The Israeli government reportedly commissioned a campaign in 2023 that included social media accounts targeting Black U.S. lawmakers.
The New York Times reported that, in October 2023, Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs paid $2 million to Stoic, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based political marketing firm, to push pro-Israel content on social media at a time when many Americans were concerned for Palestinian civilians during the war in Gaza.
The outlet details that Stoic created fake accounts in support of Israel across X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and Instagram that focused on over a dozen majority Black and Democrat U.S. lawmakers.
ChatGPT was mainly used to create the fake accounts’ posts, which asked for the politicians to fund Israel’s military, per the outlet. In addition to fake social media accounts, Stoic reportedly created fake websites and articles.
Meta’s quarterly adversarial threat report said the accounts “posed as locals in the countries they targeted, including as Jewish students, African Americans and ‘concerned’ citizens.” The fake accounts gained about 40,000 followers — mainly bots — on the three social media platforms, according to The New York Times.
— source yahoo.com | Jul 29, 2024