Accurate reporting of Russia's cyber activities is not propaganda.

According to Mr Bernays who wrote the book Propaganda. The best kind of propaganda is true. It’s not only propaganda when it’s nefarious or pernicious. Effective military cyber capability is an excellent example.

I have not read this book; based on the author’s definitions, what additional conditions are required for accurate reporting by media outlets of foreign cyber attacks against our nation to be considered propaganda?

It's interesting that you focused on this particular aspect of my message and replied with an assertion that rests on a whole stack of shaky assumptions. One, that I was talking about reporting of Russia's cyber activities. Two, that the reporting of such activities is generally accurate. Three, that accurate reporting cannot serve propaganda purposes. Such comments derail discussions, and it did exactly that here.

My point was that there is a logical discrepancy in how most people process statement about privacy. When presented with a specific example of an "outgroup" violating their privacy, there is quick condemnation and outrage. When presented with an example of an "ingroup" doing the same, people usually respond with some non sequitur like "I have nothing to hide". However, somehow, people mentally disconnect these two cases and see them as different. The reality is, they are profoundly connected. The simple fact is that after your private data has been collected and stored, you don't get to choose which group gets it.

I admit I honed in on a detail in your comment that is mostly unrelated to your actual argument - an argument I fullheartedly agree with would not typically want to distract or detract from. However, after spending probably an order of magnitude more time on work related to Russian cyber activity than time spent with friends or family lately, I sometimes have a kneejerk reaction to phrasing like this.

Regarding the assumptions you list:

1. Information regarding Russian activities in cyberspace is the most relevant category of "possible" anti-Russian propaganda related to the topic you bring up, and what I believe most people will imagine when reading the words "anti-Russian propaganda" in your comment, regardless of whether or not you had it in mind when writing them.

2. Do you have an example of reporting on this topic whose primary points have proven to be inaccurate, even if unintentionally? I would go as far to argue that the amount of realized and attempted damage caused by Russian cyber actors, and the audacity of some of the operations, would significantly reduce the need for entities pushing anti-Russian narratives to fabricate or twist facts.

3. There is a chance that, after arguing the semantics of the word propaganda, you could convince me that accurate reporting of facts regarding cyber attacks against our nation could be technically viewed as propaganda, based on some definition that doesn't include terms like "misleading" or a book on the topic that I have not read. However, I don't think that really matters here, because for the significant majority of people the term "propaganda" carries implications of incorrect or misleading information, and I believe the effects of these types of claim can do much more harm than a comment derailing a conversation, like mine.

Selective reporting of the truth is the best propaganda.

All reporting is selective

Exactly

If its done by the government or a government owned body it is by definition. That being said, Propublica is neither a government nor is it a government owned news agency. So its not propaganda.

Tho that's quite the overly specific, and dated, definition of "propaganda".

Public relations is a way more apt term for what's going on in modern times [0], and in the "cyber" manifestation of that field, private parties are recognized as the main contributors, and actors, for a number of nation states [1]

[0] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/17/influencers-ukraini...

[1] https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:cef7e8d9-27bf-4ea5-9fd6-85...

The creation of the term "Public Relations" is an example of skillful propaganda.

I am not "HN", just one human, one mind (more or less).

Communication is what we are doing here.

When you propagate a message to many people, then it's propaganda.

Once upon a time the word had no negative sense. Then it did, so they changed the job to PR.

Source?

Mainly because of Goebbels and co:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reich_Ministry_of_Public_Enl...

"At the time the German word ‘Propaganda’ was value neutral."

English "propaganda" sounds the same .. and therefore got the negative connotation as well.

This

During WWI [0], and even WWII plenty of countries would openly run propaganda ministries distributing government news.

Which most people considered legitimate news, as new information from afar was not very easy to come by back then.

After WWII a lot of Nazi crimes were blamed on the efficiency of "Goebbels propaganda", so the term became stigmatized. Which put people like Edward Bernays [1], who had been working in the propaganda business for decades and literally wrote the book on it, in a bit of pickle.

So he came up with the rebranding of "Public Relations", which is basically privatized propaganda. Turning it from something strictly governments do, to a service that can be bought by anyone with enough money.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsehood_in_War-Time

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

Thank you, this is thoughtful and considered. It took me a bit to understand exactly where it goes off kilter.

It's at "basically", namely "_basically_ privatized propaganda"

I see evidence someone did something that's defined as for the politics for the government during a war, then did similar work in private industry as not illuminating.

This is in fact expected. A quartermaster who now does logistics doesn't mean logistics is just a polite rebranding of supplying weapons

We also agree it is not evidence of a conscious rebranding of an entire field away from being named "propaganda" to "public relations"

If the government does it its propaganda. I don't see how that's dated. Unless you count misuse of the term as valid. People misuse propaganda to mean media describing a narrative they don't like all the time. But those people are wrong and shouldn't be encouraged.

Third parties working on behalf of a government to spread their message do count as Propaganda.

