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Comment by j0ba | Hacker News Reader

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!

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.

> 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

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