Diaspora Ministry funded fake social media posts to spread pro-Israel content — NYT
Paper says influence campaign, which reportedly targeted Black US lawmakers, was commissioned by Israeli government, didn’t have widespread impact; ministry denies involvement
The Israeli government has been waging a months-long campaign to covertly influence American lawmakers through AI-generated social media posts by fake users, according to a report by the FakeReporter organization and The New York Times.
The posts, which reportedly were aimed at Black Democratic members of Congress, were aimed at “creating the perception of widespread American support for Israel and its actions since October 7th,” according to FakeReporter.
In addition to the effort to influence lawmakers, a network of websites promoting “Judeo-Christian morals and traditions” and warning of danger from Muslim immigration also appeared to be connected to the social media campaign, according to FakeReporter.
At least part of the influence campaign was commissioned by the Diaspora Affairs Ministry in October, according to The New York Times, which said it had verified the government’s connection to the operation “with four current and former members” of the ministry.
The Diaspora Affairs Ministry denied any involvement in the campaign.
FakeReporter, an Israel-based watchdog group that tracks domestic and foreign influence networks online, first reported on the operations in March, following posts by Marc Owen Jones, a journalist who discovered a network of faked pro-Israel content in February.
US House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock, and New York Representative Ritchie Torres all had their social media posts engaged with by the fake users, The New York Times reported.
None of the three men’s offices responded to requests for comment by the newspaper.
“This is the first instance in which FakeReporter has encountered such an extensive and complex network dedicated to promoting pro-Israel messages abroad,” the organization said in its report.
The group noted that in recent years it has also uncovered several foreign influence campaigns that aimed to hurt Israel.
In March, the group announced in a report that it had found hundreds of fake profiles on X, formerly Twitter, sharing pro-Israel content.
The network demonstrated “consistent patterns of behavior typical of foreign influence operations,” the group said, “including accounts created simultaneously, sharing identical names, profile pictures, cover photos, and usernames.”
The accounts focused on the wave of anti-Israel protests at universities and highlighted the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7, with a particular focus on sexual assaults.
The accounts also published content critical of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN body responsible for providing social services to Palestinians, which has come under scrutiny following Israeli allegations that staff members were involved in terrorism against Israel.
The profiles identified by the group shared content from three platforms— Non-Agenda, The Moral Alliance, and UnFold— that resemble news sites or organizations, but none of which were active until after October 7.
None of the three platforms, all of which are still accessible, drew much of an audience. “The campaign didn’t have a widespread impact,” said the Times, citing Meta and OpenAI. “The fake accounts,” it reported, “accumulated more than 40,000 followers across X, Facebook and Instagram, FakeReporter found. But many of those followers may have been bots and didn’t generate a large audience, Meta said.”
On Wednesday, FakeReporter published a second report outlining its findings with respect to four additional websites that the group says appear to be connected to the influence network.
The Good Samaritan, a website that focuses on anti-Israel activity on American college campuses, describes itself as “a community dedicated to upholding Western morals, traditions, and the liberal way of life.”
United Citizens for Canada, an anti-immigration website that purports to be a grassroots political organization, calls itself “a vigilant non-profit organization” and says it is “founded by worried citizens.”
The report also mentions Arab Slave Trade, a site that presents historical information about the East African slave trade, much of which is copied from Wikipedia, according to FakeReporter.
Finally, the report covers Serenity Now, a website targeted at young anarchists that argues against the establishment of a Palestinian state, on the basis that no states should exist.
According to The New York Times, Israel’s Diaspora Ministry allocated about $2 million for its influence effort and hired Tel-Aviv based political marketing firm STOIC to carry it out.
STOIC, which seems to have taken down its LinkedIn account, defined itself on the social network in April as “a one-stop-shop for campaign management of all scales.” Its website, still available, advertises “the best generative AI content creation system.”
The website says of the firm’s co-founder, Maria Marashova: “Her expertise in predictive models and Big Data led to impactful roles in seven political campaigns in three countries (including the Likud Party in Israel).”
Meta, the company that owns Facebook, banned STOIC in May, according to the company’s quarterly Adversarial Threat Report.
The report documented a “network [that] originated in Israel and primarily targeted audiences in the United States and Canada” using “fake and compromised accounts.”
I am appalled by the front page story in today’s New York Times claiming that the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs allocated millions of dollars to finance a social media campaign-fake articles in English, fictitious accounts, bots, and more – to influence Congress in Israel’s favor.…
— Michael Oren (@DrMichaelOren) June 5, 2024
“We found and removed this network early in its audience building efforts, before they were able to gain engagement among authentic communities,” Meta said.
US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller declined to comment on the specifics of the report, but said the US has “very clear laws on the books in the United States about foreign influence campaigns. We enforce those laws vigorously, and we expect everyone to comply with them.”
