Google is in the middle of a six-month, $45 million contract to amplify propaganda with Netanyahu’s office. The contract describes Google as a “key entity” supporting the prime minister’s messaging.

Publicly available government contracts show that Israel’s advertising bureau, which reports to the prime minister’s office, has since embarked on a mass advertising and public messaging effort to conceal the hunger crisis. The push includes the use of American influencers widely reported on last month. It also includes a high-dollar spending spree on paid advertising, yielding tens of millions for Google, YouTube, X, Meta, and other tech platforms.

“There is food in Gaza. Any other claim is a lie,” asserted a propaganda video published by Israel’s foreign ministry to Google’s YouTube video sharing platform in late August and viewed more than 6 million times. Much of the video’s reach results from an ad placed during an ongoing and previously unreported $45 million (NIS 150 million) advertising campaign initiated between Google and Netanyahu’s office in late June.

The contract—which is with both YouTube and Google’s advertising campaign management platform, Display & Video 360—explicitly characterizes the ad campaign as hasbara, a Hebrew word whose meaning is somewhere between public relations and propaganda

  • PhilipTheBucket@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    16 days ago

    I saw an ad on YouTube for what a good job ICE is doing not that long ago. Kristi Noem was in it.

    More disturbingly, I’ve noticed a little scattering of those “police bodycam raw video” channels starting to play up when the criminal involved is an immigrant, what their status was, how ICE was involved, and so on. There’s clearly something at work that’s a little more subtle than “here’s an ad about why ICE is a good thing for the country.”

  • mannycalavera@feddit.ukEnglish
    0·
    16 days ago

    Come on now, Google is just a business trying to make ends meet. All the starving, dying Palestinians in an open air concentration camp have to do is spend $45 million on a counter advertising campaign. Like… Duh.

    /s

      • Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        0·
        16 days ago

        I remember getting pro-Israel ads literally the day after the attacks and was like wow, kinda gross. But also they just had this shit ready to go? Or were able to churn it out that quickly? It seems really disrespectful to those that died.