Aaron Erlich, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal, said it’s important to make people aware of misleading information online. But he said the wording in the CSIS campaign was “not the most straightforward” and appeared to be an attempt not just to educate but to invoke fear.

Erlich said clumsy messaging can backfire, and he would like to know if the messaging was tested at all to see how it would be received.

  • @Hegz@lemmy.ca
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    3710 months ago

    All of this, and they could have just started airing the house hippo commercial again…

        • 6fn
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          10 months ago

          Extraordinary claims being made? The source the video links to is breakthefake.ca. You can visit the source yourself and verify whether random internet comments describing the website are truthful and accurate.

          • 6fn
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            610 months ago
            1. This new house hippo is “woke”

            2. The original house hippo is “not woke” (It appears exempt from “woke”, because the new hippo is not just “woke” but “super woke”)

            3. Using Bill Maher’s supplied definition, it follows that the remake is now promoting “race as the first and foremost thing people should always see everywhere” [compare the original and remake to confirm this]

            4. visible_confusion.png

            • @Grimpen@lemmy.ca
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              410 months ago

              I just watched The House Hippo 2.0 and I think it’s totally woke because…

              You know, I can’t even keep up with the “x and y is woke!!1!” crowd. I’ll have to do a frame by frame comparison. Maybe it’s some of the production crew or voice actors or something? Maybe the VFX were done by a “woke” company? I don’t know. I can’t be bothered.

  • @cygnus@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    Ah yes: DO YOU KYOSH SHHO IS BEHIYD IT? coupled with the matryoshka doll. Good old 1980s style xenophobia. Sure, Russia is behind a lot of disinfo, but come on.

    image

    • @dlpkl@lemmy.world
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      610 months ago

      It’s topical and I’m glad they’re being direct about it. Any more direct and it would have just been Putin’s face with a speech bubble. Unfortunate that the used Russian cultural themes but eh, it is what it is.

      • @grte@lemmy.ca
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        10 months ago

        The Soviet Union is dead and gone. What this makes me think is that our spy agency is headed by someone old and out of touch with what disinformation looks like these days. Some cold warrior who hasn’t taken in any new information in 30 years.

        [edit] I got kinda curious about this so I looked it up. The head of CSIS is David Vigneault.

        In his first public speech since he was appointed Director, he named Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Venezuela as “countries of concern”

        Do you sense a theme? No Iran? No Saudi Arabia? They threatened us with our own 9/11.

        Tell me this guy doesn’t seem like he’s living in 1950.

    • @stepan@lemmy.ca
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      310 months ago

      Yeah I agree for sure.

      It is possible to have a nuanced view here, to recognize that a) Putin is comitting several war crimes in ukraine and b) that governments are taking advantage of the war to justify a hyper-militaristic , hawkish foreign policy as well as mild xenophobia.

      Unfortunately whenever you point out part b) , people assume youre some kind of putin sympathizer

      its absurd how black and white peoples brains can turn into during wartime

    • @SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      110 months ago

      Many of the people that Russia is targeting with their disinformation are the same people that were worried about Russians in the 80s.

      Don’t know if this will work, it’s possible nothing can get through to them. But for the simpletons that are susceptible to disinformation you really need to dumb things down for them.

      RUSSIA DO BAD THING ON INTERNET. DON’T TRUST INTERNET.

      Maybe a couple of neurons will fire and they might question things they see on the internet a little. Sometimes.

      Probably not, but it’s worth a shot.

      • @SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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        110 months ago

        Russian disinformation appeals to the older crowd, while Chinese disinformation appeals to the younger crowd what with TikTok and all.

        So the Chinese version would be very different as it would be targeted at a different demographic. May not even be an ad campaign at all, could just come in the form of blocking TikTok. Though it could just be in the form of regulating TikTok in some way, there is now precedent for regulating social media.

        Outside of TikTok, Chinese disinformation is kinda amateur hour at the moment. I mean just look at hexbear LOL. You think that bullshit is convincing anyone of anything? They lack the sophistication the Russians have developed in the last decade and a half. They seem to go for quantity over quality and that’s not at all effective.

        Though they have been a little more successful in simply discouraging discussion on how shitty the CCP is. But that’s more a censorship thing than a disinformation thing. How do you do an ad campaign on that? “Don’t not believe the things you didn’t hear about China.” Doesn’t make a lot of sense.

  • @CanadaPlus
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    610 months ago

    Wow, these almost have the feel of old war propaganda posters.

  • AutoTL;DRB
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    410 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Canada’s spy agency is leaning on Soviet imagery to help prime the public against disinformation, but experts say Moscow is more likely to use images that make readers think the messaging is coming from North American sources.

    Last month, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) started posting on social media about its efforts to counteract deliberately misleading information online.

    The agency said that government and non-government actors exploit open democracies like Canada, particularly since the internet allows them to amplify messages that “interfere in healthy debate” and undermine confidence in institutions.

    RRM Canada reports from early this year, which were obtained by The Canadian Press through the Access to Information Act, identify sites that are not overtly tied to the Russian state but are closely aligned with Kremlin narratives.

    The analysis also notes that these sites try to undermine the decision made by Western countries to send military aid to Ukraine by arguing it comes at the expense of domestic programs.

    It is difficult to know what sort of effect such narratives in cyberspace might have on a reader, because much depends on variables such as the person’s world view, said Tim Blackmore, a professor in the faculty of information and media studies at Western University in London, Ont.


    The original article contains 678 words, the summary contains 208 words. Saved 69%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!