Startup Nation United
Social Media for Israel: Tackling misinformation in Israel's online battle
Zach Bamberger and Nir Regev created a community of volunteers combating misinformation and ensuring pro-Israel content remains accessible to a global audience.
Zach Bamberger was in Vietnam on his first vacation in two years when the news of the devastating attacks in Southern Israel reached him and his partner.
His story is part of Startup Nation United, a series showcasing how individuals and organizations in the tech industry have united under a common vision to do their part during the ongoing war. The podcast is produced and moderated by Michael Matias and Yaffa Abadi, in collaboration with CTech, as a spin-off of the popular podcast series “20 Minutes Leaders”, also published in collaboration with CTech.
Like all of us, they were glued to their phones in disbelief and checking frantically on their families. However, even before booking the first flight back to Israel, Zach was channeling his emotions towards serving his country in her time of dire need.
Thus, his project, Social Media for Israel, was formed—a community of volunteers combating misinformation and ensuring pro-Israel content remains accessible to a global audience during this pivotal juncture in the court of public perception. It is yet another crucial battle we are fighting online while our soldiers fight on the front lines.
An American-Israeli with a background in natural language processing, Zach worked at Google in California before pursuing his Master's degree and Ph.D. at the Technion under the supervision of Dr. Yonatan Belinkov. With his background and skills, he immediately began to write code for a tool to eloquently translate potentially viral content from Hebrew or Arabic to English. The goal was to broaden the reach of the most impactful posts that lost their meaning when automatically translated.
From there, it quickly developed into a dedicated group of 120 volunteers including research leaders with MScs and experience at notable institutions such as IBM, Stanford Google, Meta, and Microsoft.
Though the backgrounds of these volunteers are impressive, the speed at which their team launched their platform could make your head spin.
Led by Zach and Nir Regev, who in Zach’s words “is basically leading everything that has to do with building our platform. Frontend, backend, \[and\] scraping,” their internal translation tool was up and running within a day, utilizing a combination of language models. The feature to report anti-Israel content was completed just a day later.
With each passing day, the versions of their platform evolve and improve. At present, their platform enables the reporting of posts that are either pro or anti-Israel. They are actively working on gathering data to enhance the quality of translation and phrasing, ensuring that no meaning is lost along the way.
How did they manage the lightning speed?
Zach explains, “When you're able to express both your passion for an area of interest and at the same time, fight for something that you really care about and is central to your identity…you’re very motivated.”
What remains is a team of experts in their respective fields, wholeheartedly dedicated to the mission of safeguarding their families and neighbors in the country they consider home.
When questioned about the impact he and his exceptional volunteers aim to achieve during this challenging period, Zach is unequivocal.
“I would like to know that I did what I could to defend my country's reputation. I don't agree with Bibi’s extremist government, but I side with the country. I don't want Israel to be known as a country that is brutal in its responses, even though innocent people do die. I think that people should recognize Israelis as reasonable people, people that want peace.
And in this case, we're forced into conflict. And we're doing our very best to minimize the loss of civilian life. It's tragic on both ends. So if there's anything that we can achieve as an organization, it's to portray that point effectively and combat misinformation that attacks that perspective.”
It’s a project whose life will outlive the war, a testimony to the way each one of us can play our role in serving our country, and a symbol of hope during this painful time.
About:
Yaffa Abadi is the founder and CEO of Abadi Brands, a boutique consultancy specializing in personal branding and thought leadership for investors.
Michael Matias, Forbes 30 Under 30, is the CEO of Clarity, a startup that preserves trust in digital media by fighting deepfakes, and an active angel investor in the AI and Cyber domain.
