Facebook is Now Aggressively Courting a New Partner: Churches (yahoo.com) 126
When the 150,000-member "megachurch" Hillsong opened a branch in Atlanta, its pastor Sam Collier says Facebook suggested using it to explore how churches can "go further farther on Facebook..." reports the New York Times:
He is partnering with Facebook, he said, "to directly impact and help churches navigate and reach the consumer better."
"Consumer isn't the right word," he said, correcting himself. "Reach the parishioner better."
Facebook's involvement with churches has been intense: For months Facebook developers met weekly with Hillsong and explored what the church would look like on Facebook and what apps they might create for financial giving, video capability or livestreaming. When it came time for Hillsong's grand opening in June, the church issued a news release saying it was "partnering with Facebook" and began streaming its services exclusively on the platform.
Beyond that, Mr. Collier could not share many specifics — he had signed a nondisclosure agreement...
"Together we are discovering what the future of the church could be on Facebook..."
[Facebook] has been cultivating partnerships with a wide range of faith communities over the past few years, from individual congregations to large denominations, like the Assemblies of God and the Church of God in Christ. Now, after the coronavirus pandemic pushed religious groups to explore new ways to operate, Facebook sees even greater strategic opportunity to draw highly engaged users onto its platform. The company aims to become the virtual home for religious community, and wants churches, mosques, synagogues and others to embed their religious life into its platform, from hosting worship services and socializing more casually to soliciting money. It is developing new products, including audio and prayer sharing, aimed at faith groups...
The partnerships reveal how Big Tech and religion are converging far beyond simply moving services to the internet. Facebook is shaping the future of religious experience itself, as it has done for political and social life... The collaborations raise not only practical questions, but also philosophical and moral ones... There are privacy worries too, as people share some of their most intimate life details with their spiritual communities. The potential for Facebook to gather valuable user information creates "enormous" concerns, said Sarah Lane Ritchie, a lecturer in theology and science at the University of Edinburgh...
"Corporations are not worried about moral codes," she said. "I don't think we know yet all the ways in which this marriage between Big Tech and the church will play out." Last month Facebook held a summit "which resembled a religious service," the Times reports, at which Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said churches were a natural fit for Facebook "because fundamentally both are about connection."
But the article also notes the 6-million member Church of God in Christ "received early access to several of Facebook's monetization features," testing paid subscriptions for exclusive church content, as well as real-time donations during services. But "Leaders decided against a third feature: advertisements during video streams."
"Consumer isn't the right word," he said, correcting himself. "Reach the parishioner better."
Facebook's involvement with churches has been intense: For months Facebook developers met weekly with Hillsong and explored what the church would look like on Facebook and what apps they might create for financial giving, video capability or livestreaming. When it came time for Hillsong's grand opening in June, the church issued a news release saying it was "partnering with Facebook" and began streaming its services exclusively on the platform.
Beyond that, Mr. Collier could not share many specifics — he had signed a nondisclosure agreement...
"Together we are discovering what the future of the church could be on Facebook..."
[Facebook] has been cultivating partnerships with a wide range of faith communities over the past few years, from individual congregations to large denominations, like the Assemblies of God and the Church of God in Christ. Now, after the coronavirus pandemic pushed religious groups to explore new ways to operate, Facebook sees even greater strategic opportunity to draw highly engaged users onto its platform. The company aims to become the virtual home for religious community, and wants churches, mosques, synagogues and others to embed their religious life into its platform, from hosting worship services and socializing more casually to soliciting money. It is developing new products, including audio and prayer sharing, aimed at faith groups...
The partnerships reveal how Big Tech and religion are converging far beyond simply moving services to the internet. Facebook is shaping the future of religious experience itself, as it has done for political and social life... The collaborations raise not only practical questions, but also philosophical and moral ones... There are privacy worries too, as people share some of their most intimate life details with their spiritual communities. The potential for Facebook to gather valuable user information creates "enormous" concerns, said Sarah Lane Ritchie, a lecturer in theology and science at the University of Edinburgh...
"Corporations are not worried about moral codes," she said. "I don't think we know yet all the ways in which this marriage between Big Tech and the church will play out." Last month Facebook held a summit "which resembled a religious service," the Times reports, at which Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said churches were a natural fit for Facebook "because fundamentally both are about connection."