The difficult part is telling apart propaganda from organic content. People have this idea of propaganda being a bunch of communists making posters with slogans or something. But that is what's really dated. How do you know a group isn't being funded by a government or affiliated with them? Sometimes its easy to tell. Like with Russia Today. They have the veneer of a news outlet but they are state owned. But when a lot of people get their news from social media its impossible to know who is really on the other side.

Selective and misleading reporting of facts is probably both the most common and the most effective form of propaganda.

Most people would point out that “misleading” is the operative word here.

Reporting negatively on the Iraq war or blackwater or Facebook isn’t “anti American propaganda”.

Just because you are anti establishment doesn’t mean you should instinctively support the Russian establishment which is incidentally many times more horrific and out of control than the people you claim are spreading “propaganda”. (I’m guessing NGOs, charities like amnesty international or anyone who reports on the war crimes and crimes against humanity of the Russian government).

I guess the point of the parent comment is that the real issue is not whether this is a anti American or pro Russia thing, but that Google's privacy practices are bad. Any government/institution doing the same would be bad, but the discussion tends to focus on whoever the public enemy currently is.

> Reporting negatively on the Iraq war or blackwater or Facebook isn’t “anti American propaganda”.

Yes it is. Propaganda doesn't have to be untrue

>> Reporting negatively on the Iraq war or blackwater or Facebook isn’t “anti American propaganda”.

> Yes it is. Propaganda doesn't have to be untrue

This makes all negative reporting propaganda by definition, which is clearly untrue.

The implication in the parent comment is that “anti Russian” propaganda is warping the truth and the people have been brainwashed, the word propaganda isn’t being used to imply the issue is the opposite of “true”.

Propaganda is just something the powerful yell when the truth comes out. It's a exclamation not a description.

> Reporting negatively on the Iraq war or blackwater or Facebook isn’t “anti American propaganda”.

Even if it is RT that is doing it?

If you must take it with a grain of salt, you can usually find a grain of truth.

On the other hand, the only way to get meaningful privacy reform is to tie it to concrete examples that are easy to understand.

> The sad thing about news like this is that most people only pay attention at all because they've been bombarded with anti-Russian propaganda, not because this showcases Google's awful anti-privacy practices. Despite years of warnings, examples and analysis of where this can lead, the only thing that matters in the end is some emotional trigger word that makes the public think they are dealing with an "outgroup".

Please be more specific about who you're criticizing here. Presumably not ProPublica, as they've been reporting on Google privacy issues for 10+ years. I'm also not sure what you mean by "emotional trigger word" - this story is about illegal and unethical activity by a major corporation that stopped as a direct result of ProPublica's investigation. Who are these "most people" that care about this story but not any other privacy issue?

>some emotional trigger word that makes the public think they are dealing with an "outgroup".

What specifically are you referring to?

Isn't it obvious? Russia

So if I write an article about say the North Korean government stealing money, or murdering, I’m using an emotional trigger word and an “out group”?

Have you ever watched Russian domestic tv, which is incidentally 100% controlled by the government? You’d find a new appreciation for emotional triggers and out groups!

> So if I write an article about say the North Korean government stealing money, or murdering, I’m using an emotional trigger word and an “out group”?

Yes. "We are psychologically predisposed to view group X as terrible" and "group X is actually terrible in real life" are in no way contradictory. It's almost as if humans are products of natural selection, and our psychological instincts serve a useful purpose

I think the point made by the original comment is that Google has been doing this basically forever, and the privacy concerns are unrelated to the fact that a Russian Ad company took advantage of them. While a Russian Ad company doing this is bad, people are only paying attention to it now, because Russia being bad[er than usual] is part of the current socio-political environment, so the activity has a higher S/N.

> people are only paying attention to it now

But that isn't true.

Yeah, I wasn't trying to make a statement on whether that claim is true or not. If you're asking, I think it's true but only to a small degree and only with certain cohorts (those likely to be emotionally inflamed or attached to the Russia issue). This website has seen lots of Google privacy articles pushed to the front page and No. 1 for a long time now, so it seems suspect this phenomenon is that common here. I have no idea how true that is outside of this self-selected group. It's possible it's true to a much larger degree in the general public, who are either unaware or don't care about the other privacy issues Google is (becoming?) famous for.

It isn't true, almost everyone is concerned about privacy: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/11/15/americans-an...

I'm sorry I'm not accusing you specifically, it's just very aggravating to hear people proclaim how ignorant "the public" is and how only they are wise enough to understand the real issues.

Interesting, I'm happy that more people are having concerns about this. I suppose it should be obvious that they are, since Apple started using that as a differentiation wedge between themselves and other tech companies.

>Privacy is important precisely because after your data has been collected and stored, there is no telling where it will end up and what it will be used for.

This can't be overstated. It's like a hole in the wall that can't be patched.

I've lived most of my life expecting an Orwellian life. While it was grounded in paranoia, complete transparency is pretty much the only lowest-stress way to live when anyone can theoretically dox you over just about anything if the fashions pendulum swings hard enough in one direction.