Plus: Delta explains high prices; PlayDoh’s plan to attract adult women.
Let’s start with one basic fact: Americans don’t like data centers.
The powerhouses fueling the AI boom aren’t popular. A Gallup poll found that 71% of Americans don’t want a data center built near them. For comparison, only 53% opposed a nuclear power plant being built.
So, while anti-data center sentiment is very real in the United States, foreign actors are jumping on that feeling to exacerbate the already existing fissures in society, according to a New York Times report. Unsurprisingly, AI is being used as a prime distributor of discontent and disinformation.
Among the examples the paper found: A comic strip posing as a Maryland newspaper that was actually made with ChatGPT in China; a video made by a Russian propaganda arm attacking an American-run data center in Armenia.
“Data centers are likely the ideal topic for engagement-maximizing operators,” said McKenzie Sadeghi, a principal analyst at Alethea. “It is locally salient in all 50 states, fresh, and it maps onto pre-existing anti-China, anti-tax, ‘selling America’ grievance.”
Why it matters: It’s become incredibly easy to scale inauthentic attacks — even if the sentiment behind it is real.
For instance, some operators out of Bangladesh have created Facebook groups targeting all 50 states, interspersing “relatable” content about living in the state with anti-AI sentiment. In other words, pinpointing specific audiences is getting easier and easier, even if the foreign operators couldn’t find these communities on a map.
Communicators are often the first line of defense for identifying and responding to coordinated attacks. Admittedly, it’s getting harder and harder to identify what’s a real push and what’s organic sentiment. And the two are sometimes intertwined.
Use tools wisely. Look carefully. Work with social media companies to try to get inauthentic content taken down. And remember that just because an idea has a propaganda push behind it, it doesn’t mean you can ignore the underlying issue. Quite the opposite.
How is Delta explaining why ticket prices aren’t going down as fuel dips?
Airlines’ prices skyrocketed amid turmoil in the Strait of Hormuz. Now that the situation has somewhat stabilized and gas prices have decreased, ticket prices are staying high.
Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta, explained why in simple economics terms: “Airfares are a function of supply and demand,” Bastian told CNBC. “The demand set is really strong.”
While some Americans are feeling the pinch of higher gas prices and overall inflation, Bastian went on to explain that Delta’s core customer is “financially very healthy, (with a) tremendous amount of wealth accumulation.”
While Bastian’s comments might alienate some, he understands who his core customer is: either leisure or business travelers with a higher worth. Delta is not a budget airline and is not positioned as such. Bastian is reinforcing that stance. And while demand is high now, it could decrease — and having higher prices can serve as a lever to increase interest later.
Why is Hasbro targeting adults with Blooms?
You know how half the Legos you see these days are 10,000-piece behemoths targeting pop culture from the ‘80s that would make a 2020s kid’s head explode?
Hasbro wants a piece of that pie.
The toymaker is seeking to turn Play-Doh into an adult-friendly product. It’s tried before and failed — but this time, it’s ensuring that every part of the experience, from marketing to packaging, feels adult-friendly. Specifically, for women looking to de-stress by making flowers out of air-dry clay that they can display in their homes. The product is called Blooms.
“If we market this as a traditional Play-Doh toy,” Hasbro Chief Marketing Officer Jason Bunge told his team, “we will fail.”
The PR push is similarly grown up, targeting influencers niched in pottery, flower arranging, art and more. There’s even a full-day crafting event at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Hasbro is learning from its mistakes and leaning into the modern media ecosystem, noting it’s substantially disinvested from the paid media ecosystem. And those flowers do look awfully pretty to this Millennial woman with limited artistic skills.
Why does Europe say Facebook and Instagram are addictive?
The Meta social media apps are facing another setback as the EU determined its apps were engineered to be addictive. The Commission criticized a number of features of the apps that have become standard over the years, including infinite scroll, push alerts and algorithmically driven recommendations. The findings also said that Meta had ignored evidence of minors overusing social media at night.
“We disagree with these preliminary findings, which don’t accurately take into account the significant steps we’ve taken to protect teens,” Meta responded.
This is a preliminary report, but if confirmed, Meta faces big fines and pressure to continue to change features seen as addictive and harmful to youth.
Meta says it has taken several key steps to protect kids on the platform, but is it enough? And can social platforms continue to hold such social dominance without the subtle tugs to get you to keep scrolling … and scrolling … and scrolling?
We’re at an inflection point for the future of social media, especially with kids. While social media is the dominant player on the field for now, and it feels impossible that it will go away, we once thought the same about radio and newspapers. It may be time to start looking at what’s next.
Allison Carter is editorial director of PR Daily and Ragan.com. Follow her on LinkedIn.
The post The Scoop: The secret propaganda push capitalizing on anti-data center sentiment appeared first on PR Daily.
