Digital Rights Weekly Update: 17 - 23 July 2026

Policy Insight:

Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming one of the defining forces shaping today’s information environment, but its impact depends on who controls it and for what purpose. This week’s developments reveal both the promise and the peril of these technologies. AI is being deployed to manipulate public opinion through coordinated influence campaigns, yet it is also empowering young Palestinians in Gaza to tell their own stories, overcome silencing, and reach global audiences in new ways. At the same time, 7amleh’s latest research demonstrates that digital harms extend beyond content moderation. Our study on TikTok shows how platform algorithms can amplify violence by rewarding and normalizing organized crime content among Palestinian citizens of Israel, compounding longstanding structural failures to address this crisis. Technology is never neutral. The design of algorithms, the incentives they create, and the choices platforms make all shape whose voices are amplified, whose harms are ignored, and whose realities become normalized. 

News Digest

New 7amleh Study Examines the Role of TikTok’s Algorithms in Reproducing Organized Crime Culture within Palestinian Society in Israel

7amleh

July 20, 2026, 7amleh - The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media has launched a new study titled "Algorithms of Violence: Analysis of Behaviors, Representations, and Implications of Organized Crime on TikTok among Palestinian Society in Israel." The study examines the relationship between the prevalence of organized crime and the increasing presence of criminal actors on TikTok, and explores the implications of this phenomenon for young people and Palestinian society in Israel. The study concludes that, beyond serving as a platform for entertainment and content sharing, TikTok has, in many cases, become a space exploited by organized crime networks to reproduce violence, construct criminal identities, display power and influence, and communicate with audiences. These practices contribute to the normalization of criminal behavior and strengthen its presence within the digital space. The research employed a mixed-methodology approach combining interviews with criminologists and digital media specialists, a focus group with professionals working with youth, and an AI-powered model developed by 7amleh to analyze videos, images, and text, and detect violence-related content across digital platforms. The model was applied to a sample of crime-related content published on TikTok.

AI agent went rogue and hacked startup by itself, OpenAI reveals

The Guardian

OpenAI has revealed that an autonomous AI agent powered by its technology went rogue during a test, accessed the open web and hacked a prominent startup by itself in an “unprecedented incident”. The company behind ChatGPT said the startup Hugging Face had detected and contained the agent – an AI tool designed to carry out tasks without human assistance – which had entered its systems. “We consider this incident to be an unprecedented cyber-incident, involving state-of-the-art cyber capabilities,” OpenAI said. The company said it expected this type of incident to become more commonplace as models – the technology that underpins AI tools such as chatbots and agents – become more capable. OpenAI said the hack occurred via an agent powered by a combination of its latest publicly available model, called GPT-5.6 Sol, and an even more capable model that was yet to be released. The company said it expected this type of incident to become more commonplace as models – the technology that underpins AI tools such as chatbots and agents – become more capable. OpenAI said the hack occurred via an agent powered by a combination of its latest publicly available model, called GPT-5.6 Sol, and an even more capable model that was yet to be released.

Israel floods US phones with AI messages in campaign to manipulate public opinion

Middle East Monitor

Israel is using AI-generated text messages, conservative media and online influencers in an expanding campaign to stem the collapse in US public support, according to an investigation by The Wall Street Journal. The effort reaches from millions of Americans having their mobile phones flooded with pro-Israel content, evangelical churches to university campuses, social-media feeds and even the online material used by AI chatbots. According to the Journal, the Israeli government has retained at least six firms to conduct influence operations in the US, while around three dozen marketing and communications professionals have registered as foreign agents working on its behalf. The campaign comes amid growing American opposition to Israel following its genocide in Gaza and war with Iran. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in March found that 60 per cent of US adults held an unfavourable view of Israel, compared with 42 per cent in 2022. The campaign involves millions of AI-assisted text messages sent to American mobile phones. To pass of as a real campaign, senders are said to identify themselves as Emma, Sarah or John and claim to represent an organisation called Friends for Peace. They begin by asking recipients for their views about Israel, Iran or the US-Israel relationship before directing the conversation towards arguments supporting Israel.

Palestine’s Gen Z Speaks Out

Middle East Policy Council

Data from their survey of 402 members of Generation Z indicate that understanding Palestinian politics increasingly requires attention to digital arenas, where this cohort is engaging in political participation through information sharing, advocacy, and narrative competition rather than conventional political channels. The authors argue that policymakers and civil society should strengthen the digital resilience of Palestinian online activism by improving platform transparency and preserving online content. They also call for greater investment in digital literacy, fact checking, and online security, while encouraging youth-led digital initiatives that facilitate political dialogue and transnational engagement. In a second new Middle East Policy analysis, Mert Öztürk and Oqab Jabali agree that we should not see these young adults as apathetic but as concerned about repression against protesters, as well as emotionally exhausted from the Gaza war and engaging in low-risk forms of engagement. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with students from six Palestinian universities, the study examines how structural, psychological, and political constraints have shaped young people’s decisions about activism in the face of the Israeli onslaught.