But the article also notes the 6-million member Church of God in Christ "received early access to several of Facebook's monetization features," testing paid subscriptions for exclusive church content, as well as real-time donations during services. But "Leaders decided against a third feature: advertisements during video streams."
the church of Facebook pays no tax! (Score:1)
the church of Facebook pays no tax!
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Why should they pay a tax when they provide a valuable service? The service is the tax.
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Nice, they can write that off on their taxes.
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Re: the church of Facebook pays no tax! (Score:4, Insightful)
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why should 150,000 people each spend their money on another big screen TV or a smart fridge or whatever, when they could give it all to one person who can buy a yacht, or a mansion, or drugs and prostitutes, or maybe get into politics?
this is the power of teamwork! hucksters provide a useful service by concentrating the money of dumbfuck plebs.
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The day I can get a SEPARATE COMMUNITY whose only community standards are THE CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH I'll go back to facebook.
Until then, http://www.sp3rn.com/ [sp3rn.com] is good enough for me when it comes to church integration with social media.
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I'll check this out when I get home since I got security ssl errors here at work.
I'm hoping this is a real thing and not just sarcasm.
That said, the Church really needs to step up. It's saddening that the Church that used to send priests to take care of lepers, risk being fed to lions, etc, cowered so fully and shut it's doors during covid.
I still send my kiddo to Catholic school and know history enough to know we've had bad pope's before, but as someone that was born the year John Paul II became pope, thi
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YMMV- it's a rather orthodox community that you need to affirm your baptismal vows to join, and that the prompt for sharing is "Share something your Guardian Angel would be proud of".
In reality, it's devolving in the last week into a big gripe session about Pope Francis and the Traditional Latin Mass.
Re:I love when... (Score:5, Insightful)
"...they say the quiet part, out loud."
That slip made me smile too.
He is partnering with Facebook, he said, "to directly impact and help churches navigate and reach the consumer better."
"Consumer isn't the right word," he said, correcting himself. "Reach the parishioner better."
Re:I love when... (Score:5, Funny)
"Mark" would be far more accurate
Re:I love when... (Score:4, Informative)
No, "consumer" is perfect.
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If he's selling his parishioners to Facebook, they're the "product."
Robbing Peter... (Score:2)
They are robbing Peter, then banning Paul so they don't have to pay him.
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Private for profit, data mining and psychological manipulation corporation to partner with Private for profit, data mining and psychological manipulation Religion, to partner together to rip gullible schmucks off. Facebook to create one unified religion with the CEO as pope. All hail the high executives of Facebook.
As sick as fuck. You use Facebook, I don't want to know you, seriously, like eww as can be, there has to be limit and they crossed it. Promoting for profit religions that rip people off FOR PROF
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Let's play a game, how many people have been threatened, harassed, assaulted, killed, raped, kicked out of their homes, denied jobs, or otherwise became victims of criminal activity after leaving a religion? Once you've done that, do the same for tobacco.
Re: Or, different headline: (Score:1)
You know slavery pretty much dominated the US to harvest cash crops right...
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And that's relevant 150 years after the abolishment of slavery because...
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Seriously. So sick of the stupid "Wee, because slavery..." garbage.
Slavery was abolished a long time ago. Any slaves or slave owners from that part of America's history are dead.
NO REPARATIONS, none of this "you owe us" BS....
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I didn't say anyone was owed anything. I just pointed out the irony that an industry was part of the one of the worst parts of American history.
Re: Or, different headline: (Score:2)
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Americans probably think that the black slaves were sold to them by a white man in Africa.
Re: Or, different headline: (Score:2)
Slaves didn't build the pyramids. Egyptian farmers during the off season did.
Re: Or, different headline: (Score:2)
I am not sure I fully understand your point. This being said the religious?context of Egypt is interesting. At this point in history their is virtually no distinction between the elite of a religious class and this starting the foundation of modern science.
This again seems to be part of the irony. Those who would gladly attack modern religious practioncers probably know nothing of math history or that it was the leisurely priestly class of Egypt which started building decent foundation for mathematics, espe
Re: Or, different headline: (Score:2)
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Well, strictly speaking, those "farmers" were subjects of the Pharaoh, and thus, slaves. The only real change was which job they were slaving at.
99% of human history and economics, for the past 9000 years, was dominated by slavery.
