"An approaching tsunami": the big risk in the coming election

Anyone who wants to understand what the next election campaign in Israel will look like shouldn't look at the polls on Channel 12, nor at the campaign videos on TikTok. To grasp the power of the tsunami approaching us, you simply need to lift your head and look across the sea.

If until now we were used to fake news in the form of Photoshopped screenshots or quotes taken out of context, the coming elections will introduce us to a new, far more aggressive and sophisticated generation of manipulations. We will see videos of candidates saying sentences that were never said, 'bombshell' recordings from closed meetings that never took place, and bots that will know how to hold personal, persuasive and targeted WhatsApp conversations with us — to push us to change our vote.

It's important to remember that technology is not neutral. Behind systems that look 'automatic' stand human beings: interests, decisions and deliberate design, whose goal is to influence consciousness — and the vote.

The deep problem is that the one paying the price is the public. Not the politicians, not the consultants, and not the algorithms. The voter is flooded with information they don't know whether it is real, processed or fabricated. Trust erodes, and the ability to hold a substantive political debate is falling apart.