Audience Capture
Audience Capture is a self-reinforcing feedback loop that involves telling one's audience what they want to hear and getting rewarded for it. Eric originally introduced this concept in an article published in May 8, 2018 at the New York Times by Bari Weiss, titled Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web.
I may have introduced the concept of Audience Capture, because I've been worrying about the same thing from the beginning. You know, I think I've counseled many people that you have to put poisonous tweets for the people who follow you, who you wish would not follow you, you know, you have to make sure in some sense, that they understand that you're not there to flatter them.
Eric Weinstein on Rebel Wisdom @ 10 min
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I try to keep an open mind w/ those who disagree w/ me. But any chance I get to shed followers w/ incurable hate in their hearts is welcome.
I periodically intentionally shed clusters of followers to avoid what I years ago termed âAudience Captureâ by tweeting fair points that I know unreasonable people will not abide. Whoever is left is usually fair minded.
Iâm now worried Iâm losing followers due to a purge though.
True. But always *actively* try to lose your weak followers. âAudience Captureâ is a killer.
âUnfollowed!â can often be your favorite Tweet. We all have our stupid phases & disagreements, and you donât want those who punk on you if their needs arenât continuously met/flattered.
The best way to get followers is to not care about losing followers.
You may be undervaluing how devious it can be. Indulge me.
You can ensure, for example; that ideological critics see 100%. They then ridicule the idea of censorship because they do in fact see all tweets!
When I pushed âAudienceCaptureâ I erred. âFeedbackCaptureâ is the issue.
@MaajidNawaz @elonmusk
I never see Maajids tweets unless I look for them. The censorship has been in your face obvious!
Audience Capture is merely a specific case of the more general concept of Feedback Capture. A platform can confuse & gaslight a target. Or a dedicated harassment community can repeatedly paint a target on an individual. Or you can hire a farm of bots to confuse a target/audience.
Conversely, Feedback Capture works to target an audience of an individual who sees the same FUD vocabulary used repeatedly using the previously strategies. The point is that you use black box algos, anonymous accounts, perseveration, FUD, to manipulate BOTH individual & audience.
This is basically the idea of Iago from Othello. When I have warned you always to âlook for Iagoâ, the underlying concept is Feedback Capture. Othello actually becomes a different human via alienation of affections. Is Othello a good person? Hard to say. He is Iago-programmed.
Lastly this can easily be done in a surgical/bespoke fashion. Friends no longer know when a friend is in trouble. Or 10,000 accounts may find the exact same obvious misinterpretation. With Feedback capture you never know what is happening. Itâs one of the biggest threats today.
Why? Because targeted manipulated feedback creates its own reality. It may start off as bullshit, but it becomes real via Kayfabrication. Oddly I covered this years ago! Just didnât see it as a big threat so didnât break it out.
A huge blunder on my part: https://edge.org/response-detail/11783
@cvaldary Sure. I have been pretty active in emphasizing the following;
GIN
Kayfabe
Russell Conjugation
DISC
E.G.O.
Preference Falsification
Audience Capture
My Four Quadrant Model
Anthropic Capitalism
IDW
There are a lot. Some as with the above are due to others.
Related ConceptsEdit
Additional ResourcesEdit
- Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web Published on May 8, 2018 on The New York Times
- Making Sense with Sam Harris #229 ~08:50