Why Russian Propaganda Works – and How to Stop Falling for It
The article discusses the effectiveness of Russian propaganda and its impact on public perception. It argues that modern propaganda aims to create confusion rather than persuade, leading to moral paralysis among individuals. Social media plays a significant role in amplifying these narratives, making it challenging for people to discern truth from misinformation.
- ▪Russian propaganda is designed to create doubt about the existence of truth rather than to persuade individuals of a specific narrative.
- ▪Social media algorithms favor emotionally charged content, which often leads to the spread of misinformation.
- ▪The article emphasizes that being educated in one field does not guarantee expertise in another, particularly regarding complex geopolitical issues.
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Record
| Original publisher | Hacker News (Newest) |
| Canonical URL | https://economicsofpower.substack.com/p/why-russian-propaganda-works-and |
| Publication time | Sat, 23 May 2026 02:38:33 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-23T03:07:24.414Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-23T03:07:24.414Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | 2gHbShX0HyCq |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Why Russian Propaganda Works – And How to Stop Falling For ItRoman SheremetaMay 22, 2026823ShareOne of the biggest mistakes people make about propaganda is assuming it only works on uneducated or unintelligent people.That is simply false.Some of the smartest people I know repeat Kremlin narratives almost word for word. Not because they are evil. Not because they are Russian agents. And often not even because they consciously support Putin.They fall for it because modern propaganda is not designed to convince you that something is true. It is designed to make you doubt that truth exists at all.The Goal Is Not Persuasion. The Goal Is Confusion.Russian propaganda does not try to convince you of one clear story.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Hacker News (Newest).
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