Israel is paying internet workers to manipulate online content

As many of you may have suspected, Israel is paying and training internet bloggers to delete, rewrite, and revise internet content to shape public opinion to Israel’s benefit. Video of the Israeli-sponsored training programs have been leaked to the web (like the video here).

Additionally, investigative reporters that infiltrated these groups have reported that Israelis are being trained to spread disinformation and to try to create conflicts among different religious, racial, and ethnic groups if it would benefit Israel. Some of the seminars also encouraged the workers to spread disinformation on the internet and to attempt to recruit free (unpaid) labor. For example, many of these bloggers have been trained to attempt to make friends with you by pretending that they share an interest in your favorite sports team or movie, or that they went to the same school, but they will ultimately try to recruit you to attack other groups or individuals that Israel thinks is against its national interests (e.g., ‘Muslims,’ ‘Russians,’ ‘Germans,’ ‘Latinos,’ ‘United Nations representatives’ and ‘human rights groups’). Others have been trained to personally attack, stalk, and harass anyone personally that does not agree with Israel. Not only is this type of behavior a terrible injustice to the accuracy of content (it’s actually state-sponsored propaganda), it is also damaging to the public trust because people are being misguided into working as unpaid servants of a government through false pretenses. People really should speak out about this.