Network of Fake Social Media Accounts Boosting Netanyahu Ahead of Election - Report

By Staff, Agencies

A network of hundreds of social media accounts has been working to boost Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's re-election campaign and smear his opponents ahead of next week's election, the New York Times and ‘Israeli’ daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported.

The report, which cited watchdog group Big Bots Project, was written with assistance of the ‘Israeli’ Alliance, a liberal-leaning organization, the New York Times said.

While it found no direct links between the network and Netanyahu or his Likud party, it said the accounts appeared to work in tandem with one another and in coordination with Likud's election campaign.

The network included 154 accounts using fake names, with another 400 accounts suspected of being fake, with all of them apparently being operated by real people and with the posts receiving over 2.5 million hits, the report added.

The network has posted about 130,000 tweets since the election was announced.

Its activity has increased nearly fivefold since the election was called in December, and it is particularly active at "climactic moments for Netanyahu."

Its messages were reposted by high-profile people linked to the Likud campaign, including Yair Netanyahu, the PM’s son, who is an unofficial adviser to the campaign and retweeted members of the network 154 times.

All the accounts are linked to one person, Yitzhak Haddad of Ashdod, according to the report, which cited a YouTube channel to which he is in active subscriber that features a message offering money for "responding on Facebook and on the internet with political messages. You just get political messages and you post them."

Haddad admitted to a private investigator that he created videos and posted them online. Asked whether the activity was paid for, he replied, "Yes. [I] post them to Twitter, post it all kinds of places."

He also gave an idea of the scale of the operation: "I don't want to say tens of millions," he said, "but loads of money is being invested here. It takes money, there's no volunteering here."

Haddad added that he was connected to "very senior people" in Likud. His attorney said he denied "what was attributed to him" and threatened a million-dollar libel lawsuit against anyone publishing otherwise.