Coverage of Netanyahu's speech on US news sites attracted activity from Iranian talkbackers, who rushed to flood the online discussions with lies - in an attempt to influence public opinion.
The Israeli company Spot.IM, whose products enable user discussions on some of the largest news sites in the US, has identified approximately 130 users from Iran who were conducting discussions through the company's products, and whose activities were intended to spread lies in the context of Netanyahu's speech.
Nadav Shoval, CEO of Spot.IM: "When we identify hostile activity, we block the harmful user, to allow other users to enjoy discussion in a safe environment. But this time we chose to leave and reveal the methods of operation of one of the users operating from Iran, to present a case study of their actions.".
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In the attached photo, you can see the activity of a surfer, who, according to information received by the system, operates from the city of Shiraz in Iran.
The same user posted a comment under coverage of Netanyahu's speech on three major news sites that target an English-speaking audience. The comments appeared at one-second intervals, which reflects a strategy for distributing content, and is different from user discussions that develop at a natural pace.
Hebrew translation of the response: "Israel mixed lies with old information, distorted information, distorted information. Lies were born from this cocktail. And the reason for this is to cover up Israeli aggression in attacks in Syria and Gaza.".
The same surfer then posted another comment, and a second later another surfer with a different name, also operating from Iran, posted the exact same comment on another news site.
Translation of the response: "Trump just announced that he rejects Netanyahu's claims as untrustworthy" - this is spreading a lie, of course.
These surfers are part of a broader group of content distributors, based in Iran, who work with identical texts and quickly distribute them on multiple sites under the same types of articles.
Shoval adds: "A significant number of such talkbackers work with copy-paste, which makes it very easy for us to quickly identify them using machine learning technology. Filtering based on real-time writing is more difficult, because we are committed to giving a platform to a variety of opinions and worldviews. It is impossible to block a surfer just because of a statement that is not liked or is inaccurate. But ultimately, we identify surfers who deviate from authentic activity.".
Spot.IM was founded in 2012 and has since raised $37 million.
Every month, more than 400 million users are exposed to the company's tools installed on thousands of content sites with more than a billion and a half pages - including the world's leading news sites: Fox News, Forbes, AOL, Time Inc, Huffington Post, Sky, Oath and more.
The company has offices in Tel Aviv, London and New York, employing 50 people.
