Watchdog group in Israeli says social media accounts spreading information about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been found.
Two researchers from the big bots projects, Noam Rotem and Yuval Adam, said in a report on Monday, they have uncovered hundreds of account promoting Netanyahu.
No direct connection has been found between the network and Nethanyahu or his party, Likud, based on the report.
Adam said his project discovered a large number of accounts, including real people, along with hundreds of twitter accounts that appeared to be fake or duplicated.
The campaign has focused largely on personal attacks between the two frontrunners, with Gantz taking aim at Netanyahu’s alleged ethical lapses. And Nethanyahu paining Gantz as a weak “leftist”. the prime minister’s Likud Party has also tried to portray Gantz as being mentally unstable.
The Big Bots watchdog group said it was unclear who was operating the network and said the accounts identified by researchers were real.
The expose about the pro-Netanyahu network was the latest technologically related incident in the tumultuous 2019 Israeli election campaign.
Last month, news broke that Gantz’s personal telephone was infiltrated by Iranian hackers. While Gantz contends no sensitive information was compromised, Netanyahu leveraged he breach to argue that Gantz was unprepared to lead a whole country.
Israelis will vote in a national election on April 9.
