Researchers say the campaign likely originated in Israel. They have not established who commissioned it, and their exposure figure does not count individual viewers.
An investigation into a covert online influence operation recorded more than 154 million exposures for material targeting Britain between 2024 and 2026. Researchers Marc Owen Jones and Sohan Dsouza found that the campaign used paid advertising and videos to portray Muslims, migrants and Qatar as threats. The UK had the largest recorded exposure total of any country in their dataset.
The findings were published in the October report Manufacturing the Great Replacement and examined in a November article by Jones in The Nerve. A post by Filasteeni has since brought renewed attention to the UK figures.
What 154 million exposures means
The figure combines different measures: how often ads were displayed, the reach figures reported by platforms, and public video views. Repeat viewing can count more than once. For YouTube, the researchers attributed views to the country the material targeted because public view totals do not identify where the viewers were. The total gives a sense of scale, but it cannot tell us how many people in Britain saw the content.
How the campaign targeted Britain
The Nerve reported that one set of Facebook ads used the Princess of Wales’s image before the emir of Qatar’s 2024 state visit, urging her to reconsider meeting him. The researchers also found UK advertising in the months before the 2024 general election was called. Their findings document when and where the material was targeted; they do not establish its effect on voting or on the unrest that followed the Southport murders.
What investigators traced to Israel
Jones and Dsouza assessed with moderate to high confidence that the operation originated in Israel. They cited Hebrew labels in video production files and an Israeli internet address that appeared during a Wikipedia editing session they linked to the network. Advertising was placed through intermediaries in several countries, and the researchers did not identify the ultimate client. The findings do not establish that the Israeli government ordered or funded the campaign.
Why ad transparency matters
The report found that nearly all the material escaped classification as political or social-issue advertising. That meant the additional transparency requirements Meta applies to those ads did not cover most of the campaign. Meta told The National, in comments reported by Anadolu, that it works to disrupt coordinated inauthentic activity and that its rules prohibit hateful conduct.
What this means for the UK
A person scrolling past a sponsored video may have little way to tell whether it comes from a local campaign or from an operation using intermediaries abroad. The report makes the case for clearer payer information and better records that researchers and the public can inspect after an ad is removed. Those changes would make it easier to assess future claims about who paid for a message and how widely it circulated.
Sources
Marc Owen Jones and Sohan Dsouza — Original investigation and methodology
The Nerve — UK advertising and evidence of the campaign’s origins
Anadolu — Coverage of the investigation and Meta’s reported response
Filasteeni — Instagram post highlighting the UK findings