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https://www.globalslaveryindex... [globalslaveryindex.org]
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I don't pretend America is the only one to have slaves just like I do not pretend education of extremism is comparable to concentration camps or slavery. Your other points seem fair though, I am not saying slavery is anything new -- simply there are industries that have totally flourished off it's use which is to return to the point that religions aren't the only system which has caused such injustice and both are fairly comparable. Not all the things you mention about the use of slaves do not negate this p
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In the United States it was abolished.
Guess what, there are MANY other nations where tobacco is grown, that have had slavery until fairly recently. A couple of them where American companies still buy from, it's STILL legal.
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Ask stupid questions, get stupid answers. Most everything you mentioned about religions is fairly in the past too. I mean the biggest counter-example to saying it's long history is talking about the Mormon Church of Jehovah's witnesses which are both radical forms of Christianity that were born in America. Both of which could more easily be called cults.
You again are the one who wanted the tally and are then arbitrarily collapsing it to a date range that again would show the tobacco companies have been more
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Does that include all the Africans that were kidnapped, separated from their families, and imported to labor on tobacco plantations between 1619-2015? And that's not even including the tobacco plantations still in African nations where slavery is legal and encouraged, like Nigeria and Sudan.
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Facebook should start an outreach to therapists [youtu.be].
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I think Pope Francis might find out he's concentrating on the wrong problem. Instead of stopping people from using the rituals their great-grandparents were quite happy with, he needs to stop the bishops from raping the seminarians.
Maybe a little bit of social media demographics could help him discover this.
Sympathy for Zuck (Score:5, Funny)
Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth, no taste...
[Sung in a robotic voice]
Obvious reason (Score:1)
Zuckerberg knows he's going to hell, he's just trying to buy himself some time.
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Zuckerberg knows he's going to hell, he's just trying to buy himself some time.
Heard me bought a nice island down there. Like he gives a Zuck.
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No, that was Epstein
Re: Obvious reason (Score:2)
Didnâ(TM)t Zuck try to buy out all the other properties on an island in Hawai?
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Larry wouldn't sell?
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Given how much bile, vitriol, hatred, envy and lies that facebook has helped spread across the globe, when Zuck eventually does reach Hell they'll probably treat him like some sort of anti-saint.
If he does receive any sort of eternal punishment it will most likely be because he made Screwtape look like a rank amateur (to say nothing of the Unholy Father).
Expand the base (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like a joke. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure this is the setup for a joke.
So the Devil tells Churches, "I'll host your content for free and we have lots of nice features for you."
I don't know the punchline but I'm not laughing.
Re:Sounds like a joke. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Simple: Devil A is collaborating with Devil B here. What you though churches were about doing good?
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The old joke about the politician and the priest goes along the lines of "you keep them dumb, I keep them poor"... but who is who in this case?
Re:Sounds like a joke. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure this is the setup for a joke.
So the Devil tells Churches, "I'll host your content for free and we have lots of nice features for you."
I don't know the punchline but I'm not laughing.
Given we're talking about mega-churches, that's completely appropriate. They have nothing to do with genuine religion. It's all about fleecing the flock. The best part is: they get to do it tax free!
Enter "megachurch convicted" into your favorite search engine - the list is pretty impressive.
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It would be hilarious if /. took up a policy of retroactively removing anonymity if you were using it to shitpost on this level.
Exclusive Facebook streaming = no stream (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know if they gave this church access to some special magic Facebook service that actually works, but I've never seen such a disaster as when I tried to do weekly church live streams through Facebook. At least once a month, it just plain didn't work at all.
The problem with Facebook is that they basically expose parts of their server infrastructure to the end user in the form of magic hidden values in the HTML/JavaScript. If you start the process of configuring a streaming session and Facebook's servers decide to latch on to it, suddenly that browser window becomes the only way you can get Facebook to start streaming, because that server session, tied to a hidden identifier in the content somewhere, steals exclusive use of your page's persistent stream key.
And if you try to create a new window and start the stream, even if you're editing the event that's tied to the stream, you won't be able to, because that one server session has exclusive control over your key. But if you're successfully able to use your browser's history to get back to the exact page that last had access to the session, it magically works.
What this means is that if the person configuring the stream messes up, there's a good chance it won't be easily fixable, and there's no way that some on-call expert can fix the problem remotely, either, because the browser cache is per-device.
Facebook's streaming system is clearly designed under the assumption that nobody will do anything more complicated than doing live streaming with the camera in a cell phone (with a non-persistent key), and that's pretty much the only part of it that works reliably.
