Act.IL: Gamifying Anti-Palestinian Propaganda
By Evan Ploeckelman / Arab America Contributing Writer
Have you always enjoyed hearing about foreign propaganda bots in the news? Have you always dreamed of spreading propaganda yourself but have been saddened by the lack of opportunity to do so? Do you have no qualms about spreading propaganda for a foreign nation with a long history of human rights abuses and colonization? If so, then look no further than Act.IL, where you can compete with others to spread Zionist thought and speak out against the rights of Palestinians.
In all seriousness, Act.IL should have everyone worried, even if you do not care about what’s going on with Palestine. This app not only helps to spread Zionist thought around the world, but essentially creates an international digital army of Israeli soldiers from around the globe who are ready to fight, topping the app’s leaderboards. No matter what nation, having a global army of propagandists is a problem because it hides truth and leads to biased, unfavorable outcomes.
Created in 2017, in partnership with the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs, whose minister until 2020, Gilan Erdan, dubbed the “iron dome of truth,” Act.IL gives the job of spreading pro-Israel propaganda into the hands of the player. Users are tasked with “missions” to complete. These involve leaving comments on news articles, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites, earning them points, which can be compared with other users. Act.IL has claimed credit for changing the ethnic studies curriculum in California schools due to their accurate definition of the BDS movement. They also claim credit for anti-Muslim attack on individuals such as senator Ilhan Omar (D-MN). In the past week, they have gained more attention due to their attacks on Ben & Jerry’s for their cessation of sales in occupied Palestinian territories.
In order to demonstrate how the app works in more detail, I will be using images and footage that I have personally obtained.
When you go to the app store (available on both iOS and Android) to download the app, you are greeted with this description. Notice the 1.9 star rating, reflected in the reviews (which are not shown here). Also notice the age range: 4+ years old. Your child, too, can be a virtual Israeli propaganda agent.
After you make your account, you are greeted with this page, with one featured mission at the top. This is a send in mission.
If you are ever out and about and notice people not supporting Israel, you can report them right to the Israeli government using the provided text box below. While the convenience is notable, I did notice their weird description of the BDS movement on the top. After all, the BDS movement is about boycotting companies that deal with Israel, not necessarily Jewish owned shops (although they can be both).
Of course, I could go on and on about how the app works, but Maya does a much better job than I could ever do. Notice all of the features provided by the app: additional information about Israel straight from the Israeli government, ways to organize based on a multitude of relevant characteristics, and leaderboards so you can compare how well you are doing compared to your online comrades.
I just got my first points; you could say I am on my way to Act.IL stardom.
However, looking at the top activists this month, I quickly learned that anyone looking to make it big in the world of Act.IL needed to do a lot more than just do a few missions here and there.
Below the leaderboard are the achievement badges. Somes of them, like the App Master ones, seem simple enough, but the Super Scribe and Stalwart Socialite badges do look pretty challenging, knowing what goes into writing articles and attending events. These badges, however, are actually the most difficult to get. There are a lot of other badges, too, including ones for posts on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Whatsapp, Youtube, Instagram, and Quora. Some of these are interestingly pretty low, such as the Intrepid Instagrammer Bronze award being achieved by only 66 people.
The second to last tab on the bottom is the Fact.IL library. Let’s take a look at it, starting with Gaza.
You can see in the video above how I can find pro-Israeli talking points for any issue that anyone could debate, including what points with which to respond. Each folder also includes articles, images, and videos that one can link to when engaging with others, such as the one below.
Let’s try doing an actual mission.
As you see above, the link will bring you to a post, in this instance on Instagram, and tell you why it is wrong and what you should do about it. In this case, it wants you to report the post for points. However, the app cannot actually tell if you reported it, so you could just do nothing and get your points anyway.
To be fair, some of the posts you are directed toward are blatantly anti-semetic, such as Holocaust denials, which should not be anywhere on the internet. People should report these types of posts. However, a significant number of posts are on the app simply because they promote the existence of Palestine over Israel, or because they highlight the human rights abuses performed by Israel.
Clearly, Act.IL serves as a low effort way to promote Zionism across the internet, threatening the Palestinians and altering how the world views them for the worse, damaging the global sense of Arab identity. On the plus side, if the achievements are any indication, the platform does not have nearly as many users as any major social media platform (although as I have shown, a small amount of people can do a lot of damage). Furthermore, you do not actually have to perform the given action for each mission, which is just an observation and not something that you should use for unintended purposes ever. With more attention to apps like these, we may begin to see some concentrated effort against them.
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