Platforms exploit users’ natural empathy as a channel for behavioral tuning
Evidence
Empathy is considered essential to social bonding and emotional attachment, but it can also trigger “vicarious anxiety” for victims or others who are genuinely distressed. Some psychologists have called empathy a “risky strength” because it predisposes us to experience others’ happiness but also their pain. The successful tuning evident in both Facebook experiments is the result of the effective exploitation of the natural empathy present in its population of users. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 946
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: The claim that surveillance capital weaponizes a prosocial disposition (empathy) as its tuning channel — the manipulation runs through the very trait that makes people human and morally good — is a genuinely counterintuitive inversion worth sitting with.
- XREF: connects to: Social media instruments natural empathy to modify behavior for others’ benefit — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1489; Surveillance platforms weaponize empathy and belonging to herd behavior commercially — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1492; The same emotional tactic succeeds or fails depending on audience empathy — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice: How to Communicate…, 248 (+6 more)
Broader Connections
- Social media instruments natural empathy to modify behavior for others’ benefit
#corroborates(0.90) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1489 - Surveillance platforms weaponize empathy and belonging to herd behavior commercially
#corroborates(0.88) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1492 - Headphone listening increases agreement with and empathy for narrators
#exemplifies(0.75) — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 1689 - The same emotional tactic succeeds or fails depending on audience empathy
#qualifies(0.72) — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 248