Worse, I've sent feedback to Facebook on this issue on probably double-digit occasions, and after a year, they still hadn't done anything to fix it as of when I stopped caring a few weeks back (because we stopped doing weekly livestreams). Based on that experience, I can only assume that Facebook just plain doesn't care if their streaming feature actually works, so I can't imagine why anyone would choose Facebook as an exclusive provider. That seems like the most surefire way to frequently not have a live stream at all.
But I guess everybody has to learn that lesson themselves. In a year, I predict that they'll be on YouTube or Vimeo. Just saying.
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My old church did Facebook streaming. I, and others, told them that we won't be viewing if it is on facebook (mostly because I couldn't put it on my big screen TV), but the media team didn't know how to do anything else.
I never did watch one of the streams.
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As with many churches, we leaned into live-streaming when the pandemic hit. There was one week about a year ago when we had to fall back to Facebook because YouTube changed something and temporarily broke our ability to stream from our streaming appliance box thing we were using at the time. We were able to get Facebook set up easily enough, embedded the stream in our church’s site where we’d normally have the YouTube embed, and blasted out the info to everyone a few days in advance, but our vie
Consumer (Score:5, Insightful)
"Consumer isn't the right word," he said, correcting himself.
He had it right. Churches are certainly not looking for people who won't pay a tithe.
Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said churches were a natural fit for Facebook "because fundamentally both are about connection."
LMAO! Really?! From what I can see Facebook and churches are alike not because of connection, but because they are both about obtaining money and power. The good they do in the world is outweighed by the bad, heavily.
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dont forget manipulation and misinformation
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But facebook claims that it is Working to Stop Misinformation and False News [facebook.com] ... so it seems that that claim is itself misinformation.
Re: Consumer (Score:3, Insightful)
"The good they do in the world is outweighed by the bad, heavily."
I don't like, nor participate in, Facebook.
I'm not religious, nor do I go to a church regularly.
But this sentence jars with reality so badly, and is so obviously fueled by anti religious dogma that I had to call you out.
No question, religion has been the excuse for some pretty massive and heinous wrongs. But your assertion ignores the constant, daily, positive meaningful things that religion and churches do for their communities every single
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You're a frothing, anti religous zealot.
"the money they suck" - I'm sure you're reasonably considering the $100-$200bn churches (JUST IN THE US) donate annually directly to the poor and to the nations you're talking about, right?
It's impossible to argue a vague assertion but yes, usually the priest in a poor area is the only educated person. Wealthy? Meh, not really in the modern era. Certainly the CHURCH in that area is likely 'wealthy' by local standards but it's also constantly using that wealth for s
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Would it surprise you that I completely agree with you?
If there are property taxes, all property should be taxed - NOBODY should be exempt.
If there are income taxes, all income should be taxed - NOBODY should be exempt.
But that doesn't have any bearing on the assertion by the op "The good they do in the world is outweighed by the bad, heavily."
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You do know that lots of people VOLUNTARILY give to their church, right? More than $50bn.
I would say giving food to homeless people, running free schools, clothing to poor people, funding hospitals for everyone...all are generally recognized good things?
All you're doing is cherrypicking the worst things disregarding the MAJORITY of what churches do. If all you see is through the lens of hatred, that's all you're GOING to see.
Reminiscent of the smallpox-infected blankets.... (Score:2)
Day Late, and a Dollar Short (Score:4, Informative)
So, I've done church media for a while, and have done so since before Myspace was in its prime...and the math simply isn't working here, as far as I can tell.
Churches already do plenty of live streaming. Churches that weren't streaming their services online prior to 2020 started not long after. Churches that weren't receiving online donations prior to 2020 also started providing modern means of donations once offering plates couldn't be passed.
However, there are two notable things about this story.
First, Hillsong is massive. It's not quite Catholic Church massive...but as far as protestant churches that aren't aligned with some sort of a larger denominational organization (Baptist, Methodist, Episcopal, Assembly of God, etc.), they may well be the largest if all of their satellite campuses worldwide are counted. Amongst the reason they are that massive is due to their use of both traditional and social media outlets. Songs from their worship bands are played constantly on terrestrial radio and on Spotify, they have Youtube videos with millions of views, and their Instagram stories get shared hundreds of thousands of times every week. Facebook courting Hillsong because of the hugeness of their organization seems logical, but because of its size and reach, Hillsong simply isn't representative of the hundreds of thousands of 30-500 parishioner churches that meet every week.
