How I Became Audience CAPTURED

YouTube Lies About This

Jonathan Pie on Heretics

We’re in Trouble

A lot has been made over the years about how the internet has cast us into bubbles of audience capture. The result is a confusing, polarised mess. It was hard enough arguing across ideological lines, but now we fight armed with entirely different sets of facts because of what X, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube are showing us.

Whenever I discuss Israel, gender, Islam, or grooming gangs with people I consider part of the liberal elite, I’m struck by how unprepared they are. They’ve often never considered, for example, that someone might ask them: “What is a woman?” Or why it doesn’t concern them that 53% of British Muslims say they’d vote to outlaw homosexuality. This line of thinking doesn’t exist in their silo.

It makes me wonder what I’m missing. What are the blind spots in my bubble?

In my adversaries’ online worlds, they’re watching what they believe to be endless atrocities committed by Israelis—many involving viral videos that claim to show Israeli soldiers raping male Palestinian captives. These clips surface almost daily.

And yet, nobody on the anti-woke side sees them. Equally, nobody on the left questions whether they’re real (they’re not). These videos are basically a homophobic Islamist’s wet dream of the Sodomite West.

My Own Capture

You might have noticed I’ve been branching out on Heretics. I’ve wanted to do this since day one, but booking progressive or mainstream guests was impossible. Now, with nearly 500,000 subscribers, it’s a little easier (though still incredibly difficult) to attract voices from across the aisle.

A row of Heretics episodes across the divide

I don’t expect Emily Maitlis or Owen Jones to come on anytime soon (though I’ll keep trying), but a few moderate left-wingers can help spice things up. Recently, I was joined by socially liberal LBC pundit Iain Dale and BBC satirist Jonathan Pie (Tom Walker).

It takes guts to appear on a show whose audience may be hostile to you, so I appreciate their willingness to engage. They were both excellent guests. Naturally, I disagreed with them, but that’s the whole point. It made for good, challenging content.

But the comments were overwhelmingly negative and angry. My audience is passionate, and I welcome their critiques. What disappoints me, though, is that YouTube doesn’t send those videos out to viewers on the other side. Perhaps it’s sadomasochistic, but after an honest debate, I’d like half the comments to be criticising me.

The numbers bear this out.

Forgetting Spotify and Apple, the average Heretics episode on YouTube gets around 150k-200k views in month one. Dale’s episode flatlined at around 95k. Despite his large audience, YouTube decided it was a dud rather than test it with his LBC fans. Pie’s interview is still fresh but slowing at around 120k. It might crawl to 200k in its first month. That’s modest, considering Pie has nearly a million subscribers.

Why aren’t they seeing this?

It would be a cheap shot to say, “Nobody in their right mind would support my adversaries.” The truth is that they have massive fan bases. I want those fans to watch. I want to test their convictions and possibly change minds.

But so far, all I hear from that side is crickets.

The Dark Truth About Audience Capture

YouTube, by far the dominant platform for independent video journalism, just isn’t set up for diversity of thought. It rewards videos that reaffirm what your audience already believes. Not a great system for a show called Heretics.

Even worse, YouTube denies this.

Todd Beaupré, the man behind YouTube’s algorithm, claimed:

“The algorithm for Discovery is focused more on individual videos.”

This is simply untrue.

Here’s how YouTube actually works:

When you’re starting out with, say, 100 subscribers, you really can grow in any direction. I’ve launched four successful YouTube channels and found this early stage to be the most exciting.

When you upload a video at that stage, it’s shown to all 100 subscribers. If the video is well presented, 90% of them might watch. That kind of engagement tells the algorithm, “This video is hot.” YouTube will then push it to new audiences: people who have never heard of you. The video goes viral.

That’s how some of my earliest videos outperformed what I’m releasing today.

A snapshot of my early episodes & their view counts

But here’s where things go dark:

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