Recent investigative findings by Pirate Wires have revealed the existence of a highly coordinated pro-Palestinian network that leverages Reddit as a springboard to disseminate propaganda across platforms like Discord, X ( formerly Twitter ), TikTok, Instagram, Quora, and Wikipedia. This broad online activity has been linked to U. S. designated criminal groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and engages in efforts to control public opinion, control intellectual opposition, and escape platform moderation.
Since October 7, a well-organized website habitat has emerged to intensify articles straight sourced from criminal companies, including Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Houthi activity. This system uses popular websites and their algorithms to control information flows and shape public discussion. The final objective is to make these narratives appear as popular perspectives by incorporating them into general platforms like Google Search and ChatGPT.
Particularly, at the heart of this activity is r/Palestine, a Facebook group boasting 270, 000 members. This post functions as the nerve centre of the show’s activities, guiding people to a related Discord server that serves as a command-and-control gateway. Before being granted access to this Discord, new users must go through an intellectual screening process, answering concerns about their opinions on Israel, Zionism, and the activities of October 7.
Inside the Discord, people coordinate through specific task forces dedicated to various websites, including Reddit, X, Quora, TikTok, Instagram, and Wikipedia. These organizations use tactics to manipulate content with proper content, such as:
- Voting Brigading: Mass upvoting of anti-Israel articles and downvoting of pro-Israel ideas to control visibility.
- Coordinated Posting: Determining feedback sections and articles that require more pro-Palestinian wedding.
- Astroturfing: By flooding discussions with planned messages, creates the illusion of popular support for extreme ideologies.
Beyond its main post, the network has extended its handle over a remarkable 110 subreddits, managed by almost 30 primary moderators. By leveraging their posts, these people shape stories, judge criticism, and direct users to increasingly serious information. Studies on some of the biggest joined subreddits are published by Pirate Wires:
But it’s with a cluster of million-member-strong subreddits infiltrated and then controlled by the network , that have nothing to do with the Mideast — or even politics usually — that the r/Palestine network is particularly effective, and which illustrates an unusual degree of clear astroturfing meant to convince innocent users that there’s a widespread anti-Israel, anti-Western, Marxist movement online. These include, but aren’t limited to: r/Documentaries ( 20 million members ), r/therewasanattempt ( 7.2 million ), r/PublicFreakout ( 4.7 million ), r/Fauxmoi ( 4.3 million ), and r/iamatotalpieceofs **t ( 2.1 million ).
The network makes use of command-and-control systems, radicalizing messaging, and decentralized tactics by exploiting the freedom and openness afforded by these platforms, as well as vulnerabilities in the platforms ‘ trust and safety operation, which have largely been outsourced to the user-base itself ( rather than trained moderators ).
The Resistance News Network ( RNN), a propaganda aggregator that converts and redistributes content from Telegram channels run by U.S. designated terrorist organizations, is a crucial component of this network’s activities. RNN effectively circumvents legal restrictions by repackaging and relaying this material onto mainstream platforms, potentially violating U.S. material support laws, due to restrictions on terror-related content within the U.S.
According to Pirate Wires  , RNN compiles content from a color-coded list of Telegram channels run by terrorist organizations throughout the Middle East. Although many of these channels are prohibited in the United States, RNN’s translation and dissemination efforts help to bring their stories into wider conversation.
The Harris-Walz campaign, which was previously exposed for running an extensive astroturfing operation on Reddit, had a similar connection, according to Breitbart News. According to reports, campaign staff kept a spreadsheet in which they kept track of their influence efforts, arranging mass postings, and encouraging engagement through the lens of organic user participation.
