Gov’t report: Bot network operating Eurovision in Israel boycott campaign

Muslim supremacists and their left-lapdogs use Nazi bots. Pure evil. Fake news. Shadows and fo.

Related: Celebrities Denounce Boycott of Eurovision in Israel l

Gov’t report: Bot network operating Eurovision boycott campaign

Strategic Affairs Ministry says Twitter removed 33 accounts after its investigation.

By Amy Spiro, J Post, May 2, 2019:

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A report issued Thursday by the Strategic Affairs Ministry alleged that hundreds of fake bot accounts were utilized in a social media campaign calling for a boycott of the upcoming Eurovision in Tel Aviv.

According to the report, the ministry identified 232 fake Twitter accounts, including 166 bots. The network operated “to create an impression of significant public support aimed at pressuring European broadcasting corporations and artists participating in the competition to succumb to the boycott,” the ministry claimed.

“The antisemitic BDS activists are trying every deceptive way to attack Israel, even when dealing with Eurovision which aims to unite people and cultures,” Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan said Thursday. “We have now proven that the boycott organizations are not only antisemitic and support terror, but lie and fabricate support for their agenda.”

The ministry said it began investigating the issue in November 2018. Last month, it sent information on the 232 accounts in question to both Twitter and the European Broadcasting Union. As of Thursday, the ministry said, 33 of the accounts have been closed.

A spokesman for the ministry told The Jerusalem Post Thursday that Twitter responded to its report by saying that it “took action,” but did not detail its reasoning for the accounts it chose to remove and those it left operational.

A spokeswoman for Twitter told the Post on Thursday that it “suspended a small group of accounts for violating our regular spam rules, in line with our commitment to improving healthy conversations on the service.” It would not respond to requests about its decision-making process or the other accounts flagged by the ministry.

The ministry’s report, titled “The Big Scam: How BDS is Manipulating Social Media Against Eurovision 2019,” also accused the groups behind the campaign of having ties to Hamas.

The effort, it said, is coordinated by PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, a group based in Ramallah. PACBI is a founding member of the Palestinian Boycott National Committee, BNC, which lists as one of its key supporters the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine. That group, Israel has long claimed, is directly linked to several groups that are designated as terrorist organizations by both the US and Israel, including Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The ministry’s report, conducted over a period of several months, worked to identify Twitter accounts as fakes, trolls and bots based on their activity. The study flagged accounts which carried out suspicious behavior, including tweeting at uncharacteristically short intervals – in one case, eight times a minute – and exhibiting an abnormal average daily tweet rate.

According to the report, the activity of these accounts reached more an estimated 10 million Twitter users. The ministry said it had traced some of the accounts back to France, Britain, Spain, Italy, Egypt and Indonesia.

In March, the Foreign Ministry said it worked with Twitter to shut 400 accounts that were part of “foreign manipulation networks” working to influence Israel’s election. And in November the social media platform deleted more than 10,000 accounts which were working to discourage voting in the US election.

By those metrics, the number of accounts identified by the Strategic Affairs Ministry is relatively insignificant. But the report issued Thursday said it believed “that the number of bots and fake accounts used in this deception scheme is much greater than the findings of this report.”

Despite the boycott campaign’s efforts – and those waged through more traditional media – the upcoming Eurovision has been largely untouched by the boycott campaign.

Not a single country or broadcaster pulled out of the upcoming contest for political reasons. When the competition kicks off later this month, 41 contestants from around the globe will take the stage – and every one of them has already visited Israel to film a promotional clip.

“I am happy that this year’s participants did not surrender to these lies and bigotry, and are coming to Israel,” Erdan said. “I hope that other artists planning on coming will understand that there is no extensive support for BDS, and it is all just a fake campaign.”

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created4el

5 years ago

Satan lies, steals and kills… and so do his followers. How do we know a group is Satanic? They resort to lies or they steal or they kill… part of lying is sowing discord. The BDS movement is based on a lie. They worship their god, Satan, so they do what ever it takes to propagate the lie.

We are in a spiritual battle. Violence must be stopped with force. But this battle won’t be won with bullets but with truth. The Truth will set souls free and transform hearts. Until hearts are transformed, those hearts will fight for what they feel morally convicted to do. But they don’t realize what they think of as moral is immoral because their morality is based on a lie. Until their hearts are transformed, they will be drawn to the dark… to the lie.

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John Acord

5 years ago

I hope the technology to detect and identify these fake bots is made available to the Trump campaign as we can be certain the LibTards will deploy a massive army of bots in an attempt to defeat Trump. Of course, once identified Twitter and Facebook have to deactivate, which I doubt they will.

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Roland

5 years ago

Social media is a sewer. Reporting on something that “blew up” on twitter is ridiculous. They have algorithms that make a few dozen people look like thousands. Rush uncovered this years ago. He and his staff did some research into some of the goings on in the twitterverse and found out that just a few dozen people were behind most of the so-called wave of tweets against him and his show.
We have recently seen loads of evidence on censoring of conservative viewpoints on the other social media giants. It’s all garbage! It’s NOT real. You can invent hundreds of accounts and make yourself into your own fan club.

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Hans Wellington

4 years ago

Reply to  Roland

I have an easy remedy. I had and still have a Twitter account for several years. I have never used it once and never even look at it.

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Thomas Faddis

5 years ago

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Hans Wellington

4 years ago

Reply to  Thomas Faddis

Wow !! Now at least I know why FB is such a “Honest, decent, impartial and a particular tolerant in religion organisation”……….Phew !!

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Hans Wellington

4 years ago

Of cause they can not call themselves Gods chosen people, because they are the Devils chosen people. Surely, they do not want to insult their Master.

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