This article is itself propaganda, of course, being from a pro-cryptocurrency "news" site. It's a little tricky to establish corroboration of the claims as all other sources are in Polish.
> "usually, within a democracy, it is illegal for state actors or contractors to engage in propaganda directed at their own citizens."
This isn't true, or at least I'm not aware of places where it is; this would make it very hard to do "public information" advertising.
I wish it were more true. Commuting between Hayward and San Francisco, I got to see lots and lots of advertising, mostly government propaganda. It fell into two categories:
1. "Instead of killing yourself, why not call a suicide hotline?" I guess BART tracks see elevated levels of suicide. I don't really have much of a problem with this one.
2. "If you let your infant sleep in the bed with you, you are a bad parent." I have a problem with this. What a disgusting thing for the government to be doing.
>What a disgusting thing for the government to be doing.
There is a significant association between bed-sharing and infant death. An adult bed presents far more hazards of entrapment, suffocation and strangulation than a properly-designed crib or bassinet. I haven't seen the advert in question and can't comment on how accurately it conveys the evidence, but I think that it's absolutely right to strongly warn parents about the risks of bed-sharing.
If you think that it's disgusting for a government agency to try and save the lives of babies, that's your prerogative.
The second message was, IIRC, motivated by a statistic showing several cases of parents inadvertently smothering their infant children when rolling onto them while asleep.
Now I have no idea if the number of cases was statistically meaningful enough to warrant action, compared to other public health risks. But I can sort of see why someone would be motivated to "do something", considering how devastating something like that must be, even compared to other accidental deaths of infants.
> "usually, within a democracy, it is illegal for state actors or contractors to engage in propaganda directed at their own citizens."
This isn't true, or at least I'm not aware of places where it is; this would make it very hard to do "public information" advertising.