Israel is using bots to fake social media support

A new investigation has found that half of all political accounts linked to Israel social media are bots. This includes many of the accounts boosting posts by Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his terrorist government.

Israel is using bots (tell us something we don’t know)

The report, from Channel 12 News, revealed that accounts run from other countries were instantly liking and sharing posts by Netanyahu and other politicians – even though some of the videos would have taken minutes to actually watch.

Sometimes, campaigns also involve human influencers, who initiate the algorithm. This is then continued and reinforced by bots. Channel 12 News stated that this was evident from the overwhelmingly positive reactions to posts that would typically receive negative responses.

This engagement means that the platform’s algorithms are far more likely to recommend the content to other accounts.

The documentary also found that opposition leaders were appearing to be using bots in any way.

The report estimated that around half of all politically active accounts in Israel are bots, which is in line with global figures.

Whilst some of the bots are easy to identity, others are not. Some mainly gather data rather than simply manipulating feeds. Others use more advanced AI technology meaning they can appear more like a real person. This makes it much harder to figure out if an account is real or not.

Not a new problem

This is not the first time that Israel has used bots to influence public or political support.

Back in 2024, the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs organised and paid for an influence campaign which targeted both US lawmakers and the American public. The pro-Israeli messaging aimed to garner support for the terrorist states genocide in Gaza.

In total, they spent $2m on hiring STOIC, a political marketing firm in Tel Aviv, to conduct the operation.

Previously, both OpenAI and Meta both disrupted STOIC’s attempts to use their products nefariously.

The companies stated that the intelligence firm was manipulating various political conversations online. In response, OpenAI banned a network of accounts operated by STOIC, and described it as a “for-hire Israeli threat actor”.

The news that Israel is using bots on social media will not surprise most of us – because we’ve been paying attention. All you have to do is post something even slightly questioning Israel, and pro-Israeli accounts provide a barrage of threats and abuse.

And of course, if half of the pro-Israel accounts are bots, it means the other half are simply genocide-loving terrorists.

Feature image via HG