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
There legitimate reason to suspect that Israel was involved in a series of anti-muslim rallies that happened across the US a few years back. The Molly Conger's covered it in an episode of "Weird Little Guys": https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/an-accidental-nazi-ral...
That's not a conspiracy theory though, the fact that political parties during elections campaign try to influence voters, sometimes in morally questionable ways, is pretty well known and common.
I had an issue with the idea that a nation in the Middle East is somehow interested in municipal elections in Europe as it somehow will advance its security interests... that's kinda way out there
Much of the Israeli government believes that the entire world is out to get them; that every generation brings a new “Amalek” (as Prime Minister Netanyahu put it); that every Gentile anywhere in the world is at risk, if exposed to the right trigger, of waking up tomorrow wanting to start another Holocaust. Prominent Israeli politicians talk like this all the time. Here in the US, I see Zionists make similar arguments constantly ("Israel is the only country where Jews can be safe", "antisemitism is part of the European DNA", etc.).
This (delusional, paranoid, insane) attitude is central to the national ideology, and the #1 reason why the country is so messed up.
Because of it, they see any politician anywhere expressing any criticism of them whatsoever as an existential threat, someone who could turn into the next Hitler and genocide them all. That's why they just increased their PR budget to over $700 million.
> Much of the Israeli government believes that the entire world is out to get them; that every generation brings a new “Amalek” (as Prime Minister Netanyahu put it);
Sorry to inform you but the idea that every generation breeds someone that will try to destroy the Jewish people is firm in Jewish religion (and with merit). That is repeated in every Passover. It is also based on quite firm historical grounds though.
> that every Gentile anywhere in the world is at risk, if exposed to the right trigger, of waking up tomorrow wanting to start another Holocaust
That's your interpretation, as for someone that is versed in the local language and culture, I think it is wrong
> Here in the US, I see Zionists make similar arguments constantly ("Israel is the only country where Jews can be safe", "antisemitism is part of the European DNA", etc.).
This (delusional, paranoid, insane) attitude is central to the national ideology, and the #1 reason why the country is so messed up.
Like it or not, but Zionism has said that European antisemitism is pathological and will end in disaster for the Jewish people. That might be regarded as paranoid in 1932, but zionist jews were largely saved while other less paranoid Jews were completely exterminated in an actual real genocide.
The message which you characterize as paranoid is quite easy for Israelis to understand as most of the country is descendent to refugees from genocide, ethnic cleansing or both
> That's why they just increased their PR budget to over $700 billion.
Sounds like a lot. In any case, I don't see how any of this explains Israel's obsession with municipal elections in France. But I guess it's a difference in axioms. Once you believe Israelis are insane, then you don't need to rationalize your own beliefs, even though they lack any logical ground
> That's why they just increased their PR budget to over $700 billion.
Million, not billion, sorry for the typo.
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Yes, the paranoia is for understandable historical reasons. It didn't come out of nowhere, I get that. Most paranoid people are paranoid due to real traumatic experiences that happened to them. But none of that makes it any less harmful or destructive. At worst, it becomes an endless cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy.
(Israel is hardly the only example of an entire society going down this dark path. E.g. Germany: horrible traumatic experience of losing WWI -> paranoia, "we must have been betrayed" -> "the Jews did it" -> Nazism, the Holocaust.)
I would say that it is even more of a paranoid, delusional conspiracy theory to say that GP is subscribed to a conspiracy theory, or is paranoid or delusional
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.
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.
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