Another interesting non-hypothetical example: many US states have so-called "blue alerts" which are used to send cell phone alerts whenever a police officer is attacked or injured. I used to live in Texas and blue alerts were a fairly frequent occurrence.

The stated justification for blue alerts is to warn the public of dangerous criminals. But they are only issued in response to attacks on cops, regardless of the level of danger to any other people. Also, at least in Texas, they're broadcast statewide. Texas is an awfully big state, and so the alerts are guaranteed to be irrelevant and non-actionable for the vast majority of people who receive them.

So it's fairly obvious to me that blue alerts are first and foremost a propaganda operation, aimed at perpetuating the stereotype that policing is a uniquely dangerous job. (It is indeed more dangerous than an average office job, but it has a much lower rate of fatal injuries than construction, or farming, or driving garbage trucks.)

My work sends out stupid alerts like that, for bad weather, for crimes reported near the campus, etc. I disabled all of it.