News - Not News?

I guess the real news is that the NYT is the source of the story:

Edward Snowden @Snowden

Foreign interference? In an election year? Forcing an unpopular bill through Congress that stole about $100 billion from your taxes to squander on fruitless unwinnable wars? Business as usual.

9:28 AM · Jun 5, 2024

You can read all about it here:

Israel ordered secret campaign to influence US lawmakers - NYT

The country allegedly paid $2 million to target American legislators in order to foster support for its war in Gaza

A bit more news—the campaign was apparently a flop. Most of the “followers” seem to have been bots.

At its peak, Israel’s influence campaign used hundreds of fake accounts that posed as US students, concerned citizens and local constituents on various social media platforms, including X, Facebook and Instagram, the New York Times reports.

These accounts were allegedly used to post pro-Israel comments and articles backing West Jerusalem's position on the war, and were mainly focused on attracting the attention of US lawmakers, primarily Black Democrats, urging them to continue funding the country's military.

Many of the posts were reportedly generated using the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot ChatGPT. Stoic, which was in charge of the campaign, also reportedly created three fake English-language news sites that predominantly featured pro-Israel articles, often stolen from outlets such as CNN and the Wall Street Journal.

I like that part. In effect, they’re saying that Israel ripped off pro-Israel propaganda from US MSM sources. Huh! Go figure! I think that means, taking it a step further, that Israel ripped off the Israel Lobby’s work. Very circular.

In March, the Israeli government’s campaign was noted by FakeReporter - an Israeli misinformation watchdog. Last week, it was also reported on by Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, as well as ChatGPT’s owner OpenAI; both said they had found and disrupted the influence operation.

“Israel’s role in this is reckless and probably ineffective,” Achiya Schatz, the executive director of FakeReporter, was quoted as saying by NYT, noting that the fact that Israel “ran an operation that interferes in US politics is extremely irresponsible.”

In a statement to the New York Times, Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs has denied any involvement in the operation and insisted it has no connection to Stoic.

Meanwhile, FakeReporter has estimated that the fake accounts created through the campaign have accumulated just over 40,000 followers across X, Facebook and Instagram. Meta and OpenAI concluded that Israel’s influence operation ultimately failed to have a widespread impact, noting that most of the followers of these fake accounts were likely bots.

The lack of impact looks rather like Good News. It means alternative news sources are having an effect.