General Director of the Israeli Ministry of Justice. In this role, she directly oversaw the stripping away of Palestinian rights. She created a so-called “Internet Referral Unit,” which would push Facebook to delete Palestinian content that the Israeli government objected to. In her new role at the Oversight Board, she effectively writes Facebook’s rules, deciding what content to promote to the platform’s 3 billion users and what to censor, delete or suppress.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    172·
    8 months ago

    They’re not trolls…

    They used to openly admit that JIDF was an official government agency that did this. They got backlash from the international community, so now it’s an app called act.il and they say it’s just “volunteers” who post links to social media posts/comments that are critical of Israels government.

    Posting those links and replying to them on that social media platforms gets you “points” that can be redeemed for gift cards.

    So its not just trolls, it’s not just people that believe it, you also get people from countries where a $10 gift card is a lot of money.

    https://forward.com/news/388259/shadowy-israeli-app-turns-american-jews-into-foot-soldiers-in-online-war/

    A cynic would say they named it something that looks like a website because if you just type it into an address bar, your browser tries to take you to a website that doesn’t exist. You have to first go to a search page and then search it.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
        41·
        8 months ago

        Apparently the app went away, but not the organization

        “Keeping up with the evolving trends of social media, Act-IL is decommissioning the App, and will continue working with all of our other social medial platforms and community channels,” reads an email to the app’s users. “We are not going anywhere! I invite you to remain active, follow us on Instagram, Facebook and all our other channels where we will continue to share daily calls to action and impactful educational content.”

        https://mondoweiss.net/2022/03/israel-pulls-the-plug-on-its-anti-bds-app-a-failure-from-the-start/

        The same people are still doing the same stuff across social media. I don’t think Lemmy is big enough for them to focus on yet