Security services are concerned about the threat of disinformation about the war in Gaza spreading online. Photo: Sinai Noor/Alamy
Whitehall sources believe Russia and China are “manipulating” public opinion in the UK by promoting pro-Palestinian influencers online in an attempt to fuel division.
Senior government officials fear that rogue states are promoting polarizing narratives online about the conflict between Israel and Hamas, using an army of fake social media accounts.
Analysis of some of the leading pro-Palestinian social networks Influential media outlets in the UK, whose popularity has surged since the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, have revealed that many of their followers are fake.
Experts say this rise in popularity of fake profiles will lead to to the disproportionate amplification of pro-Palestinian voices: the more bots interact with them and promote them, the more the platform's algorithms will ensure that other social media users see them.
Security services are also concerned about the threat of disinformation about the war in Gaza spreading online, as well as the possibility of intervention by a hostile state.
A government source said: “It is clear that foreign states are trying to manipulate public opinion by distorting the way we interact in the Internet. They hope to destabilize and undermine our institutions.
“The role of the Defending Democracy Task Force is to work with government and security agencies to understand and combat these threats.”
A second senior Whitehall official said: “October 7 and the conflict in Gaza are exactly the kind of issues that Russia is trying to exploit to spread disinformation and division here in the UK.”
Defending Democracy Taskforce
Working The group, set up by the government last year to protect Britain's democratic integrity from threats of interference from countries such as Russia and China, is looking at ways to combat the spread of online disinformation and conspiracy theories.
< p>The Defense of Democracy Task Force, chaired by Security Minister Tom Tugendhat and including security officials, is focusing on the role of rogue state actors in spreading disinformation.
Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) officials are concerned about disinformation about the Gaza war spreading online and are believed to be in close contact with social media companies on the matter.
National Security An online information group, part of DSIT, has been tasked with closely monitoring the issue and flagging any suspicious behavior.
Robert Clark, senior fellow at Civitas, a civil society think tank, said the Russian target using bot farms to promote pro-Palestinian accounts online was twofold.
First, Mr Clarke said Moscow was “absolutely desperate” to divert attention from the war in Ukraine, adding: “They will use their own bot and troll farms to exploit the international outrage over Israel so that people will focus on other important things.” global event.” .
“There is very little public awareness of their involvement, so enamored have they been with the anti-Israel narrative.”
Mr Clarke says Moscow is “totally desperate”; to distract attention from the war in Ukraine
Secondly, he said the aim of the campaign was to “spark divisions” in British society, explaining: “The vast majority of people under the age of 21 turn to social media for news content. It's incredibly difficult to try to influence people when they're being overwhelmed.”
Divisive Activists on Social Media
Fiyaz Mughal, founder of the interfaith groups Tell Mama, Faith Matters and Muslims Against Anti-Semitism, has been tracking the rise of “divisive activists” on social media since October 7.
“Their rise has been literally exponentially depends on the number of followers of these accounts,” he said. “What he did, especially with regard to Muslim-Jewish relations, was he completely, completely destroyed them.
“He destroyed other Jewish communities. It has also created the feeling that any Muslim who does not toe our tune is essentially a “collaborator.” This is dangerous stuff.”
He warned that this kind of activity is “designed to split, to divide” and create the feeling that “you are either with us or you are on the other side.”
A study by Cyabra, a tech firm specializing in countering online disinformation, found that a number of leading pro-Palestinian voices on social media had a significant number of fake accounts artificially boosting their follower numbers.
Analysis seen by The Telegraph found that one in five accounts using commentator and podcaster Dilli Hussain are fake.
Mr Hussain, who has 118,000 followers on X (formerly Twitter ), used his social media channels to call Israeli soldiers “genocidal sexual deviants” and “baby killers.” He said Israel was a “haven for pedophiles” and compared the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to the terrorist group ISIS.
He also appeared to promote the conspiracy theory that the October 7 attacks were carried out by the IDF, writing on X: “Nova music festival massacre? Not Palestinian militants, most likely it was the IDF and its Hannibal directive.”
Pro-Palestinian protest in London on Saturday Photo: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Researchers studied rapper Lowkey, whose real name is Karin Dennis, and found that 11 percent of the profiles that interacted with him on X were fake.
Lawkey, who has more than 390,000 followers on the social network, wrote on October 7: “It is arrogant to believe that you can keep two million people in an open-air prison indefinitely…” He also said that Israel “is not a country” and is “deliberately” starving Gazans.
The researchers also analyzed the profile of Robert Carter, who works for the website 5Pillars and has 125,000 followers on the site. X, discovering that 15 percent of the accounts he interacts on are fake.
Days after the October 7 massacre, he accused Israel of “peddling propaganda” with “fake stories of beheaded babies to deceive the public into sympathy for Israel.” In October, he said that Israel “has begun to use chemical weapons in Lebanon, as well as in the Gaza Strip.”
Mr Carter said: “Any details regarding fake accounts on platforms like X is Elon Musk's problem, not mine.
Mr Hussein and Mr Dennis declined to comment. There is no suggestion that any of them are aware of or control the fake accounts interacting with them online.
Rafi Mendelsohn, vice president of Cyabra, said: “Iran, China and Russia are very active in creating fake social media accounts. Using our technology, we can see the scale and sophistication of these campaigns, and from that we can infer or understand whether this appears to be the activity of a state actor.
“The sophistication and level of what we saw is really propose the level of participation of the state entity.”
It comes amid growing concerns among Israeli ministers about the influence of social media influencers on British discourse about the war in Gaza. A recent report circulated among senior Israeli officials said that “influential Hamas supporters” were “engaged in the creation, resonance and promotion of pro-Hamas ideology in England.”
Amihai Chikli, Israel's minister for diaspora affairs, said The Telegraph: “The Muslim Brotherhood's Hamas power in Britain far exceeds what the average UK citizen might think.
“There is a direct threat to Britain from pro-Hamas organizations operating across Britain with the clear aim of introducing Sharia law and making Britain a Muslim island – that is the reality and that is their vision.”
He said the British authorities “need to be much more active, much more proactive.” aggressive against these enemies, who threaten not only the Jewish community, but also the way of life and the core values of Britain as a democracy.”
A government spokesman said: “Protecting our democratic processes is an absolute priority and we will continue to identify harmful activities that pose a threat to our institutions and values.”
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