19 of the top 20 most trafficked Christian pages on Facebook in 2019 were run by foreign troll farms
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Not touching that one….Does this mean that the troll farms considered Christians more easily manipulated?
OB
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I don't blame you. My hand was shaking as I typed the words
. As it turns out I'm not alone in seeing Christians as having a collective susceptibility to conspiracy theories (there are obviously exceptions like your good self )In post #18 I followed up with links to a range of articles bemoaning Christian involvement with conspiracy:
OB
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dzheremi
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It's kinda funny when you consider that Eastern Europe is largely at least nominally Christian...like America, come to think of it. Hmm. Maybe in the future American Evangelicals will be part of troll farms scamming Romania or something.
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If you read this stuff for any length of time it really sounds crazy. Not in a ha-ha kind of way. But mind binding looney.
Policovacy goobly-gock. That’s politics/covid/conspiracy for the clueless.
~bella
Policovacy goobly-gock. That’s politics/covid/conspiracy for the clueless.
~bella
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rambot
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While I understand that and data bears it out, my own anecdotal experience is that about 90% of my Christian friends and acquaintances are generally positive, supportive and intelligent folks listening to science. Maybe only 2 of them are FULL on conspiratorial, and a few of them are just over cautious (in my opinion).I don't blame you. My hand was shaking as I typed the words
In post #18 I followed up with links to a range of articles bemoaning Christian involvement with conspiracy:
OB
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If I get the time and the energy I might go looking for hard data on the proportion of Christians who support the various conspiracy theories floating around from Evilution to the Great Reset via anti Vaxx, Climate Change, the Mark of the Beast, 5G, Trump's election, chip injections etc. etc. etc.
In the meantime CF postings suggests that the proportion of conspiracy theorists is significant. Combine that with the sorts of articles I'm seeing, written by Christians, deploring Christian susceptibility and the problem seems to be real. I also see a problem where the line between Christian belief and outright superstition seems to be very fuzzy. This doesn't help.
There may also, be a 'birds of a feather' thing happening where those with a tendency towards conspiracy will naturally mix with like minded folk. In your case is it possible that, as a 'rational' Christian, your acquaintances will naturally be those of a similar mindset?
OB
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Sketcher
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Forums tend to attract the crazier people out there. Though social media is working hard to catch up, it seems.
I'd say the Internet has developed in such a way to give those with weak faith new ideas. Weak faith + new ideas can result in crazier ideas.
Fortunately, weak faith can be dealt with. But looking back, I don't envy the people who chose to deal with me when I had it. There's no quick fix, it's a long climb up.
Very possible with churches. My church has a good number of university professors in attendance, so I think it skews more toward rational. It's also large. If you have a smaller church with a either a pastor or a few loud people in good standing who begin to accept conspiracy stuff, then I think there's a good chance it might skew the other way.
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Ana the Ist
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19 of Facebook’s top 20 pages for American Christians are run by Eastern European troll farms overseas, [Facebook] internal documents leaked to MIT Technology Review reveal. [Content for Black Americans was also targeted.]
For the most part, the people who see and engage with these posts don’t actually “like” the pages they’re coming from. Facebook’s engagement-hungry algorithm is simply shipping them what it thinks they want to see. Internal studies revealed that divisive posts are more likely to reach a big audience, and troll farms use that to their advantage, spreading provocative misinformation that generates a bigger response to spread their online reach.
The Facebook study was conducted in 2019, and found that these troll farms were targeting the same audience that Russia attempted to manipulate in 2016 with their own Facebook misinformation campaign. Though Facebook was aware of the troll farms and their manipulation of Americans in 2016, they did little to address the issue.
“Our platform has given the largest voice in the Christian American community to a handful of bad actors, who, based on their media production practices, have never been to church,” wrote the report’s author, Jeff Allen, who used to be a senior-level data scientist at Facebook.
I can only imagine the damage done to these poor Christians who have congregated to places where people have given them misleading information for some sort of personal gain.
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Psalm84
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19 of Facebook’s top 20 pages for American Christians are run by Eastern European troll farms overseas, [Facebook] internal documents leaked to MIT Technology Review reveal. [Content for Black Americans was also targeted.]
For the most part, the people who see and engage with these posts don’t actually “like” the pages they’re coming from. Facebook’s engagement-hungry algorithm is simply shipping them what it thinks they want to see. Internal studies revealed that divisive posts are more likely to reach a big audience, and troll farms use that to their advantage, spreading provocative misinformation that generates a bigger response to spread their online reach.