On the coattails of that is that Facebook is chasing Hillsong precisely because Hillsong doesn't need them. They're so big that they have plenty of technical people who can do basically anything Facebook wants to provide to them. Whether they want to do video streaming or some sort of Reddit-like online church community or online donations, Hillsong is big enough to not-need Facebook to do it. They can (and probably do) use Akamai or AWS or Cloudflare as a CDN. Donations are handled by Pushpay, a company used by lots of nonprofits for online donations.
Facebook could probably help out with some sort of online community function better than a roll-your-own solution, but that's primarily due to Facebook's network effect...and even then, "download the hillsong App" with some StackOverflow code that combines something Instagram-like with something Pandora-like and something Whatsapp-like, maybe a Bible tab, a LiveStream tab, and a Donation tab. They're big enough to justify having people download Yet Another App. Facebook needs to court Hillsong because an organization that size can easily replace them in their niche.
Essentially, Facebook trying to pull Hillsong away from their existing solutions for an online presence would make sense for Hillsong. Those other churches? Well, they're a different story.
Yes, many of them use Pushpay and Akamai and AWS, and there's a cottage industry of "online church in a box" that makes an app and a streaming platform and a website all readily functional...but an iPhone 6S, a Wi-Fi connection, and the Facebook app is all the smaller churches need to do a live stream...and many already do. Similarly, most of the smaller churches do already use Facebook and Instagram for their online communities.
More to the point, the smaller churches that didn't have this in place pre-Covid, suddenly found themselves forced into it. Facebook already handles those smaller churches' online components because they tend to be the avenue of least resistance for most small churches that don't have tech specialists in their ranks.
All of this to ask...what exactly is Facebook trying to do now? They already have the small churches. The medium sized churches probably have a Facebook presence in addition to a limited number of other services, and Hillsong (and Saddleback, and Elevation, and some of the other super mega churches) have had an online presence for years with dedicated IT professionals and media specialists handling them.
If Facebook was going to try and tap the faith market, March/April 2020 was the time to do it. "When churches are finally opening up after over a year of implementing their online presence, via Facebook or otherwise" doesn't seem to be the sort of strategic move that is useful for Hillsong, for smaller churches, or for Facebook itself.
Fits nicely (Score:3, Insightful)
Evil collaborating with evil is not a surprise.
regulators get tossed a bone (Score:2)
The job of antitrust regulators tasked with breaking up the social media giant just got easier....
Say hell-oh to Facebook and their holier spinoff Faithbook.
ok it was kinda funny, A little.
csw
This Is Fine. (Score:1)
The mutant creature rises from this union.
As predicted by the bible (Score:2)
The Revelation, specifically.
Now, let's see what the Bible say about this.... (Score:1)
Church of Facebook (Score:2)
"Forgive me, Facebook, for I have sinned."
The Facebook marketing department (and US NSA/DHS/FBI) must be wetting themselves with glee over this opportunity.
Even the Pope is on Twitter (Score:2)
Why not the churches?
All the other delusions are already there.
Facebook, make up your mind (Score:3)
You can either fight misinformation and false news [facebook.com] or team up with religion. You can't do both.
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Makes me glad that I am not an active FB user.
And how long before other religious organisations start to demand equal access?
Wonder when the Church of Satan will start it's livestreams.
And what of religions which have nudity as part of the rituals? Wicca? Raëlism?
Those were the ones I came out with from a quick Google search. Am sure there is more.
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Cults of a feather flock together (Score:4, Interesting)
Preying on the weak and gullible is a hallmark of both Facebook and religion. It's obvious these two will make a great match.
So is this a political move? (Score:4)
Is Facebook casting its lot with the Republicans once and for all? Build up a base of evangelicals, perhaps partly by giving away some level of Facebook tools and access not available to run of the mill organizations and then rely on them to push back at attempts by Democratic elements looking to regulate or criticize Facebook's profiteering on right wing misinformation?
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Facebook's most loyal customers are those who like to submit to authority figures - God, Government, Corporations like Facebook, etc.
Facebook's own serving algorithms are their gospel. It's no surprise to see this alliance.
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It's so funny how a platform designed around enhancing the social connections of elite college students has become the platform for the opposite demographic, dumb, blue collar types, to enhance their social connections.
Funnier yet is that the effort to recruit conservative Christians is being spearheaded by two Jews, Zuck and Sandberg. I hesitate to point this out in many ways because it sounds so awful but its such a rich irony.
