Guardian investigation: Israeli group runs international hate speech on social media for profit

London (QNN)- A new investigation by the Guardian revealed that an Israeli group has been running a hate speech campaign against Muslims and the Left around the globe to gain profit.

The mysterious group has used some of Facebook’s largest far-right pages to create a commercial enterprise that harvests anti-Islamic hate for profit and influences politics across the globe, the investigation revealed.

The Israeli group has co-opted at least 21 organically grown far-right pages for the past two years, and used them to spread thousands of coordinated posts to more than 1 million followers across four continents and funnelling audiences to a cluster of 10 advertisement-heavy websites to milk the traffic for profit.

“The posts stoke deep hatred of Islam across the western world and influence politics in Australia, Canada, the UK and the US by amplifying far-right parties including Australia’s One Nation and vilifying Muslim politicians such as US Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar”, according to the Guardian.

It also targeted leftwing politicians during national election campaigns through spreading false stories about the UK Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau.

The network uncovered by the Guardian has operated with relative impunity even since Mark Zuckerberg offered his apology to the US Senate after the Cambridge Analytica and Russian interference scandals.

The investigation revealed that the Israeli network has gained access to existing rightwing and far-right Facebook pages by approaching local administrators and offering to act as editors who could bring new content and increase reach.

“Once they gain access, the Israeli administrators publish identical posts almost simultaneously to the network’s 21 Facebook pages, which have a combined 1 million followers around the globe”, according to the Guardian.

“Queensland University of Technology researchers worked with the Guardian to confirm that the Facebook posts are being distributed by a single source across the 21 pages, probably using auto-scheduling software.”

The network published 5,695 coordinated posts receiving 846,424 likes, shares or comments in October alone. The total number of the network’s posts has reached 165,000, which attracted 14.3m likes, shares or comments.

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