The Facebook study was conducted in 2019, and found that these troll farms were targeting the same audience that Russia attempted to manipulate in 2016 with their own Facebook misinformation campaign. Though Facebook was aware of the troll farms and their manipulation of Americans in 2016, they did little to address the issue.
“Our platform has given the largest voice in the Christian American community to a handful of bad actors, who, based on their media production practices, have never been to church,” wrote the report’s author, Jeff Allen, who used to be a senior-level data scientist at Facebook.
Oh, come soon, Lord Jesus! Praise the Lord! Thank the Lord that He is and makes Himself known to us, and one day soon every lie will be destroyed forever! Hallelujah!
I think it's wise to take all these analyses with a very large grain of salt as there's a strong desire by the world to censor things. I'm on Facebook quite a bit and have never seen another Christian post from any of these. I've also seen ordinary posts by Christians, for example, merely celebrating Christ's resurrection, be flagged for what's called "violating community standards." On Twitter I also noticed during the 2016 election season that I received notifications a couple of times saying that I'd retweeted a Russian bot, and they showed me what the tweets were. They seemed to be genuine American-created memes that the alleged Russian bots probably stole and retweeted. On the other hand, I don't believe anything was said when Twitter users showed dozens of dubious looking Twitter accounts had tweeted the exact same tweets in favor of Democrats; I encountered a couple doing that myself.
Over all, a lot of the so-called news about "fake news" I think has been the true fake news. It can almost make you forget that Jesus has overcome the world, but He HAS! hallelujah!
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Strathos
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I don't blame you. My hand was shaking as I typed the words
In post #18 I followed up with links to a range of articles bemoaning Christian involvement with conspiracy:
OB
I see just as many atheists and agnostics drinking the Trump kool-aid.
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Have you? - It's possible but unlikely. I'd be interested in seeing the figures or the articles pointing this out.
In any case, it says nothing about Christian susceptibility to conspiracy theories.
OB
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Here's some figures from Pew Research.
Looks like only 15% of atheists are Republicans. Allowing that only a proportion of these will have drunk the Trump kool-aid and that atheists are a tiny minority of the overall population, it seems unlikely that atheistic kool-aid drinkers amount to significant numbers.
Party affiliation among atheists - Religion in America: U.S. Religious Data, Demographics and Statistics | Pew Research Center (pewforum.org)
OB
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Looks like Trump numbers for atheists are even lower than I thought (and headed south).
This is from The Conversation
Faith in numbers: Trump held steady among believers at the ballot – it was the nonreligious vote he lost in 2020 (theconversation.com)
What is clear is that Trump lost a good amount of ground among the religious unaffiliated. Trump’s share of the atheist vote declined from 14% in 2016 to just 11% in 2020; the decline among agnostics was slightly larger, from 23% to 18%.
Additionally, those who identify as “nothing in particular” – a group that represents 21% of the overall U.S. population – were not as supportive of Trump in his reelection bid. His vote share among this group dropped by three percentage points, while Biden’s rose by over seven points, with the Democrat managing to win over many of the “nothing in particulars” who had backed third-party candidates in the 2016 election.
OBAdditionally, those who identify as “nothing in particular” – a group that represents 21% of the overall U.S. population – were not as supportive of Trump in his reelection bid. His vote share among this group dropped by three percentage points, while Biden’s rose by over seven points, with the Democrat managing to win over many of the “nothing in particulars” who had backed third-party candidates in the 2016 election.
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Here's some figures from Pew Research.
Looks like only 15% of atheists are Republicans. Allowing that only a proportion of these will have drunk the Trump kool-aid and that atheists are a tiny minority of the overall population, it seems unlikely that atheistic kool-aid drinkers amount to significant numbers.
View attachment 306683
Party affiliation among atheists - Religion in America: U.S. Religious Data, Demographics and Statistics | Pew Research Center (pewforum.org)
OB
To be fair that's party affiliation, a lot of people consider themselves republican/conservative, but still vote democrat due to how far right wing and crazy the republican party has been of late.
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Anything is edible if you try hard enough and know what you’re doing.
It's kinda funny when you consider that Eastern Europe is largely at least nominally Christian...like America, come to think of it. Hmm. Maybe in the future American Evangelicals will be part of troll farms scamming Romania or something.
We Americans don’t need religion for that. We have the CIA.
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You're right.
Looks like the actual atheist Trump vote was around 11% (see post#34).
OB
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This sort of stuff is all over Youtube, I see it all the time. It's all about exploiting algorithms. Unfortunately, it creates a sea of confusion about many issues of public importance, and leaves the public vulnerable to manipulation by influencers with less-than-transparent agendas.
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