It makes perfect sense, (Score:2)
that two money-grubbing brainwashing soulless propagandists should unite to increase the range, extent, and lucrativeness of the psychological and societal damage they're both intent on causing.
Also, I'm not sure whether the pastor saying "consumers", then correcting it to "parishioners", was the kind of error you'd expect from an Elmer Gantry, or the kind of "watch what I can get away with" you'd expect from his new crony The Zuck.
Missionary work converted to ad buys (Score:1)
Totally checks out - used to go to church and participated in evangelism meetings. They play out just like a corporate marketing meeting with city demographic mapping data and using normal top of funnel marketing tools like event lead gen, direct mailing, word of mouth campaigns by parishioners and sometimes a paid missionary sales force.
Churches have a huge inflow of cash for building up growth and FB wants it. They want churches to start reaching out for these digital services with huge ad buys. I mean t
Fits right in to the mission (Score:2)
Facebook is well known for spreading misinformation, so this is aligned nicely with that mission.
Interesting (Score:3)
I belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This pandemic caused us to close our chapels, at least for a few months. Each family was authorized to administer the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper and perform their own weekly worship services. About that time I saw a comic where in the first frame the devil was bragging how he closed millions of chapels and temples; the second frame had God bragging how he converted millions of homes into churches. Eventually Church HQ authorized congregations to stream weekly worship services over YouTube, but the Sacrament itself couldn't be transmitted. We are now at a point where people can attend worship services in person or stream, based on each family's needs and comfort level.
Facebook is smart to want to provide this service, but a bit late to the game. I'm not sure how appropriate ads before, during, and after the broadcast would be.
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You too? Just wanted to let you know...
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Why does a family need authorization from a church to celebrate the death and resurrection of the Son of God in their own home?
Nobody needs permission from a church to worship the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
In the Church of Jesus Christ, ordinances (such as the sacrament and baptism) require priesthood authorization to perform. The keys to administer this sacrament rests with the congregation's bishop. Under normal circumstances, this authorization is given to priests and deacons for in person weekly services. In my denomination, the bishop calls on lay members of the congregation to prepare and share talks (eg. the bishop rarely delivers a sermon). Anyone can worship the Lord through prayer, music, testimony
Facebook: profits? No, prophets! (Score:2)
So Facebook after going true profits is going after false prophets now? /s
Fools and their money (Score:1)
Nothing New Here. Move Along. (Score:2)
Facebook seemed to have a lock on Catholic Church direct streaming at the start of the pandemic. To a large extent it still does. Luckily, it was in a form that could (usually) be viewed without actually logging in to Facebook. Some later duplicated their streams on Youtube, which is easier to connect to without an account though about equally intrusive, but they were a minority; FB still mostly owns that market. Somehow, in most cases, neither FB nor YT show ads (how much did THAT cost the parish?). FB sti
Haha. (Score:2)
Gotta love that one. ALL religion is misinformation!
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Pretty much what Jesus said... https://www.blueletterbible.or... [blueletterbible.org]
[Mat 23:2-36 KJV] 2 Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: 3 All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, [that] observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not. 4 For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay [them] on men's shoulders; but they [themselves] will not move them with one of their fingers. 5 But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their ph
Too many relevant scriptures... (Score:2)
[1Ti 6:10 KJV] 10 For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
[Mat 7:21-23 KJV] 21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? 23
"Consumer isn't the right word," (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Religious Bigotry on display (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cancelled if they say the wrong thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
You are mistaken. "Stop the steal" is hate speech and misinformation. That has nothing to do with "unapproved". "Unapproved" would mean _everything_ not explicitly allowed is prohibited. That is very much not the case. (Hate to have to defend Facebook here, but you are trying to push an even greater evil.)
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Nope. It depend on whether you have some minimal connection to reality and some minimal active intelligence. If these are present, the facts of the matter are completely obvious.
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A number of local government entities have had recordings of their public meetings taken down from both FB and YouTube because citizens protested ongoing mask requirements at meetings. "Covid misinformation" was cited.
For months, it was common to "cancel" people on FB if they said they believed Covid originated in a lab in China, because that was "hate speech" against the Chinese.
So "unapproved" is a fairly large target area for social media companies that are being "asked" by government officials to increa
Re: (Score:2)
You seem to be ignorant as to the meaning of "unapproved". Please read up on the definition.