Monday, April 25, 2011

Ziobots Invade Facebook

Ziobots Invade Facebook

Dozens or possibly even hundreds of fake profiles, commonly known as “Ziobots”, have started appearing on Facebook over recent months, trolling discussion threads and group walls posting vast quantities of inane “pro-Israel” propaganda comments and links. Seemingly inspired by George Lucas’s masterpiece “Attack of the Clones”, the pioneering PR techniques of Joseph Goebbels, and the principles of Orwell’s ‘newspeak’ this new virtual battalion is starting to make its presence widely felt, much to the chagrin of the broader post-enlightenment Facebook community.

“This things is like a unmanned drones for the hearts and minds of the internet”, an unnamed Israeli Hasbara Force spokesmen tells the Zionion, “We can increase the scale of the zionist presence and the impact of our messages and defamations without risking the reputations of real rightists, many who are not able to read and type so good and gets confused easy.”

Characterised by intense pigheadedness, clumsy logical non-sequiturs, personal abuse, inability to comprehend basic factual information or nuance, epic racism, and endless use of simple repeated scripted expressions, these bots have seen some measure of success in disrupting meaningful dialogue and bullying real people into silence. Behind these profiles is thought to be Israel’s latest secret weapon in the “information war”, a fully automated software platform for global Hasbara delivery.

One of the predecessors of the Ziobots is a tool call Megaphone desktop tool. Please note that this ‘Wikipedia’ site appears to be satirical.

Built with Israel’s unparalleled expertise in artificial intelligence and bayesian analytics, the wraps appear to have finally come off and the bots have been released into the wild of the social networks, but many commentators are noting poor and glitchy performances with many of the so called “Ziobots” being no more convincingly human than the actual rightists they emulate. Also obvious is the frequent resort to the so-called ‘Hasbara Bingo’ lexicon of stock phrases in particular the prevalence of accusations of anti-Semitism often in totally nonsensical contexts.

Some of the common ‘Hasbara Bingo’ refrains: Hitler Infiltrators Blood Libel Antisemite Enemy Holocaust Subhuman Terrorist Nazi Delegitimisation Treason Demonization Apologist

By appearing in turns to be psychopathically insane, heartless, factually ignorant, and almost supernaturally slow-witted, whilst showing no ability to absorb or process information from other participants, they have led some of the creators to express private concerns that this approach may be counterproductive. The bots tend to operate in clusters, typically ganging up on leftists with intense defamatory and personal tirades in attempts to obfuscate and divert any conversation that challenges mainstream Zionist views. These fierce online attacks or as some called them “progroms” are coordinated from a loosely coupled network of IHF intelligence facilities around the globe. The bots are calibrated on an hourly basis with new “key messages” which are then by all accounts delivered with the subtlety of a Caterpillar bulldozer, stuffed into any conversation, related or not. Some say that the biggest giveaway for users trying to spot the Ziobots is the constant shifting of discussion topics and endless diversions into personal tirades, commonly reaching for defamation and attempts at censorship, and also their stupid names and, in early releases, pictures of Gilad Shalit or Israeli flags on their profile pictures.

Ziobot Prime Directive 1: Respond to any reasonable valid points with infantile personal abuse.

Battle-ready or not, the pioneering work is the culmination of decades of development, seeing last year the deployment of the flagship Ziobot Caroline Glick V1.32 onto servers at the Jerusalem Post. Formerly jokingly referred to by readers as “Caroline Glitch”, more recent beta versions of Glick are capable of producing not only text-based invective but can also incite through streaming audio and video media through outlets such as Latma.

Ziobot Prime Directive 2: There is no context too ridiculous in which to play the Holocaust/extermination-of-Jews card.

Caroline Glick V1.32, considered by many to be the spiritual leader of the Ziobots

Mark Zuckerberg, seemingly set upon lately by Ziobot progroms seeking to censor anti-Israel pages on the site, was unavailable for comment but the press office did respond in curious fashion with links to some photos of the now-infamous damaged chicken coop close to Ashkelon. Suspicions are rife that Zuckerberg himself may be compromised, and might in fact be a beta of an upcoming Ziobot release, particularly in light of recent statements oddly acknowledging a right of Zionists to operate freely on Facebook, and references to a promise of exclusive editorial access to pages allegedly made by him to the Jewish people long ago at the inception of the site.

In any case, the jubilant message to leftists from IHF headquarters is for now, in the words of the spokesman, “Your move”. Watch this space.

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