Comment by breppp
1 day ago
I am an Israeli and though I dislike this certain brand of companies and would never work in one, I am not sure this is strictly bad.
I assume these were hired by a local candidate (unless someone can think who has a deep interest in French municipal elections)
Currently the only actors who use fake social accounts for election manipulation are the Russians, Chinese, Iran and Qatar.
The west is completely powerless in either fighting back, regulating social networks or coming up with a technological solution.
As democracies are being undermined by foreign influence, from Brexit, to the US elections, I'd rather local parties would have access to these tools than the alternative, and that would be only done using private companies.
Of course the better alternative is getting rid of fake accounts and making social media into a unicorn and bunnies hate-free zone, don't think we are headed there though
> unless someone can think who has a deep interest in French municipal elections
The State of Israel? They are paranoid about their international standing. (Really, just paranoid in general, to an absurd and pathological degree, though for understandable reasons.)
That's doubtful, I don't think Israel has the resources to spend huge sums of money to invest in manipulating French municipal elections.. That's absurd
It's literally American taxpayer dollars.
This is the most delusional take I have seen. Israel is known for their extensive spying and foreign influence. You sir are the absurd one.
[flagged]
11 replies →
Ignoring the actual situation as I don't care to go into that right now, just talking about the mechanisms working with here. I did have access accidentally to buy cheap social stuff. Not that it would be hard to run it myself, just wouldn't be worth the effort to make it run well for controllably long time. But anyway, i didn't do anything with it, but i always thought, how do easy it would be for a competent, young, informed government, to realize counteracting the digital influence of foreignn governments is much more important than whatever else they prioritise. Exaggerated, maybe, but it should be at least top 3 or whatever exact position in ones priority list. Because especially: it's so easy, to spend a few thousand euros to hire some really competent people who might just pay some shady social account broker, now even with the use LLMs , much more scalably & effectively, to counteract and do even better stuff than what they do.
But then, remembering bernays, i am happy they are incompetent. The day they reach competency with the toolset that is yet in infancy, i will regret not having tried to control who is running this. On the other hand, you just can't risk doing this. It will lose your control eventually. And without being a conspiracy theorists, it won't be long until more pips (people in power) will notice the ease of influence- and propaganda (in bernays understanding, the one who rebranded it as public relations), through these tools.
Luckily, i've never been in a knife fight. Though i've heard, that with an unskilled fighter, you have pretty bad chances of not getting hurt. But a skilled one is a death sentence. Of course i don't want to be attacked by a knife. And i don't want to take some other unskilled street gangster and train him. Of course, some people get humbled if introduced to power. But many corrupt. And those hungry for power, are rarely those, who should have it. This could be an hour long discussion. But just look around the people you know well. Maybe yourself in certain situations or relationships. Every humans has the potential.
So what i think w
Israel just buys the political support in the open instead.
I believe you are referring to Jewish citizens of the USA that are free to support whatever political candidate they see fit?
I take it as referring to AIPAC, one of the most influential lobbying organizations in the US.
It tends to consistently "fit" Moo-Sad's playbook. Like, ALWAYS!
How can you then turn around and try to mask it as "citizens supporting their political goals"?
Clear communication points released from headquarters to all the media minions, social media platforms, election influencing channels, and on and on.
[flagged]
You guessed wrong. As far as I know, there's no such lobby, and I find your suggestion of its existence to be antisemitic. But the pro Israel lobby is quite open and public. Aipac's spending, for example, is public knowledge, and you can look it up for yourself.
Repeating true statements in a sarcastic manner doesn’t suddenly make them untrue statements.