This is a first hand "Junior Reporter" submission, happened just now (to me at least) and I'm not entirely sure of the nature of it but I feel it's worth mentioning what I know of it.
As a bit of scene-setting, I've got a couple of IdleGames on my device here, to which I never PayToPlay but will support them by watching the occasional ads[1]. Not too much, but enough to make the Dev concerned, and myself, benefit a little from the experience. I would hope.
Occasionally they're videos, rather than trailers (or Youtube video trailers), which I pay much less attention to (down from an already low baseline) and tend to just wait for the "Reward granted" stage. And the one I just had seemed to be this.
The framing of the video was Branded with "The Sun" newspaper banner graphic (English right-leaning tabloid) but also with a URL that looked to be an Airport Parking company. Making me definitely think that there was a bit of false-sourcing by the submitting party. Doubt that The Sun has any knowledge of it, and the parking company site (which wasn't intentionally revealed as possible click-through destination?) probably subverted.
The video itself was clearly composed of drone-shot aerial footage and had insignia (some wolf-type thing across some sort of heraldic design, with a scrolled motto upon it that was latin-looking but indistinct at the downsampled resolution I was viewing at) as if of whatever actual/intermediate outlet initially distributed the video (or not!). Various other HUD-like details were dotted around that might have been on the raw footage as piloting/status navdata, but nothing really clear to me to know what it means or if it might also be post-raw overlay.
(Though before that it started with a compilation of what seemed to be those military vehicles 'hidden' at that shopping centre in Ukraine that was struck by Russia in the first week of two of their campaign, as the 'justification' for what (at that time) was a shocking military attack on civilian infrastructure. I presume, then, that this is justification for the footage that follows.)
The view seems to be of a farm, typical dense grouping of modern steel-shuttered barns and other buildings, green crop-filled fields abutting the plot, etc. And what happens is that various parts of the scene are digitally zoomed in upon and highlighted with semiopaque overlays (prior to anything happening, but post-processing can 'anticipate' what actually happens amazingly accurately, so I'm not falling for the implied videogame accuracy/cause-and-effect) before bits of barn are punctured with small explosions.
I'm no expert in explosions, but they weren't exactly bunker-busters. Not that I'd choose to be in the vicinity, at all, but I imagine I could have been able to be in the barns and... not being much under the hit bit and having a handy hay-bale to absorb schrapnel... the worst effects to me could be noise/shockwave-induced injuries. One shot invokes a larger bit of roiling flame out into the air (diesel tank hit?) but only through its own puncture-hole, so again the area of immediate effect is sub-barn in scale, not exactly Demolition Man. (Possibly that bale might become less advantageous if there's burning spatter, etc...)
The video itself... Meh. UK news has seen more drastic farm-striking attacks (hitting fertiliser silos, etc). What interested me (beyond the minimal voyeurism, just enough to compile this loose description) is of this clear shot at "Information War" drop directly upon me.
I'm purely guessing, from the total themes and contents of the production, that it's a pro-Russian propogandising effort. A well-crafted thing, let down by a sloppy (and/or vague) distribution. Possibly I could even search for and find the whole original, complete with sound, subtitles, written notes and viewer feedback (positive and negative). With some time, I could even properly geolocate it (or at least show that any claimed location/timestamp is wrong, if a dishonest claim is made on the 'master' release-copy). I might be slightly wrong and it's actually a pro-Ukraine piece, but the apparent focus of the piece (that this farm has Ukrainean units hiding in it, "like the cowards they are", and that's why it is suffering 'precision' bombardment) points otherwise. Regardless, it's very much not found a receptive audience. I'm interested enough to thought-analyse the whole thing, and to extemporise that process here in this thread, but it leaves me unswayed in any significant way.
And that someone is clearly trying to sway some opinions, some way or other, isn't a surprise. I know that is happening. It's just that it's the closest to home that it has personally (or at least far more individually, albeit clearly scattergunned) applied to me.
And one more person's farm has been bombarded, regardless of circumstances, regardless of the end-effect. This (very much) sanitised/cleared-for-broadcast (not going to flash the red warning lights at the more visceral level) doesn't, that I saw, show any actual harms to those who inhabit the property (or even any alleged 'guests'), and with or without the ad-broadcast it will have undoubtedly happened anyway, but it of course makes it more real to me. Perhaps not even for the reasons intended by those involved in putting it in front of my eyes.
But it's a thing, and a minute or so of playback has made me write how many paragraphs? Never mind, I'm done now. Unless it flashes across my ad-feed again, or I'm otherwise prompted, I'll now think no more of it having now reported my experience. There are far larger concerns of which I'm more worried. Almost the opposite of the typical "but many incidents just becomes statistics" dismissal....
[1] Not very targetted. At one point I was getting a lot of repeated Christian Dating Apps and Islamic Dating Apps presented to me... Other islamic-script stuff, too, maybe some hindu, oh and Chinese TikTik. Even when they get that I'm definitely British, a number of times I've seen Car Dealerships in Kent and Civil Service opportunities in the (English) midlands, reassuring me that the Algorithm really doesn't know very much about me. So I probably get a lot of "unclassifiable wildcard" or blanket-coverage ads, in my own personal sample. Which might have been the only reason I got the one described above.
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Topic: News Update War in Ukraine - Junior Reporter Edition (Read 66864 times)