Growing concern over Pakistan social media bot farms targeting UK and US public opinion

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that operators in Pakistan are running sophisticated bot farms and fake social media accounts to undermine American support for Israel and weaken the US-Israeli alliance.

In an interview with CBS News' 60 Minutes, Mr Netanyahu described a deliberate campaign using fabricated American personas to erode sympathy for Israel. "We have several countries that basically manipulated social media with bot farms, fake addresses to break the American sympathy for Israel and to break the American-Israeli alliance because they think it's in their interest," he said.

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He added: "It's like you hear a text message, 'I am a red-blooded Texan, I always supported Israel, but I can't stand what they are doing' and turning against Israel, then you trace the address to some basement in Pakistan."

The claims highlight growing concerns over Pakistan-led operations on platforms including X, formerly Twitter, and Facebook. In March, Nikita Bier, head of product at X, revealed the platform had dismantled a network run from Pakistan. "Last night, we found a guy in Pakistan who was managing 31 accounts posting AI war videos. All were hacked, and the usernames were changed on Feb 27 to 'Iran War Monitor' or some derivative," Mr Bier said. He noted that X was "getting much faster at detecting this, and also eliminating the incentive to do this."

Separate investigations have exposed the financial incentives driving such activity. A recent report by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism detailed how a man in Pakistan was earning thousands of pounds through Facebook pages that spread racist and inflammatory videos aimed at UK audiences. The content frequently targeted Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and London Mayor Sadiq Khan, generating revenue through Meta's advertising model.

These Pakistani operations often blend automated bots with human-managed accounts and AI-generated content, making them harder to detect. Pakistan has not publicly commented on the specific allegations. With millions of users exposed daily to potentially manipulated content, the issue raises fresh questions on how social media is being regularly manipulated by Pakistan's state and non-state actors.

Ahead of the May conflict of last year, India has blocked and withheld many social media accounts based out of Pakistan, indulging in misinformation. They continue to be blocked in India, but new bot accounts linked with Pakistan have regularly emerged.

Earlier this week, the fact-check unit of the GOI and India's foreign ministry fact-checked a Pakistan account that was using an AI-generated video to spread misinformation on India's counter-terror operation of last year in Pakistan.