this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
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[–] Akasazh@feddit.nl 46 points 8 months ago (42 children)

It's really bizarre if you compare the Lemmy comments with those on Reddit worldnews. The Reddit comments are generally pro Israël, some even banaly so (in the 'they had it coming sand the deserve what they get'- territory).

In a forum there should be dissenting opinions, however those are downvoted to oblivion. It feels very weird, I'm reluctant to use the word astroturfing, but there's a huge difference in the time of the discussion compared to a couple of years ago.

[–] juicy 31 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Israel has an app where they post links to social media posts discussing Israel for app users to go astroturf. They take their propaganda very seriously. They have a word for propaganda targeting foreigners: "hasbara." https://mepc.org/speeches/hasbara-and-control-narrative-element-strategy

[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Israeli work contacts flooding LinkedIn with their shit is one of the weirdest ways I see this online. It’s usually inappropriate to bring politics into the work sphere but in the days after the October attack, the business world came out in sympathy for Israel, as they should. The problem is that this was cemented as the only business friendly position from that point forward. Nowadays I see Israelis posting raw vitriol while everyone else is too timid to say anything except “we support Israel’s right to exist” or “we hope for peace in the Middle East” and other such fatuous trivialities.

Why is pro-Israel the only business friendly position? Simple. There aren’t any Palestinian startups. There are very few Palestinian CEOs.

When you don’t have a voice: you are wrong.

[–] Globeparasite@lemmy.world -4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

yeah, like every country, Ukraine does that, Russia pays bot, China concripts bot. And the US have its education system

[–] fuckingkangaroos@lemm.ee 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Authoritarian countries like Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela do it much more than democracies.

[–] FarceOfWill@infosec.pub 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I sometimes wonder if they're just bad at it, so the astro turfing is obvious. The people posting have to be immersed in and understand the western site to blend in while remaining loyal to a very different kind of home communication and they often don't manage it, and if they do that difference makes them stand out.

While we have dozens of western police show up in any discussion of police violence to explain that it's really hard. Not even astroturfing, I think, just people being themselves. Aside from being obviously police their posting style blends in perfectly, if there were western astroturf campaigns I think they would blend perfectly and use much more subtle techniques

[–] fuckingkangaroos@lemm.ee 1 points 8 months ago

A lot of them aren't people, they're LLMs. And I don't think the actual people doing it stand out to the average person. They're not posting "death to America, Putin is amazing," it's much more subtle.

A common tactic is divide and conquer. They'll support both extremes of a contentious political issue like abortion, gun violence, or policing.

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