2LT International News

SAN JOSE, California – Twitter on Tuesday confirmed it had “taken action” after the release of a report by an Israeli watchdog which exposed a network of fake social media sites, including on Twitter and Facebook.

The network of sites was said to be spreading propaganda promoting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party, while smearing opponents.

By the time of writing, Twitter had shut down two-thirds of the  fake sites it had identified, according to one of the authors of the watchdog’s report. These numberered in the several hundreds.

Noam Rotem said Tuesday, Twitter had closed 258 of the more than 400 automated sites his team had identified.

Twitter did not make specific comment on the sites, or their number, other than to confirm that the platform prohibits fabricated accounts and “has taken action where violations are identified.”  A spokesman said monitoring of sites in countries routinely accelerated during election cycles.

The Israeli prime minister meantime has described the watchdog’s report as “libel.”

 At a press conference on Tuesday, Mr. Netanyahu introduced a man named Giora Ezra, a real estate manager from the central city of Yavneh, who has user name “Captain George” – one of the accounts identified by the watchdog’s report.

“Are you a bot? Are you real?” the prime minister asked him. “It is such a huge, transparent lie; false allegations,” he said as he pointed at Ezra. “With a straight face they lie and say that these people who express themselves online are not real people. Meanwhile, all of them have turned out to be real, independent people with genuine opinions.”

In recent times Netanyahu has been seen to champion measures to oppose illegal use of social media and cyber hacking.

“A few years ago I decided to establish Israel as one of the leading cyber countries in the world, and by all accounts, we’re there,” he told a Cyber Week Conference at Tel Aviv University in June 2017.

“We are experiencing every month dozens of cyber-attacks on the national level,” warned Netanyahu. “At any given moment, including right now, there are probably 3-5 attacks on the national level that emanate from various sources.”

The Likud party has denied it has had any role in the setting up and operating of the fake accounts.

“The Likud is not connected in any way to the network to which you refer. The Likud does not operate any network of bots, avatars, fake profiles and so on. The Likud is almost the only party that does not use such methods,”  the party said in a statement.

The disclosure of the existence of the fake accounts has gained little traction in Israel, and has had no impact on the popularity of Netanyahu, who is now facing the prospect of an unprecedented fifth term as Israel’s prime minister.