Comment by giraffe_lady

It has been going on for decades, openly discussed among pro-palestine activists in the US since the early days of social media. One of the first and most reliable "mainstream" users of reddit was israel posting "idf thirst traps" though that nomenclature didn't exist for it back then.

I was a mod of a few semi-popular subs back then and we'd get bombarded by requests to remove comments critical of israel in those threads. A few times messaged by state employees under their real names making their case for a pro-israel mod stance. This was like circa 2008-2011, real ron paul le bacon atheism